Team Prepares for World Games

Around the country and the world the New Zealand team for the World Games in Taiwan is preparing in earnest. The team is Darren Ashmore (Rotorua), Tania Robinson (Auckland), Lizzie Ingham (Wellington) and Ross Morrison (currently Denmark). I caught up with Darren Ashmore yesterday, and the conversation below is more or less verbatim, with an emphasis on the less. The terrain looks great aye! very blue...

Hey Dazza, hows the World Games preparation going?

Good, real good, last week was challenging training in Singapore, I popped over to do a bit of acclimatisation to the humidity and the food...a good week of 40-50 minute runs in the heat, I'm trying to get a little bit faster which I think I am...

So whats the plan?

Well the races are on the 17-19th of July, sprint, middle, then a four person relay: girl, boy, girl, boy. We are heading over to Hong Kong first to do some training on some sprint maps, then over to Taiwan a couple of days beforehand

So what are you expecting in the way of terrain?

It sounds very similar to the sprint distance at the Japanese WOC, urban forest, they are saying 4min km winning times, so there must be a lot of track running.

And are the best orienteers in the world going to be there? How prestigious is the World Games?

Yeah absolutely, one or two have even come out saying that this event is even more important than WOC for them, in terms of their goals for this year. The World Games is only every four years and there is a lot more exposure than with the annual WOC. All the big names are going to be there Khramov, Hubbman, Georgiou, its going to be a great event.

photo credit the gormeister!