Orienteers Dominate Rat Race

Friday, 4 December 2009

Team CHOC (Outer Edge) wins the Rat Race

Morten Neve

Team MFR – Morten Neve (aka Morty-the-Quick - pictured), Simon Goddard (aka Nando) and Dion Keech (aka The Godfather) - won the men’s category in last weekend’s Melbourne Rat Race, narrowly edged out of overall first place by the Orienteering ‘Super’ Team (Outer Edge) comprising Central Highlands members Robbie Preston, Kathryn Ewels and Troy de Haas.

The race got under way on Saturday afternoon with a 3 hour scatter course around inner Melbourne. The course was a combination of normal control finding together with activity controls like abseiling off car parks, rock climbing and swimming, many of which were only open at specific times. A good strategy was key!

According to Dion, "some of the more quirky activities we had to do were 80’s dancing in a dodgy nightclub, getting a tattoo, collecting money for Oxfam, designing an advertising campaign for selling yellow cars (Osama bin Laden never blows up yellow cars!) and walking a tightrope! Our team MFR came in well ahead of the other 77 teams on Saturday night with 1040 points (the O ‘super’ team trailing on 980).

Early on Sunday morning we left the docklands on bikes heading for Caulfield race course and then back again via West Gate Park – 70km in all. Along the way we kayaked, abseiled, climbed, tried shooting a hockey goal, ran around a cemetery and ate fish and chips, all while navigating our way on a fixed course.

The hardest activity for the day was diving off the 7m board at MSAC which was bloody scary! We got a 10 minute penalty for not having a whistle with us and lost considerable time fixing two punctures (although not nearly as much as what we would of with out quick-fix Morty in our team). Without this bad luck we would have come in first place overall; it’s the second year in a row of 2nd overall for Simon and I so we’ll be back in 2010 to have another tilt at it."

The diving challenge was also difficult for the CHOC team with Troy refusing to to jump off the diving board.  However after negotiating with officials, was able to continue with a time penalty.  Despite this Robbie, Kathryn and Troy still had enough time up their sleeves to take the overall win.

Well done to all the orienteers who participated.

Dion Keech