Dids orienteering stories Part 6

[Dids]

Dids orienteering stories Part 6 .....The Empire Strikes Back

Junior ’Ungdoms’ Tio-mila 1997 Skövde, Sweden:

I’d some time to kill before I was due to run a junior PWT race in Laxå, Ben Dover was running u-tiomila in nearby Skövde and suggested I tag along just for the crack. Yeah sweet as, Id run u-tiomila a few times and knew, as the weather was hot the girl candy would be wicked!
A load of our Aussie and Canadian mates had also decided to turn up. Apparently the organisers really wanted them to get a team together cos they’d never had teams from Canada or Australia before. Problem was they only had 8 runners, and needed 10. I was still a junior but too old, you have to be 18 max.
Thing is this didn’t seem to be a problem for the organisers, they were more than willing to sacrifice their age requirements for 1 or 2 runners, they were just totally loving the idea of a commonwealth team competing. They said they knew we wouldn’t be at the top so it didn’t really matter, it was just the taking part that counts………….yeah right what ever!

Now when those organisers started getting cocky, this race became a matter of pride, not just for Oz, Canada, and Britain, but the whole noping commonwealth and all the other so called B nations in world orienteering. We were gonna teach them a hard lesson they’ll never forget.

A couple of the Aussie girls worked out the race order and we were all set to kick ass.

1. Dave Shepherd (Aus)
2. Tom Hart (GBR)
3. Dids Jenkins (GBR)
4. Kirsten Faifax (Aus)
5. Lorenzo Calabro (Aus)
6. Dave Donaldson (Can)
7. Julia Minty (Aus)
8. Marky “Biitch” (Can)
9. Nino Calabro (Aus)
10. Doug Mahoney (Can)

Thanks to a good old five-finger discount we managed to get some pre-race ‘sponsorship’ from Dextrosol Energy Tablets, this stuff really got us pumped, Shepherd ate a whole packet and was going mental. (Don’t worry we made sure Tom Hart just got the sugar tabs!) Dave Shep had a tough job on first leg, he was starting at the back of around 250 teams, but he ran like a demon, came back in around 30th, just 3 minutes down. This only made the Swedish organisers even cockier, they made a joke that we might be in the lead soon and walked off laughing, we just thought what smarmy twats and pumped up with even more dextro tabs!
Tom Hart was next out, he ran a wicked race, came back 6th , just 1 minute down. Then I went out, ran a kick ass race, took over the lead and came back 1st by over a minute. I came running down the finish, airplane impressions and all the razz, like we’d won the world cup. I’ve never seen so many pissed off Swedes in my whole life. The poor organisers were shitting it, their cocky smiles had turned to open mouth astonishment. They ran over, pleading and begging, “You’re running too fast you must slow down”….”You are destroying the event”.…..they even threatened to pull us out of the race!
Luckily for them we dropped a few places on the next legs, thanks in part to the dextrosol tabs giving most of the team serious diarrhoea, and finished around 30th overall.
But to hear a bunch of arrogant Swedes pleading with a group of Ozzies, Canadians, and Brits to slow down was just pure magic.
God save the Queen and all that!