Results for Yvette Baker Trophy Final, High Ash, 07/12/2003

Organiser

As organiser I have a huge list of thank yous:

to the BOF junior trust fund for financial support,
to the shooting tenant, Mr Richard Sparkes, for his cooperation,
to John Ward for an accurate and timely map,
to Graham Louth for meeting all the planning deadlines with time to spare,
to Hilary Palmer for help and advice throughout the organisation,
to Michael Napier for his most efficient operation of his excellent software,
to Clarissa Napier for decisive and most helpful controlling,
to all the WAOC families who turned out so willingly to help,
to the team managers who produced 10 fantastic teams
and finally to all of you who came and ran so hard for your team and then supported our soup and cake stall which made a magnificent £160 for our junior development fund.

Congratulations to all of you and particularly to AIRE - but wasn't it close?

Ursula Oxburgh (WAOC)

A note from the Organiser. We apologise to those whose start times were between 12:57 and 13:00: you actually started 1 minute later than you should have done because we lost a minute at the start. Some of you had printouts showing a time 1 minute longer than your actual run time. We were able to confirm what had happened by looking at the -2 minute check punch, and Michael Napier quickly adjusted the database start times, so the times which were used to calculate the Yvette Baker Trophy result are your correct run times.

Planner

What a glorious day! I do hope you all enjoyed your run. Congratulations to the winners, and commiserations to those that came so very close.

My biggest problem as planner was the undergrowth. When I had a look at the forest back in January this did not seem to be too much of a problem. However, on my first trip to the forest in the autumn, I was horrified to discover that the bracken and nettles were four feet high in places - in particular along the rides that I had hoped to use for the Yellow course. Even I couldn't get through them, so what hope did a M or W10 have?!?!

John Ward, who had surveyed the area for the new map, assured my that the undergrowth would die down by early December, but none the less I decided that I would have to re-plan the courses, avoiding the worst of the undergrowth, just to be on the safe side. In the end the undergrowth had died down quite a bit by the time of the event, although it was still a bit of a problem in some areas, in particular where the dead bracken was covering brashings underfoot. However, looking at the split times, this doesn't seem to have slowed many of you down very much!

High Ash is not the most exciting of orienteering areas, but it does have a few interesting bits, which I tried to exploit to the full on the harder courses. Most of you seem to have had no problem with these, but some of the slightly harder legs did catch a few of you out - why not take a look at the course maps, try to work out where mistakes were most likely to be made, and then check the split times to see if you are right?

Finally my thanks to: John Ward for surveying and drawing the base map in plenty of time for the event; Fred Northrop for organising the printing of the maps in his usual highly efficient manner; my family for putting up with me disappearing to the forest for days on end, and for helping me to collect in the controls; and most importantly of all, my thanks to Clarissa for not only controlling the event in a very efficient and pragmatic manner, but also for driving around the forest in her Land Rover helping to put out and collect the controls.

With best wishes to you all for a Merry Christmas and a successful New Year.

Graham Louth (WAOC)

Controller

This was one of the easiest events I have controlled. Graham Louth as planner made a first class assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of this new area and planned four good courses with the competitors in mind. The open downhill run in to the finish, in particular, made for some very exciting racing. Ursula Oxburgh looked after the organisation with her usual aplomb, particularly the cakes and soup. Having Michael Napier's equipment and expertise on the download and results was a particular bonus and meant we could put back start times to 11:20 and still have the prize giving at 2pm. And finally Hilary Palmer took all the concerns about the prize giving off the shoulders of the organising team.

Many congratulations to all who turned out to run for their clubs and were prepared to travel long distances to do so. I took a short walk in the forest during the event and was very impressed by the competitive spirit and hard racing I saw there.

I was also amazed by the closeness of the final result. Many congratulations to AIRE for getting that last essential point and sympathy to those clubs who were so close. I hope you all had a safe journey home and wish you the best of luck in next year's competition.

Clarissa Napier (NOR)