The SuperSeries 2008 starts up with the first round at the Waitangi Summer Carnival running from the 2nd to the 10th of Feb. The carnival is begining in Taupo, moving up to Hamilton and ending North of Auckland. The 4 of 9 races in the Waitangi Summer Carnival count towards the first round of the SuperSeries. The Waitangi Summer Carnival also includes the first 2008 TestMatch between the Australian Bushrangers and the New Zealand Pinestars.

Scottwood Trust is kindly going to support the National Orienteering Squad members by partly funding flight travel for athletes to attend the 2008 SuperSeries. This will make it possible for more athletes to compete in the Overall SuperSeries; thereby raising the level of competition throughout the Series and in this way improving skills of the New Zealand athletes.

The SuperSeries website for 2008 have moved to a new location on the maptalk website.

A preview for the Waitangi Carnival Round and the overall SuperSeries will be available at the news part of the maptalk website during the week.

We would also like to take this opportunity to once again thank Bendigo Valley Sports and Charity Foundation for their kind support towards flight travel at the Otago Champs SuperSeries Round in 2007.

All the SuperSeries athletes had received a battle invitation to the action packed final of the SuperSeries 2007. Saturday started out with a skirmish on a tiny but incredibly detailed area with unusual features, near the Hutt River. The battle continued in the afternoon with a second sprint on the Victoria University campus in Wellington. The Sunday event was on steep farmland characterised by many small marshes and unique concrete buildings.

Thunderball Sprint
Mapreading skills were challenged to the full in the very intricate track systems of the paintballer's paradise. In this unique environment, one part of the map gave the orienteers the feeling that they were running in a maze of tunnels with many of the tracks enveloped by dense vegetation. Another part of the map was an open area surrounded by hiding places made out of old car tires. The Wellington weather performed to its best to challenge all of the competitors with icy rain. Despite his shift to sunny Gisborne, Jamie Stewart is still a southern man at heart and the weather was no obstacle to the National Champs bronze medallist showing his supreme sprint skills to take a convincing win. Bill Edwards kept a calm head to claim second place as the National Champ's gold and silver medallists both faltered, the former taking a detour off the map and then missing a control altogether. Junior Simon Jager took the third place once again showing the promising future for New Zealand elite orienteering. Another who will, no doubt, play a role in future international results is the women's winner, Lizzie Ingham who won easily in front of Piret Klade and Penny Kane.

Victoria University Sprint
Victoria University lies on quite a steep slope, literally adding an extra dimension into figuring out the best route choices. The route challenge was spiced even further with one area of intricate tracks and steps as well as the fatal risk of running into dead-end traps ensuring hefty time losses. The weather hadn't improved significantly since the morning so the conditions were slippery and cold. The students working overtime in the weekend (or surfing the world) could view the assembled orienteers getting ready for attacking the controls and route choices from the cosy warmth of the computer labs.
One of the performances on display was definitely world class, Ross Morrison's huge win in the men's class demonstrated both leg and head speed. Ross even had a few mistakes so if he can produce a similar run minus the mistakes at a World Champs, then it won't just be Australia who can boast about a down under World Sprint champion. Bryn Davies, one and half minutes behind, claimed second place ahead of Carsten Jørgensen. Lizzie Ingham collected another win in the women's class, this time ahead of Tineke Bethelsen with Piret Klade collecting her second top three place of the day.

Belmont Bunkers, Long Distance
The courses offered a mixture of highs and lows, the exhilarating feeling of being on top of the world mixed with the feeling of being at the bottom of a very high hill. Huge hills had been promised and huge hills there were - one altimeter on the men's course apparently registered 775 meters of climb on the 10.6 k men's course! (We are assured the altimeter was only checked after the course and not used illegally during the race.) The terrain was open farmland with patches of native bush and a few spots of intricate contour detail and the remains of some bunkers hanging out on the top of the hills.
The men's course had a winning time to match that experienced in the big international events but not often found in New Zealand races. It was a chance to test your grit and the ability to maintain performance over a long period and into the last crucial minutes. Given this challenge it wasn't surprising that Carsten Jørgensen, with nearly twenty years of international racing under his belt, took the win. He was followed by another mature orienteer, Mark Lawson while James Bradshaw showed there is some grit present in the younger generation to claim third place. The women's course wasn't quite so long but was still tough and hilly. Tineke Bethelsen showed her physical prowess to take a clear win in front of Penny Kane and Lizzie Ingham.

Overall results
Even before the final weekend the winners were clear; the Southerly Storm couple of Jenni Adams and Carsten Jørgensen. The overall results allow each competitor to drop their 7 worst scores meaning that it is possible to miss a couple of rounds and still be in contention. Carsten, however, attended all of the rounds, won nearly half of the races, scored a top three place in all but three that he completed and so took the victory by the huge margin of 80 points. Jenni missed just the last round when work commitments required her to be in the US that weekend, and scored a top three place in two out of three of the races she ran, giving her a 50 point buffer down to second place.

