Juniors triumph at JK and BOC2000

Martin Humphries, seconds after completing the winning leg in the BOC2000 Junior Ad-hoc relay race

WAOC's juniors brought home the trophies at both the JK and the British Championships this year.

In the JK Helen Gardner won the W14 class with a winning margin of 6 minutes over arch-rival Cerys Manning of SWOC to retain the JK champion title for her age group. And at the British Championships, held near Ross-on-Wye on 13/14th May, WAOC's Peter Gardner (M16), Philip Humphries (M10) and Martin Humphries (M14) romped home by a 3½ minute margin to win the Junior Ad-hoc relay race.

WAOC win the BOC2000 Junior Ad-hoc relay

Peter set the pace early on, completing the first leg, a light green standard 2.5 km in 20:49, second only to David West of SOS (20:25) and a full 3½ minutes ahead of third placed Mhairi Mackenzie of BL. Philip then took over, catching up SOS's second leg runner, Matthew Johnson (M12) even before he'd left the changeover field. A steady run from Philip over the 1.5 km Yellow standard course brought WAOC into first place as SOS dropped to 5th and the other teams struggled to overcome their deficit.

	Team-mates Philip Humphries and Peter Gardner

It was left to older brother Martin to secure the 2½ minute lead over the two SLOW teams "Lemon" and "Lime" who were fighting out second and third place, separated by only 5 seconds. Unfazed by the competition, Martin put in a sterling performance, spurred on by shouts and cheers of encouragement as he approached the spectator control. Three minutes later, it was all over. SLOW "Lemon" pipped SLOW "Lime" to second place, but Martin had outrun them both, with the second fastest time for his 2 km leg of 16:51 to win the race for WAOC in a total time of 48:34, 3 minutes and 34 seconds ahead of the runners-up.

Helen Gardner, Blanka Sengerova and Julia Carpenter before the start of the Women's short relay race

Meanwhile, JK W14 champion Helen Gardner joined forces with Blanka Sengerova (W18) and Julia Carpenter (W21) to compete in the Women's short open race, three legs of 2.8 km and 140m of climb. Blanka opened the batting for WAOC, finishing in 20th place with a time of 37:42 to hand over to Julia. A few places were dropped at this stage but Helen clawed back 8 places on the final leg, completing the leg in the 7th fastest time of 33:29, to bring the team home in 16th position, with a total time of 112:50.

WAOC's Men's Premier team also produced the best result for several years at this level of competition. Ian Renfrew (M21) took the opening leg and had a steady run, with no significant errors, to finish in 15th position with a time of 52:15. Neil Northrop (M18) was next out, running for the first time in a premier team and had a fantastic run, coming 7th on that particular course, and indeed winning one of the splits and coming second on another. At the end of his run, after 58 minutes 41 seconds out in the forest, only 2 places had been dropped, leaving Ian Jones (M21) to secure 14th position with a total time of 169:00 after a solid run of 58:04

Helen Gardner wins Jan Kjellstrom W14 class for second time

	Helen, racing to the line on the second day of the JK

Helen Gardner, WAOC's most successful female orienteer since Abi Weeds, consolidated her position as JK women's under-14 champion by winning the title for the second year in succession at this year's Jan Kjellstrom Orienteering Festival in Scotland. On Saturday (Apr 22nd) at Drumbuie Wood she finished in first place with a time of 33:25, 2:07 ahead of Cerys Manning of SWOC. Sunday's race at Rannoch Forest culminated in a nail-biting finish as Helen dropped to third place behind Lucy Jepson (SO) and Sarah O'Neill (NOC), but neither were able to rescue their Day 1 deficits. Only Cerys was in a position to take the trophy from Helen, but a relatively weak run, finishing in 9th place on Day 2 mean't that she could only manage second place overall, with Helen taking the championship title by a margin of 6 minutes and 3 seconds.

Congratulations to Helen, our JK champion, to Peter, Philip and Martin, our Junior Ad-hoc British Relay Champions, and to everyone else achieving good results this year.

Full results from the JK can be found at http://www.btinternet.com/~heardman and for the British Championships at http://pages.eidosnet.co.uk/~boc2000/index.htm

Follow this link for photos from previous events

Dave Wotton. 18/5/00