Scottish Championships 2012

Several BASOC members had a grand weekend (or day) out at the Scottish Championships near Braemar on 2nd/3rd June. Photos now added - with apologies for the delay. These versions have been compressed - do please get in touch if you want high resolution versions.

In the Individual event on Saturday, both Alex Campbell (M50L) and Callum Scott (M55L) finished in 13th place - both of these classes include some extremely fast orienteers, so these are both really good placings. To keep it neat, Steve Salem was also 13th in M50S. Adrian Hope unfortunately missed a control in M80L (instant disqualification, no arguing!) and David Ford (M65L) missed 3 of his, but Alistair Johnson did well to gain 4th place on the Light Green course.

Meanwhile Marion MacCormick settled a few old scores to finish 3rd on W65L (2nd Scottish runner) and Hilary Q's 2nd place on W55L was enough to give her the Scottish title in that age group. Hilary S (also on W55L) had a bit of trouble with a couple of the very tricky controls in the middle of the course but persisted, found them, and was NOT LAST. As you'd expect with a Championship event, the courses were all well planned and technically very challenging. Oops I nearly missed Caroline McCarthy's victory on the Long Orange course! well done Caroline!

Relay results show our two senior teams were 6th (Hilary Q, Marion, Gavin) and 10th (Alex, Hilary S, Callum) out of 18 teams in their class; the junior team (BASOC's first ever Scottish Champs junior team!) had to be deemed non-competitive because of their ages, but still recorded perfectly respectable times. All three of our teams finished with all controls correctly found and punched; our only prizes were the self-awarded scones (and Jubilee capuchino with cocoa-dust in the shape of a Union Jack) - thank you Alex!

Results, splits etc. are available via the SOC 2012 website. (The "simple results" are easiest to understand, but the "Splits" show the gory detail...) Also follow the RouteGadget link and see where people actually admit to having gone. For a fantastic nail-biting race, select the M50L class, then select the top 2 finishers (John and Martin), click on "View animation" then "start"... Look where the race is won and lost!