Peter Palmers Double For SYO Juniors

Two teams of SYO juniors competed at the Peter Palmer Relays last Sunday morning. The relays start at 5am and the teams of 6 run through dawn to the early morning. This year the event returned to Sutton Park, Birmingham and was hosted by the City Of Birmingham Orienteering Club (COBOC).

SYOs first team won by 8 minutes to win the Peter Palmer trophy for the second time for the club. Such is the strength of the club juniors at the moment that, besides being able to field a second team, that second team won the Joan George trophy in a sprint finish with Lakeland Orienteering Club (LOC). Teams are eligible for the Joan George trophy if the team members have a combined BOF age of less that 90. The photo below shows both the winning teams (and a strange white rabbit!). Photo © Rob Lines. Results.

Congratulations to our juniors!

World Masters Orienteering Championships

The World Masters Orienteering Championships (WMOC) was held in central Germany earlier this month. Peter Gorvett won the M65 sprint final in 13:05 (for 2.7 km) with a significant margin of 25 seconds to second place. Peter is pictured here on the M/W65 podium with Jean Lochhead and Hilary Palmer who were 1st and 2nd in W65. Nick Barrable was 4th in the M35 class for the sprints, though improved this for the Long final to finish in 2nd.

Results Photo © Anne Salisbury.

Junior World Orienteering Championships

Aidan Smith was selected to represent Great Briatin for the Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC) back in April and, along with the 11 other juniors, has been competing in the championships over the past week.

Last Sunday they competed in the sprint event around Košice city in Slovakia - where the championships are based. The weather was much better than that in the UK of late, the late starters had to cope with a high of 34oC. The area was very fast with results done to 1/10th of a second. Aidan finished in 73rd, 1:41 minutes down on the Russian winner.

The following day was the long event, west of Košice. Starting relatively early, Aidan avoided the torrential rain and thunderstorms which affected the later starters to finish a credible 68th. The British team did well, with the majority finishing in the top 100. Lucy Butt (SARUM) had an excellent run to finish 7th.

After a rest day on Tuesday, the middle qualifiers were held on Wednesday North East of Košice. Half the team managed to qualify for the A finals, with the other half in the B finals, including Aidan. There was frustration as 2 of the team missed out on the A finals by seconds. The team had an excellent day at the middle finals including Aidan who achieved 4th on the B final.

The final event of the JWOC were the relays. With the loss of Jonny Crickmore from GBR1 due to injury, GBR2 (Aidan, Tom Fellbaum, Duncan Birtswistle) stepped up to the mark and had a fantastic run to finish 13th overall. The women's GBR1 also did well an finished in a credible 9th.

Results Photo © Michal Eliáš

JIRCs and BBQ

Photos © Wendy Carlyle

The past weekend 10 SYO juniors ran for the Yorkshire and Humberside Junior Squad (YHJS) in the Junior Inter-Regional Championships (JIRCs) at Sandringham.

There was plenty of sunshine around for the individual event, though the recent rains had caused the bracken to grow to head-height in most places. Winning times throughout the weekend were longer than expected due to the vegetation. YHJS did well and finished 3rd for this first day, with notable runs from Aidan (1st), Zac (5th), Jake & Michael (=7th) and Louise (6th).

In contrast to the individual day, the relays started in torrential ran, thunder and lightning with many runners getting soaked. On her first JIRCs selection Pippa made it into the first YHJS girls team, a great achievement, and came 5th overall. The first YHJS boys team also finished in 5th place with Aidan running the fastest last leg of all boys teams.

Overall the YHJS finished 3rd, for the 5th consecutive year, with Scotland (SOA) coming 1st. Overall, individual and relay results. Next year the JIRCs moves to Dorset/Hampshire.

Those SYO members that were too old or young to be selected for the JIRCs attended the annual SYO BBQ at Tim Tett's house. Before the BBQ there was a short sprint event around the Walkley area accompanied with a few rain showers. A few people were caught out on the Long course with a numbering mix up, but this didn't really affect the overall results. [More to follow]

Congratulations to the 2012 Northern night champions

Congratulations to the 2012 Northern Night Champions:

M18 Simon Bradbury  SYO (Northern),  Adam Potter BOK

W18 Julie Emmerson OD

M21  Oli Johnson  SYO

W21 Lucy Wiegand SYO (Northern) Alice Leake EUOC

M40 Steve Watkins  AIRE

W40 Susan Skinner WCOC

M55 John Britton MDOC

W55 Jackie Barnes CLARO (Northern) Inara Gipsle TVOC

In fact congratulations to everyone who got there.  I hope everybody made it home safely.  The promised 10mm arrived before the event, but another 30 or 40 during it, so I'm afraid some had a difficult journey home.  Sorry I left the M/W18s off my earlier post.  PG

SYO take CompassSport Cup for 4th year running

Today SYO won the British Orienteering Club Championships very comfortably, with 2224 points, 161 points more than second place Octavian Droobers.

