Bushflers Sprint the Bay in NZ

Sunday, 10 March 2013

Bushflyers  Sprint the  Bay 2013 in NZ

This January members from three Bushflyer families, the Brown/Poland’s, Barnett's and the Harding’s stayed on in New Zealand following the Oceania Orienteering Carnival to compete in the Dirty D Sprint the Bay competition.  Sprint the Bay format was six separate stages held over three days, around the Hawke’s Bay area on the north island of New Zealand.

We competed on a mix of urban and non-urban maps, with a brief description as follows.

Stage 1 Woodford. Technical building, school and farm terrain. This event was Sprint the Bays first world ranking event, with many European competitors staying on after the Oceania carnival to compete.

Stage2 Splash Planet. This was a map of New Zealand’s biggest water park. Competitors raced through a map with intricate park detail, building areas and an expectation to get wet, with a control placed in a shallow wading pool.

Stage 3 Kaiwaka. Dry stone riverbed, bush terrain with unusual contour and vegetation detail.

Stage 4 Central Napier. This urban map covered a vast majority of the Art Deco capital of the world, Napier city.

Stage 5 The Slip. Strange intricate fast open farmland with rocks and other point features. This was a mass start race within age groups, but with loops designed to split competitors.

Stage 6 The Village. Urban, industrial, school and park terrain, finishing in the outside area of The Tav, the local pub.

To add interest to each day’s competition, each age group had a green singlet and a polka dot singlet winner. The green singlet was awarded to the competitor who had the fastest time on a pre determined sprint leg, the polka dot singlet awarded to the fastest on a hill climb leg.

Toni Brown finished 2^nd overall in the green singlet competition in W50, but had many of the fastest times for each days sprint leg.

Carol Harding finished 1^st in the hill climb polka dot singlet competition in W50, with Toni 2^nd.

Overall Bushflyers results are:

Oliver Poland 12^th men’s elite

Andrew Barnett 42nd men's elite (and took out the polka dot singlet on one day)

Noah Poland had a miss punch one day so no overall placing in JB but had many good runs on the other days.

David Poland 5^th M50

John Harding 12^th M50

Toni Brown 2^nd W50

Carol Harding 4^th W50.

Overall it was a very enjoyable competition with spectacular scenery, interesting maps with a mix of terrain types and great friends with whom to compare route choices after competing.

Thanks to the Morrison family of Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand for organising a great carnival.