VHI 2008 Report-Scottish Orienteering

VHI 2008 Report

Scotland Wins the 2008 Veterans Home International

Well, after two decades of trying, we’ve finally done it - and the name of Scotland can at last be engraved on the VHI Trophy.

Scotland Wins the 2008 Veterans Home International

The team of 24 was drawn from clubs all over Scotland … from Solway and Roxburgh Reivers in the south to Inverness and Moravian in the north. It included regulars who’ve run at many VHI competitions, and others who were competing in the VHI for the first time.
We travelled across to Northern Ireland on Friday, about half of us by ferry and half by air. The evening ferry from Troon was cancelled so 2 car-loads of us had a extra hours drive to Cairnryan, and only arrived at the event centre (Magilligan military camp) just after midnight.

The Individual Race:

Saturday morning dawned much too quickly, to the sound of horizontal rain against bunkhouse windows. Breakfast was from 7am and Individual race start times were from 10am, unsociably early given the late arrival of the previous evening.
It was miserably wet conditions at Magilligan dunes, but the team were very self-organised and just got on with it. Runners began to return pretty quickly, after about 40 minutes; despite being the N.I. O-Champs, the courses were on the short side (not that we were complaining given the horrible weather). When the results were all in, the Scots had edged the English by four points, enough to retain the Individual Trophy we won in 2007, but a very narrow lead to take into Sunday.

The Relays:

… were at Woodburn, near Carrickfergus, close to Belfast. The weather had blown through overnight and Sunday morning was cool with perfect clear blue skies. Everyone was grateful that the Irish had organised the best weather for the relays.
The race started in highly dramatic fashion. James Crawford, first leg runner for one of England’s teams, slipped and fell just 150 metres after the mass start and broke his wrist. Our very own medic, Dr Joan Noble, was on hand to help before James was driven off to hospital in Belfast. We wish him well with his recovery.
Each country has 6 teams (of 4 runners per team) in the relays, with the best four teams to count. Because of the mixing of long, medium and short legs, it’s difficult to judge how things are going and it’s only on the last leg (when each team runs a short course) that the result starts to becomes clear. On third leg, Martin Dean ran the fastest medium course time to come back with a 2½ minute lead. Lorna Eades set off on last leg and extended her lead to win by 6½ minutes!

England’s teams as usual ran very consistently and got us very worried. But, with the help of an English disqualification, we managed to match them. Although England took a narrow Relay win by just 2 pts, Scotland held on to finish ahead overall, with 269 points to England’s 267. The smiles on the team photo show how good it felt.

A VHI Trophy can only be won by consistency of performance across all the age classes. Every score counts in the individual (there are no “discards”) and we had no mis-punches all weekend. In the end, this made the critical difference in a very close competition. Our class winners were backed up by solid placings all through the team. If you would like to see the complete event results on the web, the link is: NIOC 2008 Website
My sincere thanks to everyone in the team, to my fellow selectors Martin Dean and Hilary Quick, and to SOA Executive for all their help.
The VHI rotates around the home countries, and next year’s competition is in England at a Peak District National Event weekend. It would be exceptionally satisfying to travel down south in 2009 and retain the overall VHI Trophy on English soil. Hopefully we can go one step better and win the VHI Relay Trophy too. To achieve that, Scotland will need its strongest possible veterans team. So if you think that could include YOU, please put the following in your diary now: Longshaw and Eyam, 14-15 November 2009.