By Kirra Livingstone
THE Sunshine Coast Orienteering club hosted the Mountain Bike Orienteering Queensland Championships on October 8 and 9 across the hinterland in various length races.
Event volunteer Susie Blissner said orienteering is fantastic, and although it isn’t hugely popular, it’s a great family friendly sport.
“We’ve got some competitors here today who are 10… but also right up to 70, and you can ride an e-bike if you want too, so it’s a sport for all age groups, which is absolutely inspiring,” she said.
Competitor Gavin Blissner said although both physical and mental strength are equally important, if you can’t orienteer it doesn’t matter how fast you can run or ride a bike.
“It’s a bit of both but better navigators will be the better rider any day… so it’s all about navigation… and getting the distance of the courses and scales of the maps right too,” he said.
“Never ever follow anyone because they could be going to a different checkpoint to you… because there will be multiple checkpoints and, in this course, we used some checkpoints twice.”
The sport is not as big as the Sunshine Coast Orienteering club would hope, but with the help of volunteers, Susie said it’s how they intend to grow the sport.
“Because we are such a small group, we take turns in volunteering, everyone gets roped into a job but by doing that we can keep the sport going,” she said.
There was an average of 48 competitors in each race, with the highest attendance being the long course race with 65 orienteers, with people from clubs from Newcastle to Yarra Valley.
Out of all the Sunshine Coast Orienteering club racers from all three events in their respective age groups, 13 came first, 10 came second, two came third and four came fourth.
The winners also won pineapples for their efforts, donated by Fullerton Farms in Elimbah.