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The end of financial year is rapidly approaching. Orienteering Australia is continuing its fundraising partnership with the Australian Sports Foundation to allow tax-deductible donations.
With COVID impacting on our national team representation at World and Junior World Championships why not donate to Orienteering Australia generally or to the High Performance group (to support training camps and, we hope, Australian team representation at Oceania 2022 in NZ next January)?
Last day to transfer funds via EFT – Monday 28 June
Last day to make credit card donations- Wednesday 30 June
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The article "938 Participants for digital Pre-O – Can you solve the challenges?" was originally published in Skogssport Sweden's Orienteering Magazine and has been translated by OA's Foreign Correspondent Caroline Pigerre. Thank you for sharing this article with us Caroline.
938 Participants for digital Pre-O – Can you solve the challenges?
Digital Precision Orienteering has grown enormously during the pandemic. Linkoping Orienteering Club’s Christian Enberg has organised nine competitions in Sweden. Here, you get the chance to solve four of the challenges.
The options for answers are A-F from left to right. If you don’t believe any of the options fit, you can choose Z (which stands for zero). Otherwise you choose whichever letter you think is correct.
“The digital format provides the opportunity to set courses where normal Pre-O courses can go”, says course setter Christian Enberg, who during a week in February organised nine (!) competitions in digital Pre-O. The terrain for these competitions was in Smaland and Ostergotland in Sweden. One of the competitions was in Hompen-terrain, outside Gamleby, where some of the world cup races in 1988 were held.
How do you find the area where you want to set the courses?
- I have often take pictures when I am out running, and when there are places where I think would be good for a course, I contact the local club that owns the map and ask for permission to use the map for this purpose. The clubs have been very helpful, says Enberg.
Have you had to make any revisions of the maps?
- No, I have chosen to use the maps “as they are”, Otherwise there can be trouble with the organisation of the revisions. Would my photos be sufficient?
The response to the Pre-O competitions has been very positive. In total, there were 938 people who participated. 36 different countries were represented, with the most participants being from Italy (112 people), followed by Germany (over 100 people).
The overall competition was won by the Swiss Severin Howald, with Antti Rusanen from Finland in second place. The best placed Swede was the reigning Temp-O world champion, Martit Wiksell.
The whole competition series can be found at temposim.yq.cz
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OA welcomes Matthew Dunstan to the OA team as executive officer. Matthew has a strong background in Australia and overseas with organizations including Basketball Victoria, Sport NSW, Tenpin Bowling Australia, Sport Bay of Plenty (NZ) and England Netball. Matthew has also worked at the grassroots and club levels as General Manager of the Bulleen Boomers in Melbourne and the General Manager of Central Coast Basketball in NSW.
During his career, Matthew has also worked closely with all levels of Government and key stakeholder partners including Sport England, Sport and Recreation Victoria, Victoria Police, VicSport, VicHealth, NSW Health and Sport AUS on a variety of projects and programs with a focus on growth, leadership and capacity building.
Matthew has a passion for community sport and will bring diverse knowledge and experience to the organisation.
On his appointment, Matthew commented: “I am excited to be joining Orienteering Australia. I am looking forward to working with the board and members to build on the foundation that has been set.”
Some interesting facts about Matthew:
Tell us a little about yourself
I am from the Central Coast of NSW although I have spent the last 20 years living and working in New Zealand, England and Melbourne. I am married to Rachel and have two daughters - Josie (9) and Eliana (8).
Who is your favourite coach?
I was fortunate enough to be coached by a man called Graham Murray. Muz coached in the NRL for a number of years with the Illawarra Steelers, Sydney Roosters, North Queensland Cowboys and the NSW State of Origin Team. Muz inspired my passion for sport and drove my interest in coaching.
What do you read in your spare time?
I like to read biographies, particularly on influential people that left their mark - I love history.
Tell us your guilty pleasure?
Watching the Penrith Panthers, Western Bulldogs or Central Coast Mariners run around.
To find out more about Matthew, please click here.
We look forward to working with Matthew as OA continues to grow into the future.
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OA has appointed Hanny Allston to the board as Director – Coaching.
Hanny Allston is the founding director of Find Your Feet, an award-winning Tasmanian business specialising in international trail running experiences, peak performance coaching and outdoor retail.