Sara Wallen was safe in second not competing in the final round as the only one who could challenge her, Amber Morrison was unable to compete either due to injury. In the men's class though, Rob Jessop faced a possible place drop if Ross Morrison could average second places through the three races. Ross still had a chance going into the last day where a win would have seen him pass Rob, but a stomach bug meant he missed the last race altogether.

Going into the final weekend, Penny Kane had a realistic chance to overhaul Amber Morrison for third, needing an average around second place over the weekend. But this wasn't to be the National Middle distance champion's best weekend and she ended up in an overall fourth place, three points behind Morrison. Aaron Prince held onto fourth place in the men's although James Bradshaw could have taken over this position if his Victoria University Sprint place had matched the third and fourth places he claimed in the weekend's other two races.

With the juniors competing in the senior grade, the overall junior results remained the same over the weekend. Georgia Whitla and Simon Jager took the overall wins with Greta Knarston and Angela Simpson taking the junior women's minor places and Sam McNally and Jack Vincent, the men's.

In the team's competition the battle was always between Southerly Storm and Herd Homes Central Magic. Despite lacking numbers at the final event, Southerly Storm had already done enough to ensure the victory. Although the Storm's overall win included some large victories on home ground they had the depth and commitment from their members to score consistently, well even away from home. For example the Nationals to After Match rounds, furthest from the Southerly Storm's base, were the most even rounds of the series, with Southerly Storm scoring388, Herd Homes Central Magic 357 and Macnut Northerners 319 over these seven races.

Planning is already underway for the 2007-08 competition - will it be the season that sees the handover in SuperSeries titles to the next generation?

The North West Orienteering Club provided after Nationals an opportunity to race around more of the beautiful forest around Auckland with the AfterMatch Carnival.
The club followed some of the successful concepts that the Waitangi 4 day has introduced like a wide variety of events and less courses and classes resulting in 5 events all of different types of orienteering. Furthermore North West had made the administration less intensive using the sport ident to determine the timing with "put and run" starts for most of the events.
The juniors and seniors ran the same courses and the juniors got this chance to see how their current form measured up to the seniors.

Massey University Engineering Albany Campus Sprint
The university provided a superb sprint orienteering area with a very intricate track net work, lots of impassable gardens, fences and buildings, combined with normal park orienteering with big open grassy areas and housing. The course started straight out into the very technical part with very intense map reading required which limited how fast the athletes could run. Then it took the athletes racing out into the open parkland with route choice and maximum speed being the decisive factors. After using up all oxygen deposits racing in the open for a while, the course finished off in the intricate areas and challenged the oxygen deprived brains of the athletes to the utmost.

The juniors showed off that they can handle these kind of fast challenging courses extremely well with taking victories in both the men's and women's class. Tom Reynolds the National Junior Sprint champion ran away with the glory with very impressive racing and won with a huge (when we are talking about sprints) 33 seconds margin. In second place came the National Elite Sprint Champ Carsten Jørgensen, closely followed by James Bradshaw. Yet another of the Morrison Family Racers had a break through with young Kate Morrison claiming the victory just in front of Tania Robinson in the women's class with another junior, Georgia Whitla, taking third.

Middle distance, White Lightning
Using mostly a new extension of the White Lightning map (used at Auckland Champs 2006) which featured more of the fast running but vague intricate contour detail on the flat part towards the coast and then a 30 metres high ridge line inland with contour details on top and a bland slope. Especially the vague intricate terrain is real challenging as the athletes need to know where they are all the time as there are no big features to aim for and relocation is very hard when nothing really stands out in the terrain. Many runners found their mistakes were very time consuming and had some of their biggest time loses for a long time. Tania Robinson showed how orienteering and running at full speed is done in this terrain type, claiming the win in the women's class with a huge margin. The juniors were in there on the next spots again.


Region Night 3 leg Relay, Turkey Ridge
The Turkey ridge terrain offers big sand dune forms with mainly open grassland and patches of open native forest, and also similar landforms instead covered in nice open pine forest. It was the scene of some very exciting night racing as the Superseries regions battled it out for the title of the best night relay team. In the dark of the night quite easy things turned quite hard and hard things turned really hard! Lots of people found it difficult to adjust to navigating in the forest after having been out in the open for the first part of the course. And on several occasions the time-loss was substantial.
Mark Lawson and Northerners first team ran away from the opposition being the best at handling the transition between open and forest on the first leg. On the second leg which was the women's leg Greta Knarston extended the lead with an impressive run in the night. And Simon Jager managed to hold off the chasing Southerly storm despite having a bit of trouble as he came into the forest.

Longdistance, White Lightning
This longer distance race used the rougher parts of the White Lightning map, which made both the technical and running aspects of orienteering more challenging. Especially one area of rough open with lots of undergrowth was a really good exercise in technical running skills and good training for going overseas to Scandinavia. Unfortunately some of the controls in this area were rather hidden and big bunches of runners could be seen hunting around in the high grasses looking for controls, making finding these controls quickly more a matter of good timing (arriving when a big bunch was punching the control) rather than good navigation.

