JWOC Selection Event 5/6 March – Information Saturday 5 March: Middle Distance  Map:    Smedley Station 1:10000, 5m contour interval Directions: From the North (or Napier airport) take Highway 50 to Smedley Road, and turn right.  If you reach Tikokino, turn back , you will have gone about a kilometre too far. From the South follow Highway 50 […]

New Year – new challenges. With much of 2015 devoted to getting a High Performance plan finalised and adopted, the on-going issue in 2016 is to make that plan both a reality and a success. Organizationally this means getting the different levels of squads functioning well and providing the training and coaching that is needed […]

Presidents Rant, Constitution Review, 2016 International Team Costs, Vacancies, Appointments, AGM Notice, AWMG Updates, Community Sport Investment Update, International Olympic Academy Session for Young Participants

Nick Hann is one of New Zealand’s top orienteers winning the men’s elite grade in both middle and long distance at this year’s national champs. Nick will definitely be one to beat at Southern O Week, and here we catch up to him to find out how his orienteering is going.   1) In 2014 you finished […]

Orienteering NZ invites applications for the following two vacancies: Orienteering NZ Event Liaison & Orienteering NZ National Coaching Co-ordinator. Applications close 31 December 2015.

7 December 2015 The Junior World Orienteering Championships for 2016 will be held in Engadin, Scoul, Switzerland 9-15 July 2016.   Selection Criteria The 2016 JWOC Team will be based on the following selection events: Primary Selection event – Hawkes Bay event in 5-6 March 2016 Supplimentary Selection event – 2016 Orienteering NZ National Championships   Overseas-based […]

Regional Junior Squads; Costs for JWOC, WOC and Australian Schools Champs; IOF Athlete’s Licence; IOF – WOC in the future; Sprint Relay to feature in 2016 SuperSeries; Regional Junior Squads; Adventure Race World Championships 2015;

The benefits of getting ONZ’s committee convenors together around a table were realised at a workshop held in Wellington during mid November. Whilst providing each convenor with the chance to highlight the goals and progress made by their respective committee, it also raised opportunities for interaction on common issues.

Notwithstanding the WOA and SI Champs, and the wrap-up from the Australian Champs, the main issue this month is (finally) the announcement and rationale behind the new Senior and Under 23 National Squads. These have been a long time in gestation (about 9 months actually!) but the birth is here and, hopefully, the start of […]

President’s Rant – October 2015 It’s been a busy period with an overseas trip to Australia to take in their Australian Championships and two trips back to Wellington on orienteering business. Whilst over in Ballarat, I had several rounds of informal talks with our Australian counterparts largely around increasing opportunities for more competition between the […]

Orienteering NZ invites applications for the following two vacancies: JWOC Team Manager & WOC Team Manager 2016/2017. Applications close 15 November 2015.

President’s Rant – July 2015 Not surprisingly July has seen our young junior athletes taking all our attention. During the early part of the month, I’m sure that most of us were actively following JWOC from Norway with no indication of what was about to unfold. It’s hard to find the appropriate superlatives to acclaim […]

Well what a month! Another wonderful JWOC for New Zealand highlighted by Tim Robertson’s successful defence of his sprint title, but supported in full by excellent performances by the men in the long distance and relay, and some promising progress made by the young women’s team. Now attention switches from Norway to Scotland as the […]

The Kiwi #1 men’s team just failed to replicate last year’s podium finish coming in 12th place but as 7th nation just 24 seconds behind Switzerland. A steady first leg by Devon Beckman was followed by both Shamus Morrison and Tim Robertson moving  through the field, as many of the runners ahead made mistakes in […]

Shamus Morrison and Tim Robertson have produced great runs in the JWOC Long Distance in Rauland overnight to finish 9th and 10th respectively. With only 3 seconds separating the pair of them in Tuesda

Familiarity with Norwegian terrain was the key in Tuesday’s JWOC Middle Distance Final with a sole Russian the only interloper as Scandinavian and Swiss filled almost all the top 10 places in both Me

Tim Robertson has written his name well and truly into the history books of orienteering, with a stellar run into GOLD in the sprint distance held today in Åmot. On a course that proved to be physically challenging, with difficult route choice legs, Tim ran away from the field, leading from start to finish, to […]

Tim Robertson has pulled off back to back gold medals in the JWOC sprint with a start to finish victory in Rauland Norway. Tim’s 14:31 was 3 seconds ahead of Aleksi Niemi of Finland, with Lithuanian Algirdas Bartkevicius in 3rd! Shamus Morrison and Devon Beckman also had excellent runs coming in 30th and 32nd in […]

The sprint simulation was held at Krossen village. Norwegian sprintmaps are very  different to New Zealand because there aren’t  any close together buildings or tight alleyways. Most buildings are single houses with no fence so is often hard to tell what is out of bounds. We started off on a suburban road but could cut in between houses through the […]

The Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC) start on the 4th July, in Rauland, Norway. There are 302 athletes from 40 countries taking part in the week long event. There is also a Supporters Tour event running alongside the JWOC competition.

As the second day’s training in Rauland came to a close Tim Robertson decided he needed a haircut. But where, in a ski town, in summer you might ask.

On a stunning day in Rauland we headed out to one of the nicest maps of the area for our Long Distance Simulation Race.

June has been a long month in orienteering terms, starting with Queen’s Birthday weekend, continuing into the World Cup races in Norway and Sweden, and then Jukola and Venla relays, and so on as the northern hemisphere season swings into full action. There have already been several reports on many of these events, so I won’t dwell on them unduly here and this will therefore be a relatively short newsletter. Suffice to say that now we await the major foci of 2015 – JWOC starting now in under a week, followed a few weeks later by WOC. Good luck to both NZL teams – do us proud (again!).

Before meeting up with the team in Oslo, Dani, Kayla, Tommy, Devon and I had a couple of days in Sweden in the small town of Lund. We were able to find a sprint map close to where we were staying, which consisted of buildings and small patches of forest which helped us recover from […]

Some of our top athletes, Lizzie Ingham, Tim Robertson and Matt Ogden are asked a few questions about how they have progressed from starting out at orienteering to competing on the world stage.