With not too much on the agenda in September this issue is a little thin, although enlivened by the results in Australia from the early part of this week. Much of what is here is therefore looking forward rather than back and includes the 2016 JWOC Trials, 2016 SuperSeries, WRE events for 2016 as well as training camp plans.

Malcolm Ingham (mandg.ingham@xtra.co.nz)

Australian Middle Distance Champs

Congratulations to Nick Hann for his victory at the Australian Middle distance Champs on Sunday in what was clearly a very closely fought race in technical gold mining terrain. I happened to switch on Live Tracking just as the race reached its climax, and in time to see Murray Street, who at that point was in the lead, make a mistake about 4 controls from the end. So Nick has added an Oz title to his ONZ ones from Easter with the sprint and long distance still to come at the end of the week. Backing Nick up was Matt Ogden who was 5^th just over 2 minutes behind. Congratulations also to Ed Cory-Wright for his victory in M20E, again with good support in Tommy Hayes coming 3^rd. Well done too to Renee Beveridge for her 4^th place in W21E.

The 3 Australian Championship events are also part of a NZ-Australia Test Match in the elite and 20 grades. Standings in this after the middle distance are not to hand.

Australian Schools Champs

The Australian Champs week is also the time for the Australian Schools Champs and the Southern Cross Challenge between New Zealand and the Australian state teams. Competition started on Monday with the Schools Sprint Champs. In Senior Boys Ed and Tommy reversed their placings from the previous day, while in Senior Girls Danielle Goodall was 2^nd. There was less success in the Junior Boys with Callum Sutherland in 5^th the top Kiwi, but this was more than made up for with Jenna Tidswell, Carolyne Nel, Marisol Hunter and Briana Steven filling the top 4 places in Junior Girls.

In Tuesday’s individual champs Tommy and Ed were 2^nd and 4^th respectively in Senior Boys (Tommy beaten by only 4 seconds), with Jenna and Briana 2^nd and 3^rd in Junior Girls. Really hot off the press, however are today’s relay results with NZ coming in only 4^th in Senior Boys but winning the other 3 grades with Katie Cory-Wright, Georgia Creagh and Danielle in Senior Girls, Daniel Monckton, Dominic Cleary and Callum in Junior Boys, and Marisol, Briana and Jenny in Junior Girls. As a result of this once again New Zealand has retained the Southern Cross Challenge with final scores being as follows

New Zealand 89 points, 2=. Tasmania 63, 2=. ACT 63, 4. Victoria 56, 5. Queensland 55, 6. NSW 41, 7. SW 39, 8. WA 22.

Congratulations to all!

Camps and squads

I am hopeful that National Senior and Under 23 squads will be named by the end of October, but this is subject to confirmation from Orienteering New Zealand. The present proposal is that there will be qualifying criteria for these squads (including an age criterion for the Under 23 squad). The proposal, again to be ratified by ONZ, is that Regional Junior squads will underlie these national squads. More information on the formation of these will follow.

As has been advertised on the ONZ website the National Junior Camp is scheduled for just before Christmas and will probably be preceded by a short camp for the older juniors wishing to make the next steps towards National squads. Prior to the Anzac Weekend 3-day there will be an Elite and U23 Squad camp in Hawkes Bay.

Wellington area, at least, has now started regional training days which have been happening at about 3-4 week intervals for the last few months. The last one, in Osgiliath on 19 September, focussed on map simplification. The first exercise involved participants putting out a single control each (these were subsequently used in an event the following day), and then being asked to draw from memory their own map of where the control was. These were then used by other participants to find the controls. Although it’s a hard exercise, with guidance as to concentrate on simplifying the navigation when you put the control out, it is remarkable how easily some of the hand drawn, simplified maps are able to be used for navigation. Essentially, it teaches how much detail there is on a map that we don’t necessarily use, but often waste a lot of time identifying. The second exercise involved running in pairs on a 6 control course, with relatively long legs, where participants took it in turns to memorise a leg and then run it. The next session will focus on sprint techniques.

JWOC Trials 2016

The JWOC Trials for 2016 have been confirmed as being in Hawkes Bay on the weekend of March 5/6. These will consist of middle and long distance races. Thanks to Hawkes Bat OC for offering to put these on at a time of year when there are generally no major events.

SuperSeries 2016

The 2016 SuperSeries is also shaping up. At present the proposal is that it will have 4 rounds as follows.

Waitangi Weekend (Wellington); 2 sprint races

Easter Weekend (Nelson): spring, middle, long

Anzac Weekend (Manawatu): sprint, middle/long, mass start middle/long

Queen’s Birthday (Wellington): middle, long, multi-day distance

The concentration of these in central New Zealand is a concern, and it is possible that a proposed TONIC weekend hosted between Easter and Anzac weekends by North West OC may be added.

World Ranking Events 2016

 World Ranking Events (WRE) for the elite grades are important as they give New Zealand athletes the opportunity to gain IOF ranking points. With start order in World Cup and WOC races determined by ranking, gaining points to improve ranking is actually quite important, especially for those athletes who do not compete overseas very often.

With the change to the World Ranking System to separate rankings for Sprint and Middle/Long the number of such events that a nation is able to host has also changed. We are now allowed to hold 3 sprint and 3 middle/long WRE’s each year, but these have to be applied for by the end of September. A request for nominations was sent out to all clubs. This does require some forward planning in terms of events.

By the close off of applications the following have been entered for NZL WRE’s for 2016.

7 February: Sprint WRE – Raumati (Wellington)

4 June: Middle distance WRE – Kuku Beach (Wellington)

5 June: Long distance WRE – Waitarere (Wellington)

23 October: Long distance WRE – Hogsback (PAPO)

The sprint race is part of the Waitangi 6 sprints being put on by Wellington. Both the June events (Queen’s Birthday) are also likely to be Test Matches with Australia and should have strong fields, while the Labour Weekend event hosted by PAPO is the South Island Championships.

What to watch

As indicated above, the Australian Champs has live tracking. So for those of you fed up with early morning rugby watching, tune in on Friday and Saturday to the sprint and long distance champs at the more reasonable hours of mid-late morning.

For the night owls, the final round of the 2016 IOF World Cup takes place in Switzerland this weekend with a long distance on Friday, middle on Saturday and a sprint relay on Sunday. Lizzie Ingham is the only New Zealand entrant and has been acclimatising to high altitude for the past week, with Dieter Wolf providing training opportunities for her. Lizzie currently sits 22 in the World Cup standings and with a bit of luck might squeak into the top 20. There are also sprint relay standings in which NZL is 11^th, a place we will certainly losw with no team running on Sunday. C’est la vie.