The recommencement of orienteering competitions in the ACT is currently planned* to kick-off with a MTBO event on Sunday 12th July at Majura Pines. That will be followed by ACT League #1 on Sunday 19th July at Isaac Ridge. Although dates are yet to be finalised, the Wednesday midday events will also start up in July.
There will be changes to how these events are organised, how entries are made and how to manage the Assembly Area, Start and Finish to work within the social distancing guidelines. MTBO, ACT League and Wednesday midday events don’t have the high numbers that are normal for the Saturday Metro events, so they will be the easiest to manage and have fewer changes required for participants and organisers.
The very popular Saturday Metro series will require changes in how the event is organised to enable up to 200 participants to compete during the morning without exceeding the approved social distance guidance at any one time. Further details on what this means for Start times and the expectations on participants’ behaviour will be provided within the next week in a separate document called the OACT Return to Play Plan.
The first Saturday Metro series competition event is planned for Saturday 25th July at Weston Park. However, orienteers can plan to have a competition-like run on Saturday 18th July at Aranda Snowgums where OACT will be fine tuning the revised organisational arrangements for the Saturday Metro series. Further details will be provided as we get closer to the event dates.
The Saturday Metro series is expected to run until mid September.
The event program for the Sunday ACT League series is being revised to take into account changes to Land Use Permissions, to avoid clashes with the ONSW State League program (that is also being revised) and to continue to hold events into September.
An updated program of events for July to mid August is now on the OACT website. The event program for all events beyond mid August will be confirmed by the end of June.
It is time to get training, the first competition events are getting closer.
*The planned dates for recommencement of orienteering events is subject to ACT Government easing COVID 19 restrictions as currently forecast for Stage 2.2 and Stage 3.