NZ – Oceania Sprint Champs

Monday, 26 February 2024

I am on the plane returning from the Oceania Sprint Orienteering championships. For me this is a huge relief to have it behind me as rather than run in any of it, I’ve been the Senior Event Advisor which means I’ve had to do all I can to ensure that the event is successful and up to the international standards & rules as set by the International Orienteering Federation.  Whilst I haven’t had to do anything like the work of the actual event organisers in both New Plymouth and Auckland, it has been a bit of a slog and quite draining especially when I had to ask the organisers to do more than what they were planning in some areas (in order to adhere to the rules or the comfort of the athletes). To add to the burden the events themselves were very complex (a knockout sprint series featuring 4 races in two venues, and around 30 heats all on one day), and a sprint relay competition which had all the complexity of a regular relay but extra fast.  The stakes were pretty high for the elite competitors as a spot at the world championships was guaranteed for the winners regardless of whether they got selected for their country.

Ultimately everything went fine – we didn’t have any official complaints or protests, and no huge mistakes were made.  The day of the knockout sprints was miserably wet all day, and the Auckland individual race had such high winds that a window on the campus we were using got blown out and showered glass down on the competitors.  In both areas the map area changed almost daily as classrooms were physically moved around and construction areas appeared and disappeared on the map.   Some things could have been done better (the course lengths for the sprint were ultimately too long and the model area was a bit of a mess), but overall it was fine.