200 Riders Go To Hospital in the Urban Polaris
22.11.2004
Headwinds became tailwinds, tailwinds, became headwinds. What was going on?
In the 3rd annual Urban Polaris a record field of 258 teams of 2 riders set off from The Australian Institute of Sport with 7 hours to plan a route to as many of 39 Checkpoints as they possibly could. Checkpoints scattered throughout the Canberra area and deep into the surrounding forests. Checkpoints that included the top floor of the multi storey car park at Canberra Hospital, on Springbank Island on the Lake, at the National Gallery, the War Memorial, the top of Telstra Tower, way down, down, down to the Murrumbidgee River or up, up, up on the summit of Mt Taylor. Of the 520 riders some 300 were from Interstate.
Local knowledge obviously helps. Knowledge of shortcuts on bike paths and dirt tracks, knowledge of steepness of hills. The Canberra Mens team of David Baldwin/Rob Burrell took out the Overall title amassing 550 points and riding some 130km to get them. 20 points behind were David Osmond/Adrian Sheppard with ex Olympic Triathlete Simon Thompson and his teammate Jason Chalker taking 3rd with 529points.
The womens title was wrenched back by Mel McIntyre/Gaye Camm who finished on 450 points, equal to the 2nd placed team of Julie Quinn/Penny Burrell but McIntyre/Camm finished 8 mins earlier. These teams finished an incredible 7th and 8th overall. In third place were recent World MTB Orienteering medallists Emily Viner/Belinda Allison (410pts).
The Mixed Pairs was taken out for the 3rd year running by local pair Jim Trail/Cath Toet (450pts) clear of David Morgan/Cath Kelaher(410pt) with recent arrivals from the UK, Tim David/Nicole David in 3rd (400pts).
In the Veterans Categories (combined age >80) John Hatley/David Hatley won the Mens Vets (420points), Kay Haarsma/Adair Ferguson (340pts) the Womens Vets, Rodney Hart/Helen Carswell (290pts) the Mixed Vets.
In the SuperVets (combined age >100) the top 3 teams all finished with 330points but the Sydney father/son combination of Guido Simionato/Roger Simionato took it on time.
Recognizing the advantage local teams have, there runs an \'Out of towners\' competition where both team members must reside more than 100km from Canberra. This was won by Sydney team of Nick Milis/Matt Chan (470pts) in 6th place overall followed by Neil Prosser/Mark Shingler(420pts) and Melbourne based Tim David/Nicole David (400pts) in 3rd.
In what must be a Polaris record, no teams were disqualified, no bones were broken and only 1 team did not finish (due to losing their control card!). The only sour taste from the day were the idiots in a passing car who lobbed a full beer bottle at a competitor which smashed in front of him and slashed both of his tyres. The team still went on to finish 13th Overall.
Results and a link to pictures by Mark Watson can be found at click here.
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