Congratulations to all our runners.  Oli Johnson and Rob Baker have had a particularly successful weekend, being members of the Dark Peak Fell Runners team that won the FRA relay the previous day.

There were a couple of items of lost property:  a pair of New Balance trainers and a watch.  Please contact me (petergorvett on Hotmail.co.uk)  to arrange return.  Please contact Tim Tett if you didn't get a chance to collect your map.

2nd for SYO Juniors

Photos © Rob Lines

Congratulations to SYO's junior team who came 2nd at the Peter Palmer Relays on Sunday in Stafford. The juniors were just beaten by Lakeland by 2 minutes and are determined to reclaim the Peter palmer Trophy next year.

The Peter Palmers are an overnight relay for juniors that start in the early morning when it is dark and by the time the last runner is back it is light. This year's event was organised by British Army Orienteering Club for the second year in a row and the barracks presented an interested change from the more traditional rural areas.

Results are here.

Harvester Relay Triumph

At the Harvester Relays early on Sunday morning, South Yorkshire Orienteers triumphed in the Men's Open, Men's Handicap, Women's Open and Junior classes. The event was organised by Sheffield University Orienteering Club (ShUOC) at Ecclesall Woods and Limb Valley and was a resounding success. GPS tracking was used and this certainly added to the spectator aspect of the event.

SYO's junior and women's teams were battling it out for 1st place on the B relay and the junior team did well to maintain a 3 minute lead until the penultimate leg where Michael Adams handed over to Adam Bradbury 2 seconds ahead of Clare Baker handing over to Rachael Rothman. Adam and Rachael were both wearing GPS trackers so their progress (and mistakes) were shown on in the marquee. After an interesting leg 9 route choice, Rachael eventually pulled away and 'SYO Night Ladies' finished 7 minutes ahead of 'SYO Who Needs Aidan?'.

The mass start of 26 teams on the A relay at midnight was also interesting to watch with 10 teams wearing GPS trackers. Al Buckley had a great start for SYO NIght Raiders, leading the race for much of his leg, and returning in 2nd place only 25 seconds down.  After Nick Barrable's excellent second leg the team were in the lead, and although Matt Crane for BOK pulled back a bit on leg 3, the SYO team got a 25 minute lead that it never looked like losing.  Meanwhile, the SYO Zimmer Stars (handicap team) was battling amongst other teams in the top 10 of the A race, and trying to maintain a lead in the Handicap competition.  At mid race it was close, but strong runs by Bill, Charlie and Tim pulled out a lead in the handicap, and brought the team up to 6th overall in the A relay.

SYO entered 7 teams into this years Harvester and 4 of those comfortably came back with a trophy, not a bad performance!

The Harvester was also the final race in the UK Relay League and with the results from the Harvester included SYO won the Women's league and was 2nd in the Men's.

Results

Trophy winning teams:

WMOC 2011 Sprint medals for Tim and Nick

At the 2011 World Masters Orienteering Championships in Hungary neither Tim Tett M50 nor Nick Barrable M35 managed to defend their Sprint titles from Switzerland last year. But they did come away with medals. For Tim, he was SO close - a mere second (and he was level at the last control, just getting beaten on the run-in). But he walked away with a Silver Medal. For Nick he was overwhelmed with his Bronze. He is awaiting a knee operation in the next few weeks having not run for 9 weeks. "I thought I would be miles behind and this is a great surprise. Just don't tell the doctor I've been running! I just had to limp round as best I could and try to minimise any mistakes" said Nick.

Monday is a rest day, but the Long Distance qualification races on Tuesday and Wednesday are followed by the Long Final on Friday.

SYO at the World Orienteering Champs

South Yorkshire Orienteers members Rachael Elder and Oli Johnson have been selected for this year's World Orienteering Championships in France in August.

Oli has been selected for the Long race having won the final selection race at Holme Fell yesterday whilst Rachael was unfortunately ill and couldn't run at the weekend but has been selected for the Middle Distance based on previous form. They join former club coach Graham Gristwood who is running sprint, middle and relay and former club-mate Matt Crane who has been selected for Middle and Relay view the full selections here

The World Championships are from August 10th-20th in the Savoie region of France. There are spectator races for anyone who wants to head over and cheer on our runners! More info here