2011 National Squad announcement

The South African Orienteering Federation's Selection Committee has announced the Senior national squad for 2011 as follows (in no particular order):

 

Men:

Nicholas Mulder

Jeremy Green

Alex Pope

Garry Morrison

Cobus Van Zyl

Colin Dutkiewicz

Nico Van Hoepen

Michael Crone

Martin Kleynhans

 

Women:

Tania Wimberley

Margaret Archibald

Cindy Van Zyl

Zoe Brentano

 

All the athletes listed above will be expect to show steady improvement, commitment and fitness throughout the year. Included in this the above athletes will be required to attend any squad trainings held in their respective provinces as well as track fitness assessments on 14 February 2011, 18 April 2011 and 13 June 2011. Team selection announcements for WOC 2011 in France will be made in April, shortly after the Western Cape Championships.

 

Any queries can be directed to Michele Botha : selection_committee "'at'" orienteering.co.za 

More information on the Selection Committee and the selection process can be found here.

Sprint finish - Race Day 4

We had a lovely surprise when we unexpectedly met Liz and Peter Mulder at St. Cergue and again at the Sprint in Geneva. Below we pose in the sprint arena with Simone Niggli-Luder (Women's Sprint and World Cup winner 2010) being interviewed on the big screen in the background.


The World Cup sprint made for a thrilling final spectacle before our flight back to SA. In the men's Elite race the first 18 finished within one minute of each other, there were 5 shared places with second placed Graham Gristwood and Matthias Müller missing Daniel Hubmann's top spot by only 9 seconds. In the women's race Simone had another near-invincible run ahead of Helena Jansson with JWOC 2010 star Ida Bobach in third place.

We had a rainy, slippery, slightly slower run.

The complex area around the Geneva Cathedral on the World Cup sprint all-controls map

This then ends our fantastic tour.

Over to the next orienteers!

Up and down - Race Day 3

We spent the training day in Geneva mostly looking at Geneva (particularly the Old Town sprint area).

The the following day's middle event at St. Cergue just outside Geneva went quite a bit up and down in both the terrain and the races. Cindy was suffering from a cough and runny nose, Tania had an uphill struggle with a control or two and Nico's speed went a bit downhill in the much more runable white forest.

Lots of contours, white and the nasty white bits are actually marked on the St. Cergue Middle map

What to do with the stones from stony ground

(Just for completeness here's what we did on the last few days, written from home)

Chateau de Chatillon

Lausanne's Gothic Cathedral

More stony ground - Mt. Blanc

Tania on top of Aiguille de Midi (3842m) after an arduous cable-car journey.

Cindy and Nico getting in some high altitude training with Mt. Blanc in the background.

The bottom-most part of the Mer de Glace ("Sea of Ice") glacier - France's biggest.

Today may be the final post as we're now off to Swiss-land. Depending on how the data networks receive us we'll try to write a few more posts from Geneva.

Wet - Training Day 5

We had a late start in the hope that the overnight rain would stop for us. It didn’t really. As a result we were unusually late to the training and arrived to a packed car park, with all the national teams out in full force. The area was right in the middle of the WOC 2011 terrain so it seems no teams wanted to miss out on the training opportunity. We all did the shorter of the two courses. The first half proved to be very slow terrain to move over. Rocky (and wet) together with the French’s sporadic felling practices meant there were lots of (wet) branches everywhere.

Tania's course on the training map in the middle of the WOC 2011 embargoed area

To give you some idea Tania was quite pleased with direct, faultless route from 4 to 5 even though the going was slow. Nico also had a clean run there, but felt he was a bit slow. Never the less he was still 3 minutes faster than Tania. Some teams seemed to be able to move faster through the messy forest floor, something worth practicing if you could find similar terrain in SA. Visibility was low, but the now familiar complex contour details seem to be helping ones progress over the course. It is difficult to imagine where in SA we will be able to find such complex contours to practice on.

The second part of the course gave some hope, as by comparison it was possible to run through the forests. Pits continue to be these amazing man eating crevices and are useful navigation tools (if you don’t fall into them). Clearings were again useful (although some felling caused confusion) but the difference between green and white was not so obvious. Despite their name, depressions continue to be a win.

Tania at a control in a depression in the white forest

And that wraps up team SA’s participation in this training camp. Regrettably with just one week it feels like we are have only just scratched the surface of how to master this complex, tough and unforgiving terrain.

A word of thanks to Jean Dermine and his team for organizing the training camp. It was a welcome pleasure not to have to hang out our own training controls and the hot coffee at the end of today’s session was a lovely surprise to help warm up our icy fingers.

No pressure - Training Day 4

Day 4's training was on the map from Sundays long event. The course we did in the morning was of a similar style of the previous days. Several controls in highly complex areas on one hand verses nice route choice longer legs. Again the trick was to find nice paths on the long legs and to have good safe attack points (as close as possible) into the controls. This was all possible, and relocation is becoming easier in the complex contours (regrettably the need is not necessarily becoming less frequent).

Route choice

On the leg 7-8 Tania and Cindy cut to the path south of the red line once they had crossed the tar road. Nico went north. On 8-9 Nico stayed south of the red line, Tania went north and Cindy did a combination of both. The trick is getting the hang of the speed variation. Fast on the long legs (rocks and vegetation permitting) and then to reduce speed in the complex areas in order to avoid mistakes. Accurate navigation is very possible at a slow pace.

Control picking - with a few hand drawn controls

In the afternoon Nico and Tania went in opposite directions to go do some extra control picking. Tania went cruising around the second part of the morning course. Nico played nice fast ping pong in the complex area around the first part of the morning course.