The Dawn of WOC 2015: The Sprint Qualification

Today we preview our six runners competing in the sprint qualifier, which is tomorrow! The first starts are at 6pm (UK time, GMT+1), and the start lists are available here (http://eventor.orienteering.org/Events/StartList?eventId=4966&groupBy=EventClass). Keeping track online is easy this week as well, the woc2015 home page (http://www.woc2015.org/home) has plenty of info, just click on the respective race to get the available start lists, live results and live broadcasts/gps tracking, although broadcast tracking incurs a fee (bought here http://shop.orienteering.org/category/25/buy-livecenter-passes). if you intend to watch several races, pay through the IOF live centre for the best deal.


The Aussies competing are:
Krystal Neumann: 18:11
Rachel Effeney: 18:22
Hanny Allston: 18:28

Ian Lawford: 19:05
Brodie Nankervis: 19:27
Bryan Keely: 19:28

If you're back home, this is really early Saturday morning (add 9 hours to convert to Australian Eastern Standard time)
The qualifier also allows us to introduce three of our runners on debut, which are Brodie, Ian and Krystal. The three runners certainly seem a lot calmer than I remember being at my first WOC!

The Beginning

G'day everyone, and welcome to the first blog entry for this years world orienteering championships, in rainy Inverness, Scotland! While the sun has not shown its face for more than a few minutes this week, the Australian team is full of smiling faces, as we begin to arrive in Inverness. Competitors, managers and coaches are arriving one by one, as they travel from Sweden, Norway, France, Australia and Italy, while some of our supporters arrive too (one supporter is walking the 120-odd kilometres from Fort William to Inverness - go mum!).

To start with, its time for a quick little overview of our week so far. On Monday, most of the team had assembled in Inverness so in true athlete fashion we spent a lot of money on food at Tesco! In the evening the team took part in a sprint test race run by a Scottish orienteering club. The race was a fantastic way to prepare for the coming Sprint races and there was even a Quarantine.



On Tuesday the team headed out for two forest sessions, one in long terrain and one in middle terrain. Although it was a very wet day, the terrain was beautiful and at least there seemed to be less ticks! For a sneak peak of the middle training map check out @auswoc on Instagram (link below). Following this the team headed out to loch ness for some touristing, which would have not been a true Scottish experience without a taste of some Haggis and a trial of some "traditional" Scottish clothing.

Tuesday was a special day for another reason, Simon became one year older (rumour has it he is now 40). Unfortunately Simon's cake went missing and he had to settle for apple crumble for dessert!

Today  half the team headed out to a sprint map on the coast while the others headed back into the forest for some more middle training. Big thanks to Icebug who have been helping us keep out feet in the slippery Scottish terrain. The rest of the day was spent traversing the Scottish coast, checking out the Sprint areas for the following days.

The first race this year is the sprint qualification, on Friday (July 31st). From Friday, the program is:

Friday 31st: sprint qualification

Saturday Aug 1: sprint relay

Sunday Aug 2: sprint final

Monday 3rd: rest

Tue 4th: middle distance (final)

Wed 5th: relay (forest)

Thur: rest

Friday: long distance (final)

Following the Aussie WOC team is easy this year, and we are expanding our social media outreach with the debut of our social media gurus Ian and Brodie. You can keep up to date through following our blog as well as Orienteering Australia on Facebook, following @OrienteeringAUS on Twitter, and now on Instagram @auswoc as well. Hopefully that's enough websites to get you up close and personal with our team!

That's all folks!

Hi everyone,
Well, that's it for another year at the World Champs. Time always flies at these events, and there's no doubt that's because they are a heap of fun, in large part to all the awesome people in our team, so this is a personal thanks to them for being great teammates. A big thanks to all of you around the world who've followed our blog, and I can tell you there were quite a lot of you reading, so thanks :)

This post is also a big advertisement for the World Cup events this January in Australia! If you live in Europe and are thinking about attending, ask an Aussie what they think, and they will only have positive things to say about orienteering and travelling in Tasmania.

