2024 Australian Orienteering Champship - NZ School Orienteering Team

Australian Orienteering Championship 2024

*** additional photos to be added ***

Earlier in the month of September 2024, NOC club members Riley Croxford, Micah Dunn, Eddie Swain, Zefa Fa'avae, Tide Fa'avae and Lani Murray travelled to Perth, Australia to race as part of the NZ School’s Orienteering Team. They competed in seven events over nine days, including the Australian Schools Orienteering Champs and the Australian Orienteering Champs. We first caught up with Riley, to chat about his experience and route choice analysis.

"We raced seven events in nine days and my favourite day was definitely the Australian Relay Champs where I placed 2nd, running with Eddie and Felix from Christchurch. The terrain was very fast and open with the straight route generally being the fastest. In the Australian Schools Long Distance the first leg of the race was very interesting as it was quite easy to lose direction and make a mistake. The day was quite hot getting up to the mid to late 20s so mental toughness was key to having a clean race. For this control I made sure to sidle around the spur until I crossed the first stream. Then I followed the clearing and bare rock to get me most of the way to the control. From there I took a bearing before bashing my way through some green, crossing two streams then following the third to the end, where the control would be. Other routes that people took were, taking the stream slightly to the right of the line most of the way to the control before coming up at the control from below using a large rock on a hill as their attack point. Most of the forest races consisted of these legs where the straight route was almost always the fastest. Now moving to the urban races, the last day of the carnival was the Australian Sprint Championships run at Karbomunup, two very intricate school campuses beside each other on a hill. The most interesting leg was the 4th, stretching from one side of the map to the other. As the control was early on in the race I didn't have much time to plan so I just ran this route as it was the first one I saw. However, it was not the fastest route. Cooper Horley from Australia ran this leg in 2:00 (Green line), whereas I ran it in 2:22 (Red line). On my route, I navigated in and around buildings for a significant portion of the leg, which caused me to slow down. On the other route you can sustain a high speed almost the whole way around the leg as you are barely navigating and running on a road almost the entire time along straighter lengths. It was my last year in the team, having been selected each year since 2019. If you want to learn more about orienteering I highly recommend travelling to compete in Australia."

Micah has captured his experience of his first time racing overseas:

“My trip to Australia was a fun new experience for me. It was my first time orienteering outside of NZ so it was pretty cool to orienteer in completely different terrain. The actual experience of travelling with a team and coaches to all the events was pretty nice. One event that stood out for me was the ASOC relay where I won gold as part of the NZ Karahiwi team, alongside the other Harua NZ junior boys team.
I was the first runner for my team and had a good strong run without mistakes. I then passed over to my second runner, Charlie, who also had a nice strong run. At this point there had been some technical difficulties as the organizers had programmed a control wrong so everyone was coming up as an MP. After a while of waiting they soon fixed this but there were still many people who had mispunched. Charlie then handed over to our third runner, Evan, and less than a minute later the NZ Harua team sent their third leg runner out. The Harua team third leg runner Zack then caught Evan but could not lose him as they then ran together for the rest of the race, finishing together. When they finished we knew that we had done well, but we for first. This was a proud moment to stand on the top of the podium with both teams flying the kiwi flag. It was an amazing two week experience with seven days of solid orienteering. Thanks to all the
coaches and managers.still didn’t know our placing because the live results showed lots of mispunches and we knew there had been issues beforehand with one of the controls being programmed wrong. We didn't find out we were first until they called us up onto the podium.”

Lani Murray also shared her experiences: “I spent the holidays competing in the AOC and ASOC with seven races over nine days in and around Armidale, New South Wales. Despite being sick before and during competing, I was pretty happy to come away with three medals and four very successful races. It was like deja vu as I had been really sick two years ago in Melbourne and was hoping I'd get over it fast, but it wasn't to be, so for the first six days I stayed with my parents to avoid getting anyone else in the team sick.

I knew my best chance for a medal was the first event, a technical middle-distance race. Because of my slower pace, I found the navigation easy and had a clean run picking up a bronze medal (6 seconds behind 2^nd which was a tiny bit gutting but I was pretty happy just being able to compete). Nika took out this event by 10 minutes, awesome effort Nika. As the days went on I was able to run a bit more and my brain wasn't so foggy.

The second last event was the Australian Long distance on the Saturday. We'd had a rest day Friday so I was hoping my body was up for it. It had some long running legs interspersed with short tricky controls over open farmland and dense prickly bushes. I had a good run and came 2nd. I followed this up the next day with a 2nd again for the W18 grade in the Sprint around the local University campus where I was able to navigate some technical split-level areas. This was a big improvement from the previous schools competition sprint the week before where my brain and body just weren't feeling it! The NZSS team was split into 2 even teams to compete against each Australian state for points in the midweek schools competition. We placed first and second with only a point separating us and importantly ahead of all the Auzzies!

Compared to the last 2 years there was way less wildlife about probably because it was much colder where we were based. I didn't see any snakes and only saw a few kangaroos but I did manage to spot a rock Wallaby and a few large skinks. It was great to catch up with my friends from around the country and ones I'd met in Australia the last 2 years. Big shout out to NOC for their travel grant and everyone who supported Micah and I at our Rogaine fundraiser. Also to my coaches and managers for the effort involved to make this happen.”