NZ - Oceania Champs 2025

Sunday, 16 March 2025

In late January Jon, Jett and I  went to NZ for the Oceania Orienteering Championships.   The trip was pretty quick - especially for me as I arrived a few days after Jon and JEtt on the Thursday and we all flew home on Monday night.  Everyone had at least one really good run during the championships. Jon's highlight was a fantastic win in the long distance race in the rain and Jett had some really strong results in his class.

While the terrain was just fantastic - soft pine forest with detailed dune contours, the weather was very variable (mostly wet), and the location a few hours north of Wellington  was not what you'd call a must-see destination.

 Still, travelling with friends is always fun and we had a great time.

A sunny day for the middle distance. 

We went for a swim at this beach before the thunderstorms hit later in the day. Not sure I love the black sand. 

On the last day of competition we had to leave the event at 12pm at the very latest in order to just make our flight back to Australia. As it was a relay day this meant that we had to run either in 1st or 2nd spot, and if in 2nd spot, we really had to hope that the first leg runner had a good run.  The rest of us were all fine, but unfortuately for Jett who was 2nd leg,  his first leg runner Niko didn't have a clean run, and even if he had, it was still doubtful whether he'd make it back in time as the courses were longer than expected. This meant Jett had to pull out half way though his race basically keep running all the way to our minivan so we could jump in and drive away at the last moment feasible. The 2 hour drive back to Wellington was a bit slow with some traffic hiccups but we made it comfortably in the end. On the way there was some grumbling about our choice to fly home Monday (so we could all go to work Tuesday) - but once we got back to Australia we heard that everyone who didn't get out of Wellington on Monday was stuck for days as all flights out were cancelled on Tuesday and then delayed on Wednesday. I'm really relieved as I had a crucial event at work on Tuesday I really needed to be in studio for. So phew.