Event report: MetrO 10

The last MetrO event for the 2024-2025 series was a success with 77 finishers. The starting location, Troy Park, was at the end of a long skinny map with mostly straight streets. However, the competitors were still challenged with choosing the best route choice.

As this was the last event of the 2024-2025 MetrO series, the placegetters for the overall MetrO 2024-2025 Series were announced after the event.

For this last MetrO round, Ruben Claessens sandbagged the short course, running a time 6 minutes faster than anyone else. This left first place on the medium up for grabs, with the father-son duo Tom and Archie Brownlie fighting it out. In the end Archie beat his dad by 4 seconds. And on the long course Liam Dufty won, though Sten Claessens had a very impressive route, the shortest possible, 6.8km, 100m shorter than anyone else doing the the long course.

Thanks are due to course setter Oliver Martin, and to Kate Klyukina for helping Oliver put out controls and set up the assembly area. And a huge thank you goes to all the KO members - Sten, Ruben, Volker, Heike, Dave, Wendy, Jenny, John, Ceri and Kate - who helped collect controls after the event.

Results can be found on Eventor, along with routes in Livelox, and detailed splits on the MetrO Series Splits page.

2024-25 MetrO Orienteering Season Report

The 2024-25 MetrO Orienteering Season, held over ten exciting rounds from November to February across various locations in the Perth Metropolitan area, was a resounding success. 

Organised by the dedicated members of the Western Nomads Orienteering Team, the Series welcomed many new faces, casual participants, and family groups - all enjoying some exceptional weather that truly enhanced the events.

We extend a huge thank you to local trail running shop,Tribe and Trail, for donating prizes and supporting the Series. The class winners were as follows:

Short Course Junior: Fraser Brownlie (497) and Sheridan Ellery (500).
Short Course Senior: Ian Fletcher (492) (narrowly beating Ken Post on countback, 96 vs 95 points, a correction to the results announced on the day after a scoring error was identified) and Sharon McFarlane (498).
Medium Course Junior: Ruben Claessens (500) and Amy Dufty (500).
Medium Course Senior: Liisa Hirvonen (497), with Nick Dale and Tom Brownlie tying (498) - both competitors finished with identical scores, countback, number of wins, and head-to-head victories.
Long Course Open: Sten Claessens (500) and Rachel West (500).
Additionally, the Long Course Junior Awards went to Christopher Drury and Kate Braid.

A special thank you is due to the setters and computer operators from the Western Nomads (with budding tech talent Quinn Lommers) for managing the series, as well as