New Zealand finished tantalisingly close to another top ten finish today at the World Games Orienteering Relay in Chinese Taipei, finishing in 11th place just 50 seconds behind Lithuania.
After his superb runs for 10th and 18th place the two days prior, Ross 'Rocketman' Morrison led the Kiwi team out on the 4-person mixed relay and at the changeover was in 9th place, ahead of the fancied Danish and Finnish teams.
Second runner for New Zealand, Lizzie Ingham ran hard and navigated cleanly to keep in touch with the leaders, overtaking the Czech Republic after the Finns and Danes had surged past.
But, while third and fourth-leg runners Darren Ashmore and Tania Larsen were running just as well to hold off the chasing orienteers, the frontrunners were not making any big mistakes and proved impossible to catch.
The Russian team showed they had the leg-speed with the fastest third leg from Khramov to overtake Sweden, and Vinogradovaran a perfect last leg to give Russia the win ahead of Finland's Minna Kauppi and Norway's Elise Egseth.
Linnea Gustafsson from Sweden made mistakes in the beginning of the last leg and lost the lead, dropping to 8th, while the expected charge to the lead from Australian double medallist Hanny Allston failed to eventuate.
Such is the standard of orienteering at this level that any small navigational error at full running speed is instantly punished and while New Zealand didn't get to capitalise on errors from the leaders, they showed great maturity as a team to run very strongly and consistently to be in position to do so.
Lead runner Ross Morrison was in superb form over the Games and was particularly pleased with his 10th place in the Sprint .
"I'm totally stoked with my result! Navigationally I lost about 20 seconds on the 5th and a few seconds on some small stutters. All in all it was pretty good"
While leading lights of New Zealand orienteering, Darren Ashmore and Tania Larsen, showed at the Games that they are still at the top of their game, it is also clear that the new guard, the likes of Ross Morrison and Lizzie Ingham, are staking a claim for the top of New Zealand orienteering and have their eyes set on World titles.
After their World Game results Tania Larsen (14th Sprint) and Ross Morrison (10th sprint and 18th Middle) are now ranked 70th and 79th in the World respectively, while Lizzie Ingham also moves into the top 100 at 84th place.
Results. World Games Orienteering Relay
Mixed
- 1:55:07 Russia (Dmitriy Tsvetkov, Yulia Novikova, Andrey Khramov, Galina Vinogradova)
- 1:56:38 Finland (Pasi Ikonen, Bodil Holmström, Tero Föhr, Minna Kauppi)
- 1:56:48 Norway (Lars Skjeset, Mari Fasting, Oystein Kvaal Osterbo, Elise Egseth)
- 1:57:11 Australia (Simon Uppill, Kathryn Ewels, Julian Dent, Hanny Allston)
- 1:59:15 Denmark (Mikkel Lund, Maja Alm, Rasmus Soes, Signe Soes)
- 1:59:19 Latvia (Edgars Bertuks, Inga Dambe, Martins Sirmais, Aija Skrastina)
- 1:59:49 Switzerland
- 2:00:08 Sweden
- 2:02:31 Czech Republic
- 2:05:17 Lithuania
- 2:06:07 New Zealand (Ross Morrison, Elizabeth Ingham, Darren Ashmore,Tania Larsen)
