Congratulations to Barbara Dawson (Garingal) who has won Orienteering Australia's Silva Award for Services to Coaching. Barbara has done long-term work in schools in NSW and at local club events, and contributed to the National Schools Kit Project. She has also been a stalwart at the River and Bay Series as the lead coach for newcomers and in helping other club members in instructing first-timers. This award caps a big six months for Barbara who also won the Cox's Cup (ONSW Encouragement Award) in 2021. Photo, caption from ONSW.
29 Garingalites travelled to Kingaroy Qld for Easter - a beautiful part of Australia known for peanut growing. The orienteering was superb in granite terrain with well set courses and excellent organisation. The weather was gorgeous. A huge THANK YOU goes to the many Queensland volunteers who made it all happen.
The key to good outcomes over the Easter 3-day Nationals is consistency. Day wins are a good achievement - but to win overall once the times are summated is something really special as each day also requires a different style of orienteering (Middle Distance, Long Distance, Relay Distance).
- Overall 1st place getters were: Lilja Lehtonen in W16A ( middle left dais in photo), Cooper Horley in M16A (running an age class up, middle right in photo) and Eszter Kocsik in W18A (yellow blouse first photo at the dinner). The margins with these wins were very convincing! Clearly these 3 juniors have excellent prospects in our sport and are to be congratulated.
- Overall 2nd place: Eino Lehtonen in M10A, Nikolett Halmai in W35AS and Andrea Lux in W45AS.
- Overall 3rd place: Istvan Kertesz in M35A, Juha Lehtonen in M45AS, Barbara Junghans in W65AS.
But it is not all about the orienteering. Easter offers a chance to socialise and be a tourist. Many of us went to the Bunya National Park with the enormous exotic pines not too far away. Plus, there is the Garingal Easter Dinner! On the Saturday 22 Garingalites had dinner together at the Kingaroy Commercial Hotel (traditional, old-style, country pub, live music). Fortunately our booking put us in a side room. The food was good and there was heaps of reminiscing about the last two days of orienteering, and for some, also the Armidale events the previous weekend.
Four hardy (or perhaps foolhardy!) Garingal members ventured to Cessnock at the weekend for the Australian MTBO Champs. Torrential rain midweek meant that already wet courses were by now underwater and/or muddy, which made for very slow going and a blowout in times. It was like being flogged on SAS Australia.
It is noted that our MTBO gun Michael Ridley-Smith showed his pedigree with 2nd in M50 in the Long on Sunday - his only ride for the event. Ian Jessup, riding in his M50 age class for the first time instead of a recreational category, managed 7/9 in Friday's Mass Start, covering 24km in just over two hours of hard work.
On Saturday morning Ian came 6th in the Sprint, which featured a fiendish track network in the second half of the course with several knee-deep creek crossings, and James Lithgow came 11th in M60.
That afternoon Ian opted out of the Middle to go wine tasting, during which James improved to 9th and first-timer Edith Chow (a new GO member) unfortunately mispunched on the non-championship Recreational 1 course. Edith only had the last control to go but noticed she was already on course closure time so went to the finish (I am sure if it had been better weather the organisers would have really chuffed that Edith did that!! it is such a relief to have everyone back), but she did not realise the organisers were allowing some leeway due to the slow going. (And that was after she had done the 3D SOS at Balgowlah in the morning.)
On Sunday Edith was determined to finish and - riding in W21 (Open Women Elite) - completed her course in 4 hours 16 minutes! Wow, what an epic. Bigger than Ben Hur! Our spies at the weekend put her stamina and endurance down to Edith's extra large helping of dessert on Saturday night to store much-needed energy. Also, she's a budding adventure racer so has some talent there.
Newcastle club had this event postponed multiple times due to Covid and we THANK them for the thousands of volunteer hours they put in to ensure riders from six states could compete. They have earned some rest, but the washing machines could be in for some punishment!
