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European Trail Orienteering Bronze for Great Britain

Great Britain took 3rd place in the 2018 European Trail Orienteering Championships Relay yesterday (Monday 30 April), behind clear winners Finland and the other powerhouse Sweden.

Relay Flower Ceremony L to R: John Kewley, Charles Bromley Gardner, Tom Dobra

The trio of Charles Bromley Gardner (BAOC), Tom Dobra (UBOC) and John Kewley (MDOC) were the only other team with Finland to produce a faultless PreO performance, getting all 33 controls correct, but then slipped back in the TempO phase. PreO errors result in a 60-second penalty; TempO errors cost 30 seconds each; these penalties are then added to the cumulative time taken in Tempo. Great Britain was just 27.5 seconds behind Sweden – less than one TempO error, so one alternative TempO decision could have had them even higher on the podium.

GBR Scores:

Charles Bromley Gardner:  82 seconds

Tom Dobra:  157 seconds

John Kewley:  162.5 seconds


Great Britain ‘B’ team (Iain Phillips (LEI) – 316.5 secs, Peter Huzan (SLOW) and Ian Ditchfield (MV) – both 182 secs) finished in 19th place out of 31 (7th-second team of 12). If either Peter or Ian had been the 3rd member of the ‘A’ team, it would still have won Bronze, so that is strength in depth.

Charles Bromley Gardner, GBR Team Manager for the European Trail Orienteering Championships 2018, says: 
“We are delighted with the 3rd place. The parkland terrain around the ruins of a marvellous heritage castle was certainly not to our detriment. Three controls were to be selected from five O-kites (1.2m x 1.2m size) over 1000m away! It was marvellous to be able to map-read across the rock and vegetation features to identify whether each control was marked with a kite. Just one TempO control away from 2nd, which any of us could have rectified, so a thoroughly competent team result.”

The Long distance problems – flags & zero control sites.

Today is the final event: TempO. With 109 competitors in two Qualification heats, it is a hard task to finish in the top 18 in either heat in order to qualify for the Final. Today any one of three British competitors could do so, but we should not count our chickens until the eggs are well and truly hatched.

British Orienteering and all members send their congratulations to the GBR trio of Charles Bromley Gardner (BAOC), Tom Dobra (UBOC) and John Kewley (MDOC).  Many congratulations on winning the Bronze medal.

We wish the GBR team all the very best today again as they get set to compete in the final event of the Championships in the TempO.  

 

Keep up-to-date: 

ETOC 2018 - TempO Qualification; Day, TempO; 01-05-2018
 

For more information visit the European Trail Orienteering Championships website here

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