World of O News
The World Cup in Tasmania in 1998 is a real classic! Note that the courses are not shown on the original map – but overlaid on a new map of the area. Thanks a lot to Timo Sild for the tip!
Tasmania is coming into the attention of the orienteering world again now as there is a World Cup in Tasmania in 2015. The courses have been posted at the Oceania 2015 webpage along with the following text:
The races were held in the St Helens area on the Littlechild Creek map. The terrain there is similar to that competitors will encounter in the Oceania Championships and World Cup long distance races during the 2015 Carnival. The Oceania and World Cup long distance races will be about 10km away as the crows fly.
The winners of the World Cup races then were Sweden’s Malin Wastlund and Norway’s Havard Tveite. Wastlund completed the 9.8km course in a touch over 65 minutes and Tveite completed the 14.8km course in a touch over 82 minutes.
We have overlaid the 1988 World Cup courses on the latest version of the Littlechild Creek map for your perusal. It would challenging to reach those winning times today we suspect as the forest is quite a bit “greener” than it was back in 1988.
Timo Sild writes the following in his comment:
I ran the Australian long distance championships on the same map in October 2005, but still as a junior. A couple of controls before the finish one of my shoes fell apart and for the last 20 minutes or so I ran only with one shoe. Grant Bluett won the men’s elite with 10 minutes and won his first long distance Australian championship. At one point he tore his map so that an area of a control was illegible, fortunately he got the control with the help of an accurate bearing. A tough terrain is waiting for orienteers next year in Tasmania: shoes will fall apart and maps will get torn.