She holds tertiary degrees in medical research, education, coaching and business. Hanny is an Australian Institute of Company Directors councillor, the tourism & recreation advisor on the Tasmanian National Parks & Wildlife Advisory Council and a director of Orienteering Australia. In 2015 she was the Tasmanian Young Businesswoman of the Year and in 2018 Find Your Feet won the Telstra Small Business of the Year. Hanny has authored two books, a podcaster and motivational speaker.
Further to this she is a World Champion orienteer, ultra-endurance trail runner and now, a mother.
We look forward to the new directions that Hanny will bring to coaching in our sport.
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The 2021 ACT & NSW Ski-Orienteering Championship will be held at Perisher Valley on Sunday 15th August, organised by Big Foot, Red Roos and Perisher X Country. This event forms part of XC Ski week (www.perisherxcountry.org ) with the start in front of the beautiful, warm and special Nordic Shelter at Perisher.
Everyone who loves or dreams of trying Skiing or Orienteering, will be able to take an opportunity to combine both skills and to take part in our exciting Championship. It will be the 8th Championship, after Swedish ski-o expert Patrik Gunnarsson brought the concept back to Perisher in 2014. It was no event in 2020 due to Covid. It is the only Ski-O event in Australia and among the only few in the Southern Hemisphere!!!
Virpi Komulainen - is an experienced and talented Course Setter for the Champs 2021!!!
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Uncomfortable though it may be, it is important to commit to your training routine throughout the icy months. Not only for your physical health but mental wellbeing also. It is worth taking time to consider that winter workouts don’t work quite the same way as summer sessions do as exercising in cold weather places extra demands on the body.
If your body is cold, your “muscles and connective tissue have less elasticity and are therefore more prone to injury,” Better Health Victoria shared.
Cooler conditions do put you at a higher risk of injury because of that temporary reduction in flexibility. Brisbane physiotherapist and podiatrist Doug James spoke to the ABC on this topic a little while back and shared that a failure to warm up correctly is another key issue here.
“In cooler weather, and particularly if you haven’t warmed up sufficiently, muscles and tendons may sustain damage from tearing caused by a lack of extensibility,” he told the outlet.
The Australian Institute of Sport suggests about a 5 to 10-minute warm-up normally but recommends increasing that time frame in colder weather. The goal, the AIS says is to: “prepare the body and mind for the activity; increase the body’s core temperature; increase heart rate and increase breathing rate”.
What kind of warm-up works best?
According to the Australian Institute of Fitness, this can be as simple as gently working through the exercises you plan on practising through the workout. Just reduce the speed, remove the load or limit the frequency as your body gets used to the movements.
Other options they suggest on the AIF website include skipping, rotating lunges or even getting a pre-workout massage.
What are some common injuries people experience?
The type of injury varies depending on the type of training and your body, there are some regulars. With runners and cyclists usually more often calf strains, ankle sprains and IT band issues, and with HIIT, knees and lower backs tend to bear the brunt.
To continue reading this article by Stephanie Nuzzo and published in Lifehacker, please click here.
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At times the course planner has to consider the possibility that the route choices might be restricted because of various hazards or other limitations
Let’s think about each of the following examples:
- There are dangerous features, such as high cliffs, in the area
- There are numerous watercourses with thick vegetation.
- The land manager has asked that certain areas be avoided because of stock or protected plant species.
- There are difficult fences which some competitors might have difficulty crossing.
In the interests of risk management and fairness these need to be carefully considered:
- Obviously, physical dangers such as high cliffs have to be avoided and the course planner should avoid route choices that can put competitors at risk. If this is not altogether possible, then competitors need to be alerted to possible dangers: Control descriptions can include the ! symbol to indicate that there is danger near-by, and dangerous features such as mine shafts can be taped. Event information on the day needs to make mention of these.
- John Brock and Paul Pacqué who were the course planners for the Australian Championships on Littlechild Creek had to grapple with the problem of the thick vegetation along the creeks. As well, the creeks were difficult to cross in places. Their solution was to provide a number of marked crossings, siting some of them on obvious crossing points for some courses, but placing others so as not to influence route choice excessively, while still leaving it open for runners prepared to tackle the green to do so. In this way, the crossings provided safe and fair options for competitors.
- When some areas of the map have to be avoided (because of stock, crops, etc.), then the course planner should be able to work around this. Sometimes, though, it is necessary to ‘guide’ the competitors around an out of bounds area, and this is done by having a marked route that runners are obliged to follow.
