A team of Forres youngsters came within 2 seconds of winning the UK junior Orienteering Championships 12’s and under relay title last Sunday when Culbin Forest was host to around 2000 runners taking part in Britain’s premier orienteering event of the year. The Moravian team comprised Applegrove’s Alan Ironside along with Andrew Barr and Johnstone McPherson-Stewart who both attend Dyke Primary. All 3 are better known for their exploits in the swimming pool with the Forres Bluefins, but these 3 talented youngsters, who only started orienteering seriously after last year’s Forres Schools Championships, took on the best youngsters in Britain and came agonisingly close to pulling off an amazing victory. Johnstone ran a lightning-fast first leg, handing over to Andrew in 2nd place. Andrew, who was up against Saturday’s British Individual Champion under 13 girl Rachel Emmerson, valiantly hung onto second to give Alan everything to go for in the final leg. But Alan still had it all to do as he was up against experienced West Midlands runner Hamish Rogers. Soon they were neck-and-neck on the final leg and with Alan hampered by poor grip on his running shoes, he lost ground on the sandy uphill sections of the course, but as the finish line approached he was catching up all the time. Unfortunately the finish came just a few metres too soon and after 46 minutes of fast-and-furious running, just 2 seconds separated the pair. The West Midlands team had retained their title from 2007 by the skin of their teeth, but it took the fastest individual leg time of the day from Hamish to do it.

The relay races were the culmination of a weekend of intense competition, with all of Britain’s elite orienteers joining representatives from every orienteering club in the UK to make what has been Moray’s biggest sporting occasion this year. This corner of Scotland is renowned for the quality of its orienteering terrain, with Culbin being the jewel in the crown, and this is now the third time in 5 years that the area has staged major events, with over 4000 runners having taken part in events in 2003 and 2007.

Forres based club Moravian Orienteers played a big part in organising the event, with retired Forres doctor Douglas Murray masterminding the organisation behind Sunday’s relays, with local RAF man Chris Spencer planning many of the courses for the individual races on Saturday. All the club’s membership were involved in some way, either with car park marshalling, erecting tents, operating the event results system or any one of a hundred jobs that were all done by unpaid volunteers. There was great support from the local community too, with local farmer Gregor Taylor providing a parking field for around 1000 cars on each day, and Dyke Community providing a refreshment tent that looks set to have raised well over £1000 for the local church and village hall.

But it wasn’t just the relays that brought success for Moravian. Best of the 44 club members who took part in the individual races was Eddie Harwood of Lhanbryde. Eddie is a well-known face across this side of Moray, and he proved his credentials as the top over-55 orienteer in the UK by winning the very competitive M55 class. Following a titanic battle with Yorkshire’s Steve Whitehead, Eddie took the title by almost 3 minutes, leaving the 2007 champion Andy Hemsted trailing a massive 16 minutes in his wake. An exciting prospect for the future is North District Cross Country Champion Ben Livesey. Ben, who is a RAF navigator by trade, has only recently started orienteering, and took part in the M21 race over an arduous and intensely technical 13 Km course. Ben’s time of under 2 hours was a tremendous performance for his experience level, with RAF champion Geoff Ellis only 10 minutes ahead. With work on his technique and a few more events under his belt, Ben could easily become a serious force in Scottish orienteering. In the W45 short distance race, experienced competitor Penelope Smirthwaite made it 2 wins for Moravian with an extremely fast time over a technically difficult course, with her daughter Rachel finishing 8^th in the very competitive W20 elite class. In the junior ages groups, several Forres youngsters put in the runs of their lives (at least they were until the next day), none more so than Andrew Barr from Dyke, who took second place in the M12B class, only missing out on winning by 10 seconds. In the British Championships, there is the option for very experienced youngsters to run in the more technical A class, while relative newcomers compete in the technically easier B class, and just over a minute behind Andrew in the B class was Surya Morton with Alan Ironside tying for 6^th place with Lossiemouth’s Robert Hornby. Rebecca Rodgers who lives in Kintessack, just 5 minutes’ bike ride from the event, was 3^rd in the W10B and one of the club’s most promising youngsters, Jack Rawlinson who is still only 9, managed 7^th place in the M10A. Never before has the local club had so many juniors involved in the sport, but thanks to Moray Council’s Active Schools programme, the club has been able to introduce orienteering into primary schools. The aim of the programme is to give youngsters the chance to try out sports and activities that they might not normally think to have a go at, and this amazing level of success in a national competition has been reward for the hard work that Moravian members have been putting in to help develop the skills of their new junior members.

Junior development member Mike Rodgers summed it all up by saying “We’re finding it quite hard to believe. Two years ago we only had a handful of juniors taking part occasionally, but these 2 days have been a great example of the talent we have around. Support from the parents has been terrific, and the excitement on these youngsters’ faces at doing so well has been the highlight of our weekend, making all the work of staging training events worthwhile.” The club are hoping to build on their work in making orienteering available to everyone, young and old, in the area, and in May and June will be holding a series of small events in local forests. Anyone who has heard of orienteering but doesn’t really know what it is, or why 1000s of people are prepared to travel the length of the country to run in Moray’s forests, will be most welcome to come and have a go at these relaxed, friendly events where club members will explain exactly what to do. Details will appear in the Gazette nearer the time.

The full results for the weekend’s British Championships are available on www.boc2008.co.uk, and anyone with even a passing in interest in maps would be well advised to look at the ‘route gadget’ link on this website. Here you can see some of the stunning cartography that has gone in to making the maps of Culbin that were used for this event that in the words of many of orienteering’s elite has been the finest British Championships in living memory.