Mass start long distance, Coastal something or rather
To top off a good week's challenges there was a mass start to spark a bit of racing fire into the drained legs and brains of the athletes. Three variations of Woodhill sanddunes were presented on the loops, the coastal dunes, the inland dunes and low visibility inland dunes. The latter added to the orienteering challenge quite considerably. Tania Robinson, who had missed the previous two races due to a cold, showed that she really is the queen of Woodhill with a convincing win. The men's race was closer with Carsten Jørgensen first over the line, follwed two minutes back by Neil Kerrison who outsprinted Tane Cambridge to claim second.An analysis of the men's class can be seen on maptalk on the thread TAMOC.

The tired but happy orienteers, who had grabbed the chance of getting close to orienteering overload, and the organisers providing this unique opportunity could travel home and relax with work for a while until the next must-do events show up in the calendar.

The Easter bunnies in the forests south of Auckland had to make way as the orienteering elite battled it out for the title of New Zealand champion. Over 300 orienteers in different classes challenged themselves to compete hard and have fun. Three very different terrain types produced six different winners for each of the three individual titles in both the men's and women's elite classes.

Sprint Distance in Auckland Botanical Gardens
The battle started in Auckland Botanical Gardens for the short pressure- filled sprint distance. The course was a combination of very fast head down, full speed forward parts interspersed with intricate areas featuring many small tracks and gardens to challenge the map reading. Wedding parties showed up every now and then to distract the competitors who had to work to regain their lost concentration.
Junior Amber Morrison (Hawkes Bay) who had shown very good form at the Waitangi 4 days in Feb was running up in the women elite class and snatched the Sprint Title in front of home favourite Tania Robinson (Counties Manakau) with Penny Kane (Hawkes Bay) in third.
Just a couple of weeks before the Nationals it looked like Amber was going to have to take a break for a while with a foot problem suspected to be a stress fracture. But after consulting a sports doctor, she was allowed to run as long it didn't get worse and turned into the NZ Queen of Sprint Orienteering.
Tania Robinson is getting back into form after injury problems early in the year and is getting closer to performing 100%. It will be exciting to follow both Tania and Amber in the big international events later on in the year.
In the men's class Carsten Jørgensen (Christchurch), Danish international orienteer and runner, was eligible to take the NZ title after obtaining residency and took full advantage of the new situation with a win in front of Ross Morrison (Hawkes Bay) and Jamie Stewart (Hawkes Bay). Ross was running the fastest but didn't slow down enough to get it right in the intricate bits and lost too much on two separate occasions to succeed in his quest to be crowned NZ king of sprint orienteering.

Middle distance in Waiuku Forest
Waiuku Forest is situated on the steel mine sanddunes above the mouth of the Waikato River. Large rolling sanddunes with areas of pampas and fallen logs spread out on the ground like pick up sticks in the open pine forest greeted the runners. Map reading as well as keeping a bearing were very challenging in these circumstances. On one of the legs there was a beautiful view of the Waikato River deep below, that could be used as a boost in the hard physical running with lots of knee lift over the logs and in and out between the pampas grass.
Neil Kerrison (Taranaki) likes it a bit rougher and tougher and often does very well in terrain that is physically challenging and leaves little energy for getting the orienteering right. And as the terrain was just that, Neil could run away with his first National elite title. After the race an overjoyed Kerrison "At last - I've been trying to get this victory for 10 years". Just 19 seconds behind, Carsten Jørgensen took second place with a meagre second back to third place Aaron Prince (Christchurch).
Penny Kane (Hawkes Bay) was flying above all the logs on the ground and between the pampas grass to a convincing win in the women elite class. Tania Robinson took another second place and Sara Wallén (Christchurch) grabbed hold of the bronze place.

Long distance of state highway 2 east of Smythes Quarry
The next day was the long distance on terrain which turned out to be the opposite of the middle distance terrain, as it was very nice on the ground but the low pine branches forced a bit of bent-over running for the taller orienteers. The orienteering technicality was not too hard but many competitors got lured into mistakes on the few hard controls or when the big hills had gotten the best of them.
Tania Robinson had gotten sick of second places and took out a big victory with her 20th NZ orienteering title plus her third podium place of the weekend. Penny also managed to take her third podium place with a silver placing on the long and Jenni Adams (Christchurch) came in for the bronze.
Young Ross Morrison ran away with his first Men's title after a very fast finish, which pushed him just in front of Carsten Jørgensen, who had been leading all the way. It was a very exciting finish and Mum Morrison had to let a little happy tear flow when Ross was announced as the Champion. Neil Kerrison did another very good performance to take 3rd.

The orienteers could travel home after an Easter of challenges and the Easter Bunnies in the forest south of Auckland could return to their daily routine again.

