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Orienteering Superseries: Prospects for 2003
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| Series Manager,
MAPsport Services, 5 Atahu Gr, Lower Hutt, NZ Ph (04) 566 2645 |
Testing Series Start among Craigmore Rocks
The start of the 2003 Superseries on 5 April will involve some testing navigation
in a hitherto-unused part of the Craigmore oreienteering map, near Timaru.
A maze of huge boulders, some the size of a house has been mapped specially for the event
by top NZ mapper Michael Wood and Danish star Carsten Jorgensen.
The boulders are in passable forest at the foot of massive
cliffs, and the difficulty of mapping them properly has led
previous course planners to avoid them. Other parts of the map have slump
features of depressions, knolls and discontinuous reentrants on a slope,
with random rock features disguised by the scattered vegetation.
The PAPO website has a
sneak preview of the terrain and
a sample of the map.
The Saturday event is also the Canterbury Championship. The second series event the
following day will be at Lake Tekapo not far from the
famous Church of the Good Shepherd. The mapping of the forested glacial moraine has been
updated since last year's national medium-distance championship, and the shorter courses
in the more open forest near SH8 will leave no room for error.
A solid entry of 17 men and 9 women will be competing, but the absence of some
top runners will open up the competition.
Top-equal-ranked man Bruce Mcleod (Queenstown) still has a leg injury suffered in the
Southland Championship in February, while the other top rank Jorgensen
(Denmark/Christchurch) is involved in the mapping and course planning for
Craigmore. Last year's SuperSeries winner Karl Dravitzki (New Plymouth)
is recuperating after surgery for compartment syndrome, so our pick
for the Saturday would have to be Helensville's Mark Lawson. Next on paper would be
Brent Edwards (Auckland), but we wouldn't be at all surprised by top runs from Jason
Markham (Christchurch) whose overseas travel last year left him under-represented in
the SuperSeries and NZ rankings, and Rob Jessop (Auckland), an orienteer of
immense experience who has been trying to compete a university thesis.
Jorgensen will be able to run the Sunday event, but it's often difficult to quickly
shrug off the organiser's worries and step into a competition frame of mind.
Top NZ woman Tania Robinson has not entered, so Christchurch's Rachel Smith,
Superseries leader last year, is our favourite for both races. But Penny Kane (Dunedin)
the national champion in the classic distance rates well, and could win one
of the two events. Jenni Adams of Christchurch, the course planner for Craigmore,
will be able to run on the Sunday.
In the regional competition the Southerly Storm should have a small edge over
the Northern Knights, with the Central Raiders hardly getting off the blocks.
The lower NI team has no elite women, its top juniors-nudging-elite will be saving their
money for the Junior Worlds in Estonia, and its star perfomer Dravitzki has had
surgery. Its only runners James Bradshaw and Andrew McCarthy will have to "hold the fort"
until rumoured transfers take place and some of its talented juniors move up.
This page was written by Michael Wood,
, and was installed on 26 Mar 03