- One of the more difficult situations is where a property might have fences that for some competitors (eg. small children or older runners) are very difficult to cross, while for others on the course, the fences pose no problems. This is a potential threat to fairness. The course planner and controller have to consider the fairness to all competitors and if necessary provide crossing points (eg stiles, gates, sacks, etc.).
When providing crossing points of any kind, there are a few guidelines that we need to follow:
- Crossing points can be provided either as ‘marked crossings’ which are there for a competitor to use if she or he wishes, or as ‘compulsory crossings’, which competitors are required to use. Maybe there is an in-between category where the crossing might not be compulsory, but competitors can be encouraged to use it. For such a crossing and for a compulsory crossing, there should be a control close by to ‘lead’ competitors into the crossing point (which might well double as a drinks control).
- A crossing point becomes another point feature on the map, and must be placed exactly on the map and in the terrain. This can have some disadvantages, because these points become extra aids to navigation and reduce the quality of some route choices on courses. Many of us have competed in events where drink stations are put along tracks. It might be quite tricky normally to pinpoint where you are crossing the track, but with drink stations set along it, that task becomes an easy one. (This is one of the major reasons why in Australia we have the convention of putting drink stations at actual controls rather than creating new points on the map.)
- Any crossing point must be marked clearly on the map and on the ground (in the terrain). Competitors need to know what coloured tapes have been used to mark the crossing, and these tapes need to be visible from either side of the crossing. Even if the planner feels certain that everyone will be approaching from a particular direction, because it is a marked feature on the map and in the terrain, a competitor may well use it to navigate by or relocate from.
This article has been reprinted with kind permission from the Tasmanian Technical Team Newsletter and was written by John Brammell
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Open Orienteering
The current version remains as 0.9.5, which provided several enhancements and fixed some bugs found in earlier versions.OO Mapper is free mapping software that can be installed on Windows (7 and higher), MacOS (10.12 and higher), and Android (4.1 and higher) computers.
For more information and downloads go to the OO Mapper website.
OCAD
The annual license for the full team version is just under twice the single user fee (about $A375 compared with $A220), and two users can use OCAD per team license. Although sounding restrictive, OCAD offers the option of transferring licenses between team users within 24 hours. Thus, several team members could have OCAD installed on their computers but only two per license would be able use it at any one time. Discounts are available for three year licenses and volume purchases, and there are also limited and cheaper versions.OCAD is Windows-only software and is now only available as a subscription version for single users or teams.
The current version of OCAD is 20.5.11, which has corrected minor problems and added some enhancements. Users are notified of new updates when they start the program. Older non-subscription versions of OCAD have not been updated for some time. For more information on updates and features go to the OCAD service update page.
For more information and downloads go to the OO Mapper website.
Thanks to Frank Burden, editor of the OSA Newsletter for this summary.
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In May, Sport Australia Hall of Fame (SAHOF) and Victoria University (VU), in partnership with Sport Australia, the Australian Institute of Sport, Sportscover and Sport Integrity Australia, delivered the 6th National Sport Integrity Forum, It takes a sporting village to raise a child.
The key focus of this year’s National Sport Integrity Forum was on creating safe sporting environments, on how we can set better standards, rules, regulations and even laws that will ensure welcoming and safe sporting clubs. The panelists also discussed how sport as an industry can become more aware of and responsive to its crucial role in the village that prepares young people for a complex and ever-changing society.
It takes a sporting village to raise a child is about the entire sporting system coming together and having a responsibility to provide community and elite athletes, and in particular our kids, a safe sporting environment.
Some key takeaways from the Panel include:
• Sport has often been championed to solve all the world's problems; to deal with social inclusion, to deal with diversity, to create equal playing grounds. Sport has been championed for peace, for development, and for health, but all those positives of sport have recently been shown to have their counterparts. Safe and welcoming environments are essential for children to gain the many benefits that sport participation brings.
• The new funding issued to Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) under the National Strategy to Prevent Child Sex Abuse will be used by SIA to embed safeguarding, not only in national sporting organisations but throughout the system. This will need to be done in partnership and is about making sure that we move beyond having a policy and ticking a box, to actually embedding the policy into the practices and operations of the business.
Our children of today are our athletes of tomorrow, there has never been a more important time to focus on our next generation. You can watch it here.
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