Lots more info like results and maps + lots of photos can be investigated using this link: Nationals 2007

Rocks as far as the eye reached was the sight that met us as we travelled the last kilomatres to the event centres of the 2007 Otago Champs just out of the Middlemarch township.
This orienteering playground provided lots of exciting control sites. As the ground was hard and fast the challenge was to keep up speed and direction and still be able to navigate between the rocks. Most mistakes were made due to too high speed into the controls and thereby not having the navigation accuracy needed to go straight to the control site.
The fields in the elite classes were the best seen in the South Island for a while as the support from Bendigo Valley Sport & Charity Foundation had made it possible for some of the best North Islanders to travel down and race aorund in the rocks.
On sundays long distance the course planner Jim Cotter had made many challenging routechoice legs which trapped quite a few athletes to loose time in the hot and hilly conditions.

Lara Prince had a very successful debut in the 2006/07 SuperSeries with a double win in saturdays middle distance and the following sprint distance. The second places were scooped up by SuperSeries overall leader Jenni Adams in the middle distance and overall 2nd Sara Wallen in the sprint.
Jenni Adams showed of why she is the overall leader with a convincing win in the long distance follwed by Lara Prince

In the mens elite class the South Islanders are very hard to beat on homeground with the visiting North Islanders only being able to take two of the nine podium places.
Carsten Jørgensen extended his overall lead in the SuperSeries by claiming three victories even though he had to share the sprint victory with Rob Jessop. Rob also took the third spot in the middle distance and thereby consolidating his overall 2nd place.
Aaron Prince picked up three good placings with the 2nd place in the middle distance as the best to move into the 3rd spot in the SuperSeries overall.
Local Dunedin orienteer Tane Cambridge had his break through in the mens elite class with a 2nd place on the long distance and we are looking forward to see him compete at Nationals.
The North Islanders scooped up two 3rd placings with James Bradshaw running away with it in the sprint and Neil Kerrison securing it in the long distance.

In the JuniorSeries Georgia Whitla managed to climb to the top of the overall tables with 2 wins and a 2nd placing.

Thank you very much to Dunedin OC for organising and Bendigo Valley Sports & Charity Foundation for the support to make Otago Champs a very exciting round in the SuperSeries and some hot steppingstones to the Nationals taking place in two weeks time just south of Auckland.

All the results for the Otago Champs 2007 can be found here.

Bendigo Sports & Charity Foundation has decided to support Flight Travel for National Orienteering Squad and Development Squad members to go and compete in this weekends Otago Champs, which is the 4th round of the SuperSeries 2006/07. This will give North Island Elites a chance to come down and try the Unique terrains full of gigant rocks around Middlemarch. At the same time the South Island Elite Orienteers will meet the toughest opposition for a very long time in the South Island. The organising is in the hands of Dunedin Orienteering Club, that has hosted many well organised orienteering events over the years and they will show of their organising skills in the three competitions (Middle, Sprint and Long Distance), that the Otago Champs will consist of. While we are looking forward to the competitions we will take this chance to thank Bendigo Valley Sports & Charity Foundation for their support.

The SuperSeries took advantage of the extensive and diverse programme of the Waitangi 4 days. While the international competitors continued to add to the intensity of the races only NZ residents are eligible for the SuperSeries and so the points available weren't affected by the large start fields. Only one of the seven events didn't count towards the SuperSeries that being the Spa Sprint. The first three events of the Waitangi epic journey formed the ANZ Test match already described in a separate article.

The Double!
The ANZ sprint race determined the chasing start order for a middle distance on the monster detailed Waipora map the following day, with the combined result counting for the SuperSeries. Unfortunately OCAD had eaten a contour in the first part of the course so that the organizers had to eat that part of the course in order to send out the athletes on an accurate map. This didn't bother the competitors as they were happy to get it a bit shorter with two more competitions to follow later the same day. Although the terrain was open, the humps and hollows and an innovative forking system meant that competitors had to stay on their toes. Ross Morrison took his first win in the 2006/07 SuperSeries leading into the chasing start and into the finish as well. The next places were decided in a big group sprint with Aaron Prince showing off Coast to Coast form claiming the 2nd place with Rob Jessop, Michael Adams and James Bradshaw finishing very close behind. In the women's class it was the juniors that took the glory with Amber Morrison claiming another win with Tineke Berthelsen in 2nd, taking her first podium place in the senior's elite class. In third spot Tania Robinson showed that she was getting back into it after injury.

The Relay!
Only hours after the first head to head race of the SuperSeries 2006/07 another head to head opportunity arose in the Regional Relay on the Whakaipo Bay. Each team consisted of three runnes with at least one woman. The intensity of the relay pushed most competitors out of their normal balance, which resulted in many mistakes and in some cases disqualified teams. Still the main thing was that all seemed have a great time out there getting challenged on all factors of relay orienteering with good spectator opportunities. The planners had done well to pose route choices which separated the field and split controls which punished those who were merely following. The regional team that handled the challenges best was the MacNut Northerners with Brent Edwards, Tania Robinson and Mark Lawson closely followed by Bivouac Southerly Storm and then a bit further back the Herd Homes Central Magic. In fourth place was the Northerners Junior team with Thomas Reynolds, Tineke Berthelsen and Sam McNallay showing that the young ones have pulled their car out onto a straight stretch of road and are ready to overtake as soon as everything is clear. MacNut Northerners took out their only victory in the team's competition (in which two relay teams counted) until now in the SuperSeries 2006/07.

