Junior World Orienteering Championships Report

 The Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC) in Bulgaria have finished, with excellent performances by two WA brothers – Oscar and Henry McNulty.

In his fourth and final JWOC, Oscar had top twenty finishes in the field of more than 160 - 17th in the Sprint race, only 53 seconds behind the winner, and 19th in the Long distance. He qualified for the Middle Distance final in 11th place, but could only manage 32nd in the final in a very complex forest. Oscar ran first leg for the Australia 1 team in the Relay race, and despite suffering a large gash in his leg early in the race was in 2nd position at the last radio control and eventually reached the handover in 6th place. Unfortunately the team's second leg runner mispunched, otherwise Australia would have been challenging the top 10 teams. After the race Oscar was taken to hospital and needed several stitches in his leg.

Henry, who is two years younger than Oscar, was competing in his first JWOC but was not overawed by the world class competition. In the field of 160 he had two very, very good runs to finish 63rd (only 1 min 39 sec down) in the Sprint and 49th in the Long. He just missed qualifying in the Middle distance, and came 21st in the B final. With the mispunch by Oscar's teammate, Henry's team finished 22nd overall in the Relay after Henry ran a great first leg only a minute or so behind Oscar's courageous run. With two more years of eligibility for JWOC we can expect great results from Henry in 2015 and 2016.

You can find full results for JWOC here, and also see reports and photos from JWOC at Orienteering Australia's News pages.