Oceania Orienteering Champs Review

The Oceania Orientering Championships recently took place in the parks and forests of Canberra. New Zealand had a large representation including Schools, Elite and Age-Group teams. Highlights of the week included the amazing granite terrain of Namadgi National Park, the high winds and the awesome victory by the School team over their Australian rivals.

Schools

The current crop of New Zealand orienteering juniors is the best ever. They are not only very fit and focussed, but also technically sound and cool headed in pressure situations. Junior Worlds athletes: Greta Knarston, Kate Morrison, Nicola Peat and Jack Vincent stepped back down a level into the schools team and terrorised the best Australian athletes for a week. Other stars for the team were Matthew Ogden (Auckland) and Jaime Goodwin (Hawkes Bay) who held together the junior teams and completed the rout, particularly on the relay day which New Zealand claimed 4 grades to zip.

Elites

Tables were reversed in the Elite grades. While Australia were missing their international golden girl Hanny Alston, off trying to qualify for the Beijing Olympics in the marathon, they had proven world class performers such as Julian Dent, Dave Shepherd and Tracey Bluett, to see off the New Zealand challenge. The only New Zealander to get amongst it early in the week was Ross Morrison scoring well in the middle amd sprint. While in the tough long distance race James Bradshaw and Penny Kane put up a fight. Largely the kiwis failed to cope with the technical and physical demands of the hard rocky Australian terrain, and are looking forward to the return match in the central north island at Waitangi weekend.

Age-Groupers

The final two races of the carnival, the long distance and relay were the traditional Australia/New Zealand Challenge which is competed for over all age-grades. Despite high hopes from the kiwis it turned into a rout, Australia winning 40 grades to 8 over the weekend. While a somewhat extreme result this is representative of the difficulty teams have in winning the trophy away. New Zealand held their own in the M/W 60 and 20 grades, despite the unfortunate accident to top junior Greta Knarston who knocked herself out cold halfway round the course...the next Australia/New Zealand challenge will be held at the Oceania Champs in the South Island, early 2009.