The Loop Race!
The last event of the Waitangi 4 days was yet another head to head race to motivate the competitors to pull out the last little reserves left in their bodies and brains after the abundance of challenges put forward in the preceding days. A well placed start point for the loops made it easier than normal to try out the excitement of doing a 180 degrees mistake and not figure it out for a while. Yet again the very detailed terrain also used for the chasing start put people on the edge of their map reading capabilities especially when hitting the detailed areas after a nice bit of fast running through the energy sucking high grass. In the women's class Penny Kane pulled out a victory to top of a weekend with results improving all the time. In the next places Jenni Adams and Lizzie Ingham added a further podium place to those they had collected in earlier races. Ross Morrison was flying in the Waipora terrain taking his second victory there. This time he was closely followed by Mike Adams, claiming his first podium place, only 10 seconds behind. In third Mark Lawson capitalized on being able to keep the steam up all the way to the end of the weekend.

The Waitangi Overall and SuperSeries 2006/07 status.
As the dust settled on some very tired athletes it emerged that Ross Morrison and Jenni Adams had scored the most SuperSeries points from the four days. In both cases this might have been different if others hadn't dropped an event altogether; Carsten Jørgensen giving up his lead in the chasing sprint to look after his vomiting daughter and Amber Morrison not finishing in the WRE middle distance. Amber certainly added to her total of wins with two more to the four she collected at Labour weekend.
Adams and Jørgensen hold the top places of the SuperSeries leader board when, all the eleven events held so far, are counted. Adams has a 30 point lead over Amber Morrison and Jørgensen has a ten point buffer down to Jessop. Jørgensen keeps his lead if only the best 8, or even 6 events are summed but Ross Morrison moves into second place with only a point separating him from Jessop in both of the reduced event cases. While Amber Morrison comes to within a point of Adams when 8 events are totalled and takes the lead with 6 events. Sara Wallen holds third place whichever way the points are added. For the final results competitors can drop 5 of their total 23 individual event scores.

The JuniorSeries!
The excitement of the Waitangi 4 days and the fact that these races will be used for showing form and ability for JWOC (with the final JWOC trials being at Nationals) had attracted big fields in the Junior Elite Classes. Thomas Reynolds and Sam McNally took out two wins each with Reynolds taking the second places in the races he didn't win and top points over the four days. However these were Reynolds first SuperSeries races for the season so he's down in an overall third place behind Jack Vincent and Simon Jager. Vincent has scored consistently in the events so far, while Jager, who wasn't competing over Waitangi weekend, had four wins in the opening rounds giving him a good points base.
In the Junior women's grade the four wins were shared by four runners underlining the great depth in this field. Kate Rea triumphed in the hills and rocks of PioPio, while Georgia Whitla showed her technical expertise in the tricky Kaahu forests to take the lead there. Angela Simpson was the fastest in the sprint and increased her lead in the chasing sprint the next day. The final loop race was one of the closest seen in this grade with two minutes separating the top 5 runners. In the end Jamie Goodwin proved to be the strongest with a 23s victory over Simpson. Third placed in the loops was Nicola Peat, who missed the first races of Waitangi, but still holds the overall lead in the SuperSeries from Jamie Goodwin and Greta Knarston.

At Waitangi 4 days New Zealand's Pinestars took on the Australian Bushrangers for a match over the three individual distances in orienteering: Long, Middle and Sprint. The scenes for these three challenges were quite different stretching from farmland with intricate limestone detail and tomos past steep Pine forest with low visibility and lots of undergrowth to very fast and clean pine forest with some rock details. The team with the most versatile orienteers would come out on top!

Tania Robinson that has New Zealand top competitor at many a World Championship and one of the main dynamos in the Pinestars has had injury problems over Christmas and summer just got ready in time for the match but was lacking a bit in form. This didn't seem to bother the women's part of the team much as the juniors Amber Morrison and Lizzie Ingham took control straight away with a double win on the Long distance that partly had the limestone rock that required very accurate orienteering into the control sites and fast technical running in long grass and on uneven ground, which was very physically demanding.
The middle distance required 100% concentration the whole way as it was near impossible to see very far in the bush trees and with branches and lots of undergrowth soaking out the energy of the legs. Here the experienced forces Jenni Adams and Tania Robinsson did the best in the pinestars team, but Australian Anna Sheldon took out the victory and a couple of Aussie Bushrangers interfered in the results to give them a narrow win in this discipline.
In the last event "the Sprint" of the testmatch it was full speed forwards in the open pineforest with a few steep hills and some scattered rockdetails. The challenge was to keep optimal line through the terrain between the controls despite the legs are demanding all of the oxygen and the brain is working on a new all time low. In these conditions Amber Morrison and Tineke Berthelsen took out another double win for team with the right combination of speed and concentration, and made sure that the Pinestars women had a comfortable win overall.

