ORIENTEERING - Varsity Match 2011
Saturday 2 April 2011
LOCATION: SUPI HORA, CZECH REPUBLIC
12 CUOC members flew out to the Czech Republic for five days to some of the best terrain in the world for the annual competition against Oxford. After three days of training, race day arrived.
On Saturday 3rd CUOC appeared in their Varsity kit specially designed to confuse the opponents into thinking they were controls (unsurprisingly, it didn't work). CUOC were expecting to win the women's match but they knew the men's was going to be very tough.
The Varsity scoring system takes the sum of the times of the top three women out of a team of five for the Women’s match, and the top four men out of a team of six. The lowest overall time wins.
In the women's, Mairead Rocke and Vicky Stevens took the top two spots, with Andy Strakova finishing fourth behind Oxford’s Anne Edwards. The team beat Oxford by an astonishing 50 minutes on accumulated time. In addition Mairead won the course by over three minutes in a time of 55:46, and came close to the times which members of the Czech national team would do on that course! Steph Bryant and Emily Lester completed the team, and Harriet Burdett who wasn't selected for the first team actually beat both of these members!
In the men's, despite hurting his ankle part way round the course, Matthew Halliday finished in 66 minutes, just over three minutes behind Peter Hodkinson of Oxford who won the course (not counting guest Czech runner Pavel Procházka). Oxford's next two finishers came in close behind in around 67 minutes each, and Matthew Vokes finished for Cambridge in 71 minutes. With the top four runners for each university to count, Cambridge's final two counters were David Maliphant and Ben Windsor who finished in 95 and 96 minutes. This left Oxford with one runner to finish, and this runner needed to take at least 131 minutes for Cambridge to take the win. As Oxford waited for his arrival and Cambridge hoped he wouldn't come, Vaclav ran in with a time of 109 minutes to complete Oxford's counting team and beat CUOC by 23 minutes. Adam Bennett and Mark Salmon completed the CUOC men's team of six.
Next year OUOC will have four national-level men, and we’re going to be training hard during the year to see if we can get ahead of this monster team!
Men's: Oxford win by 23 minutes
Women's: Cambridge win by 50 minutes
The winning women's team (left to right: Andy
Strakova, Vicky Stevens, Mairead Rocke)
Ben Windsor punches the final control to finish as CUOC's 4th to count
