Nopesport

The Scottish 6 Days 2005 competition in Royal Deeside, North East Scotland opened with a visit to Cambus O’May, a few miles north eest of Ballater and just on the southern tip of the Culblean Hill. The area promised a mix of fast undulating mature woodland and slower, open heather, and a wealth of interesting morraine features. The older juniors also visited a steeper hillside, with more rock features, tall bracken and heather.

On the M12A course, Peter Bray of Southern Navigators had no trouble in fending off competition from Jakob Dybdal of Denmark and Cillin Corbett of Ireland. Close behind him was Ben Ross and William Gardner, both of Octavian Droobers and just a second apart. On the M12B course, George Hurford of BOK came in second to Laurenz Elstner of Austria and third was Ryan Carney of Ireland.

In M14A Huw Stradling of BOK beat Peter ‘Little Hoddy’ Hodkinson of Nottinghamshire by 30 seconds over the 3km course. Ben Doherty of Swansea Bay came in in 4th, behind Fredrik Danielsen of Norway. M14B saw the quickest Briton in 3rd, Richard Jones of AIRE finishing behind Viljam Liljeroth and Markus Dresel of Finland and Germany respectively.

M16A saw plenty of competition from juniors from all over the continent, with British runners finding it hard to claim the top spots. However Christopher Smithard of Deeside managed to claim first place with Hector Haines of AIRE coming in in 5th place and Calum Coombs of MAROC in 7th. On the M16B course Ben Scarf of EPOC beat off competition from two Norwegians to win.

The 5.6km M18A course saw Duncan Coombs of MAROC ran just under 7 mins/km on home terrain to beat Swede Petter Eriksson and Kyle 'Junior' Heron of Forth Valley Orienteers. Iain Embrey of COBOC finished 7 minutes behind Duncan in 4th and David Schorah of Deeside closely behind in 5th.

In the womens competition Delyth Darlington of ERYRI beat Jenny Evans of Nottinghamshire by half a minute to win the first day of the W12A competition. 2 minutes behind the leaders was Florence Haines of AIRE. On the W12B course Eleanor Cranke of CLOK beat Emma Young of TINTO and Natalie Smith of Guildford Orienteers to win by one and a half minutes.

On the W14A course Joanna Shepherd of INVOC just beat British number one Julia Blomquist of BAOC by 8 seconds. Closely behind was Rebecca Harding of HH. W14B saw Norwegian Linn Kristine Gjesdal beat local lass Jenny Oxlade of Gramp by over one and a half minutes. Closely following her was Lizzie Clemence of South Wales and Jemma Bell of Lakeland, inseperable in joint third place.

The 3.7km W16A course saw a convincing win for Catherine Taylor of CLOK, over two minutes quicker than Hazel Wright of MAROC, who was half a minute quicker than Sophie Tritschler of Sweden. On the W16B course, Lowri Jones of AIRE was the first Briton back, 7 minutes behind the leader Emma Liljeroth of Finland.

On the W18A course, the rain, the terrain and the tall bracken in particular caused problems and some of the more ‘elite’ runners fell at this first hurdle. In the end however it was Karin Persson of Sweden who won, running just over 10 mins/km. 3 minutes behind her was Joanna Thompson of Walton Chasers, and Saana Vaha-Kouvola of Finland finished in third, with Jess Halliday, who recently competed at JWOC in Switzerland, finishing in fourth place.

PeterB

Results can be found here