One of the great maps in Tasmania: Littlechild creek

The Middle.

Well the week is coming to a close shortly, but before the week finishes we still have 2 more exciting races to go, and in my humble biased opinion the 2 best one's 2 run (really just the 2 that if I was running I would do best in cause I can't sprint!).  So enough blabbering by me lets get down to business.

Today would be the middle.  The distance that is know for it's technical difficulty.  From our run around the middle model maps it should deliver that in some varied terrain.  The terrain has some intense areas of detailed rock in lower visibility forest on one side of the hill but on the other it is relatively clean running with not quite as much detail.  Really it is on big sucker of a hill that will provide a mix bag of terrain as it has some alpine meadows on the top too.

Anyway now onto what you need to know.   Our runners are now Jas, Hanny and Julian.  Yes you might spot a change there.  Vanessa has chosen not to run due to feeling a bit under the weather the last 3 or so days.  So now for start times:  Jas 12:35:30 (only 8:35:30 back home),  Hanny 1:19  and Jules is off at 3:07.

Don't forget to check out the livecenter 

And apologies if facebook doesn't get updated... I'm not sure how much reception/internet I will have out there.

The Long Distance....

Well the long distance is just about to start.  First womens start is at 12.21 I believe.

The rain has currently gone away so it should be a nice day to spectate.  Hanny is the first Australian off at 12:37 so that would be 8:37pm AEST.  Ness won't be too far behind that at just after 1pm.  Simon is our only hope for the boys in this newly arranged World Championship events where there is no qualification races anymore.  He will start at 1:46 over here.

Simon just before I took him to quarantine 30 mins ago.

I ran day 3 of the 5 days of Italy this morning so below is a small snippet of my map which was next to the competition area for today.  So they should expect something a bit like this today!

Part of this mornings map.

Don't forget to tune into the live of results, tv, gps etc.  More details on the WOC website.  Or the swedish TV stream.

Also don't forget to tune into the Orienteering Australia facebook page for all the latest updates about the Aussies direct from my phone at the event!

Celebrating the OA presidents birthday last night at dinner.

Thursday Arvo Picnic

To all our supporters currently in Italy, please join us, this Thursday at 3pm, on the southern shores of Lago di Lavarone for afternoon tea. Normally we the team provide the food and drink, but I am yet to confirm that (will let you all know as soon as possible).
EDIT WEDNESDAY: We will indeed be providing nibbles for all who come (and if the weather is bad we will retreat to the hotel restaurant next door)

Mixing it up

Well that was a exciting evening!  The mixed sprint relay produced a exciting jam packed hour of racing.  If your back home in Australia but were too concerned about tiredness to stay up to watch it - you should have!

The Australia team of Rachel, Jules, Simon and Hanny produced some outstanding runs to come 10th. If you want to know how the race went for Australia I suggest that you jump on the Orienteering Australia facebook page and have a look at the posts which were put up during the event.  But I will still give you a short run down on the race. 

The team after the race

Rachel smashed it, spending a lot of time running in the leading 3 and eventually coming back with the lead pack just 14 seconds down on the lead in 6th place.

Jules was killing it early on to hold onto the lead bunch but eventually the speed of the top orienteers in the world started to get the better of him.  Still he managed to bring us back in 10th 50 seconds down on the lead. 

Simon, like Jules felt the pace of the top guys but still managed to come back in 13th position 2:02 down on the lead.

Hanny then had a good run to bring us home in some challenging conditions due to extra rain (not that it wasn't already slippery enough).  She took us up into 10th position just 2:41 behind the winning team of Switzerland. 

So all in all it was a awesome result from the team and if you have about 1 hour to spare you can now watch the replay of the race on the IOF's livecenter.  Do it!  It will be well worth the time!

Official results here too.