Porky's race review

The chasing sprint again attracted a high quality field and produced some thrilling head to head races.

The mens' and womens' prologues were characterised by a tricky first control, beyond which lay a minefield of dodgy map for those who overshot having been pushed east by the terrain. The going never eased up with a devilish combination of low visibility and short legs reducing running speed to seven minutes a km for the best. Jamie Stevenson and Kim Buckley came out ahead, with a few big name (well short names beginning with J actually) casualties and a few surprises (Martin Ward? Helen Bridle?) lurking behind.

Porky then despatched his roving reporter to keep an eye on the leading pack of men in the chase.

There's probably never been a race quite like this in Britain. With a large group of people within a couple of minutes of Jamie Stevenson the possibility of a massive lead pack was realised almost instantly as the leaders hesitated at 2 and 3. Heading into the open Steve Nicholson led the pack of 16 who would stay together until the end. Behind them the forest was silent as a large gap appeared.

Although the leaders had a broad range of ability, they all kept up this pace like a comet tail following Jamie, who led and did the bulk of the mapreading. Once or twice Jamie missed and Steve Nicholson sorted it out, but on a couple of other occasions the whole pack ground to a halt and even the tail-enders took their maps from their pockets until some sharp-eyed hanger-on spotted the flag.

In the end, the cream rose to the top and it was Jamie who pulled clear to win with Steve in second.

Further back, reigning M40 Champion John Rye stepped up to compete with the big boys and showed them a trick or two with the fastest second leg time and a climb of 27 places.

The ladies' holder Jenny James was absent, as was Yvette Hague, and unlike the men the women had a decidedly international feel with Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Cornwall, Sweden, England, Belgium and the USA represented.

For the second year running, the ladies leader was hunted down, Kim falling to US internationalist Kristen Hall in the sprint. Further back Catherine Ashton climbed 15 places to 6th with the best time of the day.

In the Vets classes, Diane Leakey held on to her title with some comfort, while Iain Rochford took the mens' on the back of a crushing first round victory. He even had time to show M18 Champion Nick Taylor a clean pair of heels (I think not) on the run-in. In W18 Laura Daniel preferred water to mud, leaving early for a swimming gala, which left Lucie Moseley a minute clear, a gap which she had stretched to almost four by the close.

Planner's Comments

Living within 100 miles of Stock Hill (just) made me the second-closest JOK member, so I was a "natural" volunteer to plan the courses.

The Forestry Commission gave us some anxious times as they felled ever more of the beautiful sixty-year-old pines: we wondered just how much of the white forest they would leave! This led to the decision that colour photocopying was the best way to show the changes. Though I heard only positive comments about the quality of the copies, there were two unfortunate consequences.

1. I drew the courses with my trusty red pen, just as I've always drawn master maps throughout my planning lifetime. So my humble apologies to Alastair Buckley, and to anyone else who is red-green colour-blind, for not using purple.
2. From his less-remote location, the controller made a last-minute survey of the extent of the felling and posted me a tracing. I drew the felling by hand, superposing the tracing to check accuracy. There is a potential error of up to a millimetre in each of these steps, and the cumulative error was noticeable in places. Sorry.

A similar problem affects the Stock Hill map itself: surveyor and cartographer are different people, and errors accumulate. Over a quarter of my candidate control sites proved unusable, and the courses had to avoid some small areas completely. You got the best of what was left.

I will treasure two memories of the event. First, sunlight on the steaming forest, as the overnight downpour finally stopped just as I was completing my first control-placing loop. And second, the excited buzz at the finish of the Chase. Generating that excitement is what the Chasing Sprint is all about.

Planner : Roger Thetford JOK, TVOC

Organiser's Comments

Firstly I must thank Roger & John for sorting out all the problems created by the forestry work and providing excellent courses which, despite the mud and physical nature of the area, appeared to be enjoyed by all and provided extremely tight finishes. Despite their efforts at cutting all the trees down, we Orienteers rely heavily on the Forestry Commission to provide us with suitable areas and let us hope this will continue into the future.

Secondly, a big thank you to the weather as we were eventually blessed with a gorgeous sunny day with only the odd rumble of thunder! I was on the area the previous week in the snow and was desperately hoping the weather wasn't going to affect the third selection race in a month.

Thanks must also go to all the JOK members and their associated clubs for travelling down from all over the country and help run the event. The geographical distribution of JOK does cause organisational headaches but thanks to everyone for pulling together, the event ran relatively smoothly. The advantage of having members at various clubs, and thank you to them all, is the relative ease of borrowing equipment; BOK for the area, TVOC for controls, punches and map bags, SWOA for the clocks, and QO for all the rest of the required start & finish equipment.

A best effort of the day award must go to Andy Simpson who due to a mud caked control card was only able to get the first six punches anywhere near the correct box. However after much scrutinising we were unable to locate any sign of a punch mark for No. 19. A similar comment must go to Graeme Ackland who despite being with the leading pack, see report, was unable to produce evidence of visiting No. 17. We tried our best, honest!

Finally thank you to all the competitors who provide the entertainment. The format of the event definitely leads to exciting racing and with continued development of the system, long may it continue. We hope to see you all, and your friends, next year at the 1999 JOK Chasing Sprint.

Jon Skittrall JOK, QO

Controller's Comments

It was a pleasure working with the JOK team.

In early January the controller's nightmare seemed to be unfolding as sizeable chunks of forest were felled and thinning began in earnest, leaving an untouched area too small to use. After making several more visits, however, there seemed some hope that affected areas would be sufficiently runnable, so we kept our fingers crossed. Once the colour photocopying decision had been made the only further problem could be too many new extraction tracks - but with only technically difficult courses to cater for we felt it was just about acceptable. I thought Roger's courses were spot-on and needed very little feedback from me; his organisation was meticulous. I accept most of the criticism for the dodgy area around the men's first control, we spent some time together there trying to reach a better solution, but didn't. It is no defence, but much of the area was mapped with visibility of only 10's of metres at best which is very time consuming and even then features get missed. I hope you enjoyed the better parts of the map. BOK would be pleased to hear from anyone who would like to put their name down for the next re-mapping!

On the technical front, it would seem appropriate for a few BOF (or even JOK) guidelines on chasing 'sprint' races - should Round 1 dsq's be allowed in the chase? We took the view they shouldn't, but what if there had been a protest over the decision and there was insufficient time for the jury to convene? How strictly should you check punching? There wouldn't have been many finishers if every pin mark outside a box had resulted in a DSQ. Bigger boxes, more care or electronic punching?

John Rix BOK

A message from BOF Councillor Andrew Kelly:

I was privileged to spectate the JOK Chasing Sprint on the Saturday (having decided to go down too late for an entry) - now that is what I call orienteering sport!