In the mens class the Pinestars had to be without the top three, the first two Chris Forne and Darren Ashmore with work commitments and the third Karl Dravitski suffering from a virus. But the Pinestars still had a very consistent team and with a couple of guys doing better than the results they had been selected on it turned out very well. Especially on the long distance with Rob Jessop, Neil Kerrison, James Bradshaw and Mark Lawson finishing just behind the very strong running Bushranger Julian Dent made way for a big win in the teams result. On the middle distance Neil Kerrison and James Bradshaw were the best performing Pinestars, but Rob Preston from the Bushrangers took out the win and the team battle ending up with a draw. The Pinestars still had a rather comfortable lead before the Sprint and despite a narrow defeat to the Bushrangers in the last event the Pinestar men also took the overall win. Continuously strong running Aussie Julian Dent took out the win and Ross Morrison and Rob Jessop on the next placings were the best performers for the Kiwis.

Obviously the Pinestars then also took out the combined competition with a clear win and could put the Key-Aspin trophy back on the shelve. The win was achieved with very good teamwork with athletes stepping up when the main profiles got sidetracked a bit.

The testmatch is one of the steppingstones on the way to big international events like World Cups and World Championships. The New Zealand and Australian Orienteering Federations work together to give the elite athletes the best possible competition programme by coordinating the World Ranking Events the two federations has been allocated and by organising one home and one away testmatch for the Pinestars and Bushrangers. A further step is a combined trainingcamp in Woodhill north of Auckland post Waitangi 4 days witch attracted more then 40 elites. The Woodhill terrain is similar to the terrain used for middle distance and relay at this year's World Championship in Ukraine in late August and supplied some of the first very specific training towards this.

The return Testmatch will be held in October in Canberra in conjunction with the Oceania Championships and the Pinestars are hoping to grab their fourth straight win.

Results Table: 1st Test Match Australia - New Zealand 2007
Long Distance
Women			Men			Total
Pinestars	Bushrangers	26-10	Pinestars	Bushrangers	21-15	Pinestars	Bushrangers	47-25
Middle Distance
Women			Men			Total
Pinestars	Bushrangers	17-19	Pinestars	Bushrangers	18-18	Pinestars	Bushrangers	35-37
Sprint Distance
Women			Men			Total
Pinestars	Bushrangers	25-11	Pinestars	Bushrangers	17-19	Pinestars	Bushrangers	42-30
Overall
Women			Men			Total
Pinestars	Bushrangers	68-40	Pinestars	Bushrangers	56-52	Pinestars	Bushrangers	124-92

Long, Middle and Sprint Distance, Chasing start, Mass Start and Relay Waitangi 4-days had it all. 7 events squeezed into 4days with the third day having three events, squeezed out the last bits of the competitors energy.

Heli Jukola took out the wins in three events including the two World Ranking Events that kickstarted the 4 days Orienteering Extravaganza and lived up to being the fauvorite. But in all events Hanny Alston (read Hanny's version of the story) was close behind untill she grabed a win, only to be outraced by the home fauvorite junior Amber Morrison in the next event.

In the Mens class Julian Dent took out the win on the long distance WRE with a clear margin to Tero Föhr, but Tero took revenge the next day in the Middle Distance WRE and evened out the score. Only the kiwi with his feet on fire Ross Morrison managed to take a victory away from Julian Dent in the remaining events and Dent was the clear King of Waitangi 4 days.

We want to thank the organisers for a very cool set of events. The results, maps and heaps of photos can be viewed on the Waitangi 4 days homepage

In the beginning of next week coverage of the SuperSeries part of the Waitangi 4 days plus a story on the Pinestars adventures in the ANZ testmatch will be available here.

As the top ranked runners entered in the weekend's world ranking events, Finns Heli Jukkola and Tehro Fohr will begin with the favourite label. But they'll both have to work hard on the first day if they want to keep that title going into the second day. Jukola, ranked 4th in the world will face a strong challenge from world number 10 and current short distance world champion Hanny Allston from Australia. The open setting for the long distance race on Saturday will suit the fast running Allston and it will just be a question of whether the pockets of rock detail will slow her down enough to give anyone else a look in. If Allston does slip up then fellow Australian Jo Allison or New Zealanders Tania Robinson and Amber Morrison along with Jukkola will be the ones most likely to take the chance for a win. Robinson has long been New Zealand's top female runner but she has had some injury problems over the summer and so it may well be the strong-running Morrison, still a junior, who leads the charge for the New Zealand women. The more technical forest setting for Sunday's middle race will play to the strengths of Robinson and Jukkola and will give them a good chance for revenge if needed.

