Despite the shortest day just ticking over, orienteers are not hibernating! From now over the next month we have athletes over in Europe representing New Zealand at EYOC (European Youth Champs), JWOC and WOC. No doubt there will be some bleary eyed orienteers at work who have been up through the night to watch GPS dots on screens. The Board gives their best wishes to all these athletes. We hope you have some amazing experiences.

The Board have also not been hibernating. We had a pretty full meeting last week updating policies. We’ve had a focus on updating and clarifying points in our selection policy and appendix as well as the appeals policy. We have some further changes to consider and approve these at our next meeting. The policies had not been updated for a while, and we also felt some further clarification and alignment across the policies would support athlete understanding of selections and appeals. Once they are confirmed we really welcome your feedback.

Pete Swanson, despite stepping down from the Board has also not been hibernating. He has been working on updating the health and safety system for ONZ. His first set of documents is excellent. Once he has finished them all, they will be audited by an external health and safety provider and then signed off by the Board. Our initial reaction is extremely positive and we are thankful to Pete for his time and expertise on this.