World Masters - Bad Harzburg in Germany

WMOC is always a mix of orienteering, socialising and more orienteering. The organisation of WMOC 2012 was very very good. However there was one aspect that amused and annoyed.
There seems to be no relevance between what was printed in the book regarding start procedure and what actually happened. Event 1 we went into the first start box at the given start time. Day 2 you went in a minute early. Day 3 there was an extra 1km tossed into the distance to the start and then on Day 4 we had saw us with an additional  plus an additional 5 minutes added to the start procedure which meant instead of going in at -6minutes you went in at -11. The last day was as expected almost back to normal. Needless to say there was a lot of confusion at the start and a lot of late starters.

Socially it is a chance to catch up with fellow aussies and also competitors from all over the world.

Back to competition.
 The Sprint Qualifier was held in the upper town area of Bad Harzburg. Our accommodation was just a couple of doors down from my 7th and 8th controls and the park in the centre of the courses was one we walked through every day to get to the eateries and the magnificent Bakeri's.. So it felt like home and really was quite straight forward. Mind you in the park there were so many controls it was easy to come unstuck. Unfortunately for Maureen a lapse in concentration meant a mp and thus the final was  a non competitive run. The area was used was very scenic. Alas not all control sites were great. A gap between a set of stairs and a wall may have seem like a good idea. The problem was that only one person could get in and out of the control at a time. Unfortunately Nick Dent came across this control when there were two women in the gap. The one punching was trying to come out and the other was trying to get in. It was a stalemate for  what seemed like an eternity but those few seconds cost Nick a place in the A Final. As expected Gayle and I didn't feature in the A finals. With 432 in my class competition was hot and with winners running under 6 minute kms both in the sprint and in the bush it was tough to get anywhere.

The following day we headed to Goslar for the sprint final.
This was a very tricky area with lots of bridges crossing streams and no real pattern to the streets. Funnily enough Gayle and I had found ourselves in the assembly area 2 days before when we  err like got lost heading to Bad Harzburg.
So here was the event with the assembly on the grass outside the Presidential Palace ( Boy imagine finishing on the grass in front of Parliament House). The sprint was a lot pof fun. The drizzly weather made footing a little uncertain on cobblestones. Running through streets and platzs full of tourists made concentration a task. What a day.

Then  we went to the bush. Long Qualification 1 was held SW of Bad Harzburg. This area is a private forest and will never be used again.
It had plenty of rock in the upper areas unfortunately it was often in dark green and setters seemed to delight in that. My 4th control a small depression was absolutely surrounded by large rocks none of which were mapped. It was physically hard work and fortunately the weather was reasonably cool. We rode a narrow gauge steam train to the assembly area. As it is a qualifier no one hangs around much for the results. You could get the results on your phone at the event site which was far faster than waiting for them to appear.







Long Qual 2 was held in a delightful town Claus wkv to the NW of Bad Harzburg. This time the terrain was very fast, very runnable and unfortunately featured around 700 metres of dead orienteering on the way home. However that said the forest was soft and lovely with lots of sink holes and much to the merriment of orienteers places called "Charcoal Burning" pits. We are still trying to work it out as when you arrived there was the control and there may have been a slight depression.




 The Long Final.
After a rest day it was off to the final. The assembly area was in a huge quarry. The courses for those not in the A Final were very much a run that is all. The control sites were easy. Mind you the course setter had his revenge as all courses climbed a rather large hill ( 15 contours). If they had turned the course around we would have had a much better chance of heading further north where there some complx rock features.



And so the carnival is over and troops scattered all over the place. Of the 71 Aussies competing Herman Wehner and Jenny Bourne picked up medals in the sprint and Su Yan Tay  and Natasha Key scored medals in the long.
It appears that more and more aussies are heading to WMOC. 2013 in Italy will be interesting as once more WMOC is reunited with the World masters Games and we all have experienced the added cost and whoo hah that goes with that.
2014 in Brazil is looking really good..