JOK Chasing Sprint 2011

Photos

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Officials' Comments

Organiser's Comments

Thank you all for coming to the Chasing Sprint. This was the largest entry we have had for many years, and with the weather gods smiling upon us I hope you all enjoyed taking part as much as I enjoyed organising it!

The parking arrangements changed several times in the run-up to the event. We are very grateful to BMW for allowing us to use their car park, which had the double advantage of being on hard standing and being extremely accessible from the ring road. As part of BMW Plant Oxford's annual fundraising campaign, your parking fees raised a total of £119 for children's disability charity The Childrens' Trust.

Thanks to everybody for coping so well with the long walk to assembly: I hope the views from the sunny assembly field partly made up for it. I apologise to the early arrivals who found that the taped route to assembly was not yet complete when they set off from the car park.

And now for some personal "thank you"s: I would like to thank Ian Webb, Seamus Cunnane and Susan Marsden for all the time they put in to mapping, planning and controlling respectively. Susan in particular was an invaluable source of guidance on all aspects of the event. From TVOC I thank Neville Baker, who gave up his Prologue run to provide the baggage transfer from the start to assembly, and John Dalton, the Hambleden organiser - coordinating various aspects between our two events helped to create a high-quality weekend of orienteering. And finally I thank the dedicated team of JOKers who helped out on the day, many of them giving up runs in one or both rounds in order to do so - thanks go especially to the SI and Chasing Start teams, who coped admirably under pressure as always.

Scott Collier

Planner's Comments

I hope you enjoyed running on Shotover without its usual dense undergrowth. Courses were planned to avoid areas which still had head-high bracken in early December, and to keep you out of the wet valleys which were out-of-bounds for wildlife reasons. I aimed to test route choice and execution, rather than control-finding.

Thanks to TVOC for allowing us to use their terrain and map, and to Ian Webb for reworking the map to show winter vegetation. Ian also put in a long day on Saturday hanging controls, patrolling sites, and collecting controls after the race. Thanks as usual to the many JOK volunteers who made it all run smoothly, and to Susan Marsden for constructive comments. Thanks also to BKO who provided control flags and other equipment.

We hope that nobody on Prologue course 3 was too badly affected by control #6 being thrown into the rocky pit from its original position at the pit edge. We diverted Ian to the site as soon as we knew about it.

We aimed for 40 minutes as the winning time for all courses; this worked out reasonably well except for course 4 where the W55 leading time was about right, but the W16 and W40 classes beat 40 minutes comfortably. Course 4 was constrained by the need to get the W55s all the way from start to finish in the allotted time. If we had made a separate W55 course we might have had a slightly better W40/W16 course; we will consider this in future.

James Cunnane

Controller's Comments

I would like to thank Scott for his persistance in finding a car park. This one being his fourth or fifth attempt. I am sure he knows every possible potential parking within several miles of Shotover. He also managed to arrange a sunny day, so the competitors could sit on the grass and admire the views over Oxford as well as watch the races unfold.

Without a resurvey and an update of the cartography, the event could not have happened, so a big thank you to Ian Webb for numerous trips to Shotover in conditions somewhat colder than the day of the event.

Finally can I thank Seamus for planning and the whole JOK team for putting on an event of the standard now expected of the Chasing Sprint.

Susan Marsden