The top ranked men to take to the farms and forests around Taupo this weekend are Fohr, ranked 22nd and Denmark's Carsten Jørgensen with a current world ranking of 51st. Now a veteran, Jørgensen is not quite as fast as he used to be, but last weekend he ran under 31 minutes in a 10km road race so he's not so slow either. "There were no hills in that race though" commented Jørgensen who is picking Julian Dent from Australia along with Fohr as the ones to beat on Saturday. Other names likely to feature are Australians Dave Shepherd and Tom Quayle and the young Dane Tue Lassen. Two of New Zealand's top three men are out with work commitments and the third Karl Dravitski has been suffering from a virus but he along with the evergreen Rob Jessop, supported by Amber's older brother, Ross Morrison, will be making sure the visitors see some flying kiwis this weekend.

At the same time an Australian - New Zealand Match is taking place with New Zealands Pinestars taking on Australias Bushrangers to decide who is going to hold the trophy high above their heads afterwards. This match is competed on the two WRE races and a sprint distance race on the sunday afternoon. This match is an open affair with the Bushrangers having a very competitive team and the Pinestars not being at full strength.

The world ranking events along with a further four individual races, made up of another middle distance, two sprint distance races and a mass-start loop race, over the 4-day weekend will count towards the Superseries. Only New Zealand residents are eligible to score points in the Superseries so the high number of visitors won't count against the points available this weekend.

Tania Robinson will make her debut in the 2006/07 superseries and will be expected to take the winner's points in a good number of the six races. The other likely winner is Amber Morrison who won the first four races this season. However Morrison is only in third place overall after missing the second round in the deep south. The women's current overall leader is Jenni Adams who, along with, Penny Kane, Sara Wallen and junior Lizzie Ingam, should take a share of the places and may even threaten Morison or Robinson if they falter. On a good day these four could all be beaten the fast running junior Tineke Berthelsen whose consistency is improving with every event. After this weekend it will be interesting to see if Adams can hold the overall lead or whether Morrison will reclaim it. It would be unlikely for any other women to take the lead from either of these two though.

Carsten Jørgensen is currently leading the men's superseries and hasn't been out of the top 3 in an event yet and so must be expected to still be holding the overall lead after the weekend. Whether he has increased his lead or not will be another question. Rob Jessop is in second place, and with two wins in the opening round, is a favourite for holding the lead and being one of the first to challenge Jørgensen. Neil Kerrison is making his debut into the 2006/07 superseries and can be expected to make an immediate impact. The first three places in each event will likely be shared among Karl Dravitski, Ross Morrison, Jessop, Jørgensen and Kerrison. Others that could ruin these guys' party at the top, are Bryn Davies who was nipping at their heels in the first round, Aaron Prince in his final preparation stage of another assault at the Coast to Coast longest day race and Michael Adams who has been impressive in the Auckland off-road racing scene this year. Adams was the top placed New Zealand at the Ultimax 5 days in Australia earlier this year but often performs better overseas when he's away from his work distractions.

The Junior Superseries has a very strong field with many athletes competing for the chance to represent New Zealand at the Junior World Championships in Australia. Nicola Peat and Greta Knarston currently head the Junior women while Simon Jagar and Jack Vincent lead in the Junior men. There are many athletes who will be challenging them for the top places and this commentator thinks it dangerous to try and pick any! One definite contender will be Thomas Reyonlds who performed well in Australia earlier this year and other names to look out for will be Scott McDonald and Riki Cambridge in the men and Kate Rea, Francis Peat and Georgia Whitla in the women.

In the teams competition Southerly Storm will find it hard to defend their lead against Herd Homes Central Magic with not much more than the bare minimum number of counting runners competing. And even though the MacNut Northern Knights are organising the Waitangi 4 days, they have the most competitive team this round compared with the two first rounds.

The Training Camp will start Wednesday, the day after the Waitangi 4 days, with a o-technical training in the afternoon. The following three days will have two o-technical trainings a day and we'll be running on lots of the delicious maps in the middle and northern part of Woodhill.

Return your interest in paticipating in one or more of the technical trainings in an email to Carsten. Bring around $30 to cover the basics like maps and plastic bags etc. And get your accommodation organised around Helensville, north of Auckland (if you need help with organising this, put that in the email to Carsten and he'll put you in contact with Rob Garden, who has already organised the Australians somewhere to stay).

Looking forward to see you doing some serious technical orienteering training to bring you a big step closer to success at WOC 2007.

Come and join us for a training camp in very nice terrain relevant to WOC 2007 from the 7th to the 11th of February 2007. Combine the Waitangi 4 days and this training camp to get more than a week of high impact orienteering in New Zealand.

The trainings will be staged north of Auckland in the vast forest area of Woodhill, that is wellknown for its complex sanddunes. There will be a variety of terrain runnability from the fast and furious, to areas that will test your strength. All with complex sanddune contours and full orienteering focus as the decisive factor in race situations.

