New Zealand Orienteering Championships

A wide-open contest, with six or more front-running contenders, is in prospect for this weekend’s elite men’s New Zealand Orienteering Championship, to be fought out in and around Auckland.

Best-performed of the likely stars is NZ-resident Carsten Joergensen – a world championship relay gold medalist for Denmark in 1997 and individual bronze medalist two years earlier.
Now 38 and employed as the NZ Orienteering Federation’s high-performance director, Joergensen is widely rated as the yardstick for NZ’s best – particularly since our current top-rated men, Ross Morrison and Chris Forne, are living and racing in Europe.

But the Christchurch-based Joergensen says “it’s hard to know how I’ll go – it’s really wide open this year.” And he believes that any one of a handful of runners could take the sprint, middle-distance or long-distance titles up for grabs this weekend.

Joergensen says that these days he prefers the two longer events rather than the frenetic sprint – where “you have to attack and be on your toes, mentally and physically. On the longer races you don’t have to run as wildly.”
He’s particularly wary of the experience of the likes of Darren Ashmore (a former Aucklander, now living in Rotorua) and Aucklanders Neil Kerrison, Thomas Reynolds and James Bradshaw in Woodhill Forest, where the premier event of the nationals – the long-distance race – will be run on Sunday.

Six-time national title-winner Ashmore is certainly relishing the prospect of going into his first major event in years feeling race-ready as he aims for a comeback to top competition.
The 37-year-old credits a recent move to Rotorua, where he lives just two minutes away from the Whakarewarewa Forest, with its hundreds of kilometres of offroad trails, with restoring his motivation to train hard – after merely getting-by on his background fitness over the past few years.

Ashmore, who has represented NZ five times at the world championships and placed a standout fifth in the 2006 World Rogaine Championship, says it’s now “nice to be in a position where you’re not getting by on guts.”
Ashmore posted good performances in January’s Oceania championships, as did regular training partner Brent Edwards – a current world adventure racing champion.

Not surprisingly (given his Kiwi team’s world title win in Brazil last year), the 30-year-old Edwards is heavily committed to adventure racing – but feels he has unfinished business in orienteering, having never won an elite men’s national title: “I’ve been pretty close a few times,” he says ruefully.
Edwards is the current leader of NZ’s orienteering superseries, but says that’s the result of consistent placings – whereas this weekend is “all about winning a race, rather than the thirds or fourths.” He will thus be taking a “less conservative approach.”

Expected competition for this trio includes 30-year-old New Plymouth dairy farmer Karl Dravitzki – dubbed by his rivals “the mystery man”….because the double NZ champion has not competed seriously in six months.

Dravitzki says that he’s been “putting a lot of effort into running recently,” but whether that will translate into top orienteering form he’s not sure: “So it’s a bit of a mystery to me as well – how I’ll go.”

Neil Kerrison is excited about this nationals, because his two targeted events are being run close to his Helensville home – and the 31-year-old is regarded as a Woodhill Forest specialist.
The estate manager, who won his only NZ title in 2007, rates Joergensen one of the stars of NZ orienteering: “He is still very, very good. But if there’s a chance to beat him, it might be here. If Carsten isn’t on top of his game, there’s a lot of us who’d like to think we could be the next-best thing.”
Former NZ team member Michael Adams was the top NZer over the three events in the Oceania championship, but isn’t giving himself specific targets for this weekend. Adams – now one of the country’s top trail runners – says his aim is “to orienteer excellently: My placings and my times will be the byproduct of how well I do that.”

Bradshaw, third in the superseries points, took a standout third in the Oceania sprint race in January to show that he’s fully returned from injury and could well be a factor this weekend.

So too could the talented Reynolds – the Waimauku runner already selected for the junior world champs in a few months and stepping up to the elite men’s grade this weekend. He’s already proven himself in open company with a third outright (first NZer) in the middle-distance race at the Oceania champs in January and victory in last year’s national sprint title race.

NZ Orienteering Championships

Sprint: 2.30pm, Good Friday (April 10), Epsom College of Education

Middle-Distance: Easter Saturday morning (April 11), Woodhill Forest

Long-Distance: Easter Sunday morning (April 12), Woodhill Forest

Relays: Easter Monday morning (April 13), Woodhill Forest