The (unofficial) Vic Short Champs Report – Granite Hills – Sunday 14th November

We were hoping for some exciting finishes with the chasing start in the afternoon, and we got them. We also discovered that Eventor can’t quite cope when there is an equal overall winning time, automatically putting the names in alphabetical order, as it did for the Course 1 results. It took a little while to over-ride Eventor but we did finally get there.

The weather has not been kind this spring and Sunday was no exception, with a sun – rain – wind – hail – sun pattern settling in over the course of the day. It does seem that most people managed to get their runs in during the “sun” periods but a few unlucky people did get caught out in the hail.

By all accounts competitors seem to have enjoyed their races, dusting off the rust during the morning race and demonstrating more confidence in the afternoon with some head to head racing with their nearest competitors. Some of the closest racing of the afternoon was seen with the top three Course 1 competitors. Brodie, Pat and Aston raced most of the course in sight of each other and arrived at the last control together. The race was on down the finish chute with Brodie getting in front for the win. A special mention for Pat, who was third out on the course in the afternoon, and then quickly reeled Brodie and Aston in to set the fastest time.

A big thank you goes to Ted van Geldermalsen for organising this event and planning the courses, and also to the Yarra Valley club members for their help over the weekend. A special mention and thank you goes to Damian Spencer, DROC, who was the person on the ground to check out the viability of the control sites when the Melbourne lockdown kept Ted out of Melbourne. Damian also found the short cut to the morning start, whereas the original plan had competitors walking 1.8km via the streets around to the start.

See the photos in the separate news post.

Overall Winners

Course 1
1^st           Brodie Nankervis
2^nd          Patrick Jaffe
3^rd           Aston Key

Course 2
1^st           Carolyn Jackson
2^nd          Cormac McCarthy
3^rd           Roch Prendergast

Course 3
1^st           Alexander Rowlands
2^nd          Ralph Koch
3^rd           Graham Teahan

Course 4
1^st           Lydia Stott
2^nd          Angelina Kozma
3^rd           Frankie Shin