The training camp's focus will be on mastering and/or refining the orienteering techniques useful in this terrain type. The technique trainings will be spiced up with a couple of competition simulations.

25 Australian elites have already confirmed their participation together with the New Zealand senior and junior squad. If you are interested in being part of this training camp, then send an email to Carsten.

More information on the exact schedule of the training camp and on accommodation and price (will be cost price) will be posted here soon.

In the huge beech forests of Waikaia was the South Island Champs competed on the long, middle and sprint distance. The area is unique as runable beechforest is in short supply and it is a superb feeling running through the native forest surrounded with different shades of green and little streams and marshes.

The biggest orienteering technical challenge is to keep track of where you are in the low visibility native bush, because if you get lost it is normally going to take a while to figure out where you are as everything looks the same with streams, beech forest and a big slope everywhere. Even the second rounds competitions had lots of rain and together with the tough and challenging terrain the kilometre rates for the winners were more than double the ones from the Wellington Champs.

Jenni Adams took the win in the middle distance and the sprint distance, but had to see herself beaten by Sara Wallèn on the long distance with the two of them sharing all the 1st and 2nd places between them.

Aaron Prince and Carsten Jørgensen battled it out with each a win and a second on the middle and long distance. The third place getter on the long distance was Rob Jessop with Greg Flynn taking his first top three for this season in the middle distance. Sadly one of the controls was missing on the sprint and made that race non-valid for the men.

It was great to see quite a few people testing themselves against the elites in the sprint race, where the length and difficulty isn´t a big obstacle.

Southerly Storm has taken a clear lead in the teams´ competition as none of the other teams were up-to challenging them on their home ground deep in the native forests.

In the individual classes it is also Southerly Storm that has broken away a bit with Amber Morrison just hanging on as the only non-Storm in the top three. Jenni Adams is leading in front of Sara Wallèn. In the mens class it is Carsten Jørgensen, Rob Jessop with Aaron Prince in third spot. But in the end only 75% of the competitions count in the overall result and the competition is still wide open with the ones who have achieved good results already having a bit of an edge.

Results as they were received in an email
Map with Mens long distance in .pdf (2.2 MB)

The first round in SuperSeries 2007 presented the competitors with fast running on sand dunes both in the forest and on farmland. The terrain lured many into running full speed and forgetting about pacing themselves into the controls. This proved to be fatal in some cases as even little mistakes could mean a big movement in the result tables.

The Labour Weekend weather pushed through and, after the first race was held in beautiful sunshine, the rain set in. This resulted in a slight reduction in knee lift while running and longer walks to/from the following competition centres. Despite this the runners enjoyed the races and many thanks are going to the organisers.

Amber Morrison (19 years) was the queen of the Wellington Champs with 4 straight wins and very consistent orienteering with a minimum of mistakes. Lizzie Ingham (18 years) also made some good runs. It is very encouraging to see the younger orienteers push through like this. But still Veteran Jenni Adams showed that the older generation is alive and kicking with three second places and a second place overall.

In the Mens class the younger guys were the best on the shorter courses with Ross Morrison (21 years) winning the middle distance and Karl Dravitzki winning the sprint. Veteran Rob Jessop showed to be the best over the longer distances with a double win. Overall it was very close racing in the top of the men's class with improved fitness and technical skills emerging from a whole group of competitors.

Only 5 points divide the top four runners Karl Dravitzki, Carsten Jørgensen, Rob Jessop and Ross Morrison after the first round. Bryn Davies would have followed close behind in fifth if he had had a valid run on the middle distance.

The Teams competition was a battle between the Central Magic and Southerly Storm, while the Northerners were a bit behind without their best runners available for this weekends racing. The home region Central Magic took out three of four wins and is leading narrowly in front of Southerly Storm. It will be exciting to see if Central Magic is able to keep their lead when next round is down south.

The JuniorSeries was for the men dominated by Simon Jager with four straight wins even though Jack Vincent was very close twice and Scott McDonald showed of good Sprint skills. In the junior women class it was a battle between Nicole Peat and Greta Knarton with two wins each and Nicole on top overall. Some of the younger girls showed their fine Sprint skills with 16 year-old Jaime Goodwin almost taking the win in the Sprint.

The SuperSeries 2007 is taking off very soon with the first round at the Wellington Champs 21-23 Oct 2006. The SuperSeries 2007 has a very exciting programme taking the athletes through a wide range of different terrains and distances to challenge every competitors in every way. It is going to be exciting to follow all the battles and especially the ones for the top spots. The SuperSeries 2007 programme certainly promotes that the most versatile and complete orienteers will take the tittles. Next weekends first round will give the first clues to how the wind blows in this El Nino year!

Looking forward to next year, the season will be even more tense as this years growth in competitor and spectator involvement looks to spill over. But for now congratulations to this years winner's and the best of luck to them and the rest of the NZ team as they move into their World Championship preparations.