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Jan Kjellstrom |
Background photograph: Day 2 Start at Clydach Terrace by Wendy Carlyle
Day 1 - Sprint at Swansea University
Dick Keighley writes: Congratulations to Chris Branford( M75) & Keith Henderson (M80), winners of their classes at the JK Sprint at Swansea University.
Course 13: Chris Branford 1st in M75
Day 2 - Middle Distance at Clydach Terrace
Well done Alice French, winner of W12 & Annie Pickering, 2nd in W21L on Day 2 at Clydach Terrace.
Dick Keighley won the P class in the PreO competition at Brynmawr yesterday with 17 points correct out of 20 and two errors in the timed controls.
Photographs by Richard Cronin
Course 20: Alice French 1st in W12
Course 8: GPS tracks of Annie Pickering (jade) & Jo Pickering (red)
Day 3 - Long Distance at Pwll Du
Congratulations to Keith Henderson who won M80 today and with it the overall M80 title with the times combined from Days 2 & 3.
Annie Pickering finished 2nd in W 21L & 2nd overall, with sister in law Jo finishing in 4th place.
Course 23: Keith Henderson 1st in M80
Course 8: GPS tracks of Annie Pickering (blue) & Jo Pickering (green)
Day 4 - Relays at Caerwent
Congratulations to the WIM Wanderers, (Paul Pickering, Tamsin Horsler & Jo Pickering) who won the Mixed Ad Hoc class, 1st out of 48 teams.
Wim Ad Hoc Team - 1st!
Photographs by Hilary Pickering
TrailO at Brynmawr
Given the problems that have beset the organisation of this year's JK (Covid, loss of areas, difficult land permissions, pettifogging local authority officialdom etc) the organising team did a splendid job overall.
South Wales only has two smallish orienteering clubs and so relied heavily on the assistance of two large SWOA clubs, BOK & NGOC, for help over the weekend. SBOC ran the Sprint race at Swansea University & Singleton Park, and SWOC were i/c Day 3 at Pwll Du, whilst NGOC (Day2 at Clydach Terrace) and BOK/BAOC Day 4 relays at Caerwent) took the lead on the other two days. There were also many individual volunteers from other clubs who helped at some time over the weekend. The weather was warm and sunny throughout the extended weekend: a great relief to all as all of the orienteering other than than the Sprint was on exposed open moorland terrain.
The last time the JK had been held in S Wales, in 2014, the TrailO had been planned/organised/controlled by Anne Braggins and myself with the help of a few WIM members on Day 1 at Singleton Park, and the assistance of the Royal Signals team who set up the main PreO event in the mist on Day 3. This year's PreO, overseen by this year's Planners, Graham and Liz Urquhart of OD, consisted of a Sprint PreO course at Singleton Park on Day 1 (18 A-Z controls along a 75m track to be solved within 20 minutes) and a conventional PreO course on Brymawr Tip, a restored mining area on the other side of the main road from Clydach Terrace, from where as our event unfolded, we had a splendid view of hundreds of people milling about on Clydach. Brynmawr proved to be a splendid challenge and the planner provided a testing course, despite only getting the final version of the map three weeks before the event. The P class in which I compete (we aren't allowed to call it the Paralympic class any more since the IOC took over the Paralympic Games and trade-marked the word paralympic!) had up to 128 minutes to complete the 22 controls on the course and all was going well until I'd been on my feet for over an hour at which point my back problem flared up as I lost concentration and hobbled back to the Finish. The results show this quite clearly: I got the first 17 controls on my course correct, but then missed three of the last five! Still, 19/22 is pretty good for me ( it later became 17/20 after a couple of controls were voided). We couldn't process the results on the day,(too windy and exposed to do the admin) so it wasn't until I got home on Easter Sunday and got an email from the JK Organisers asking me to be at the prizegiving at Caerwent, that I discovered that I had won the P class at the JK for the very first time. Fortunately for me, one of our relay teams won the Ad Hoc relay class so they had to stay for prizegiving too. So the Pickering family picked up my medal and and late on Sunday afternoon, there was a knock on my door in Shillingstone, and on the doorstep I was formally awarded the medal by our club chairman, Kevin Pickering together with Jo (official photographer) and Hilary (crowd noises), who were on their way back to drop off Jo at her house at the other end of the village.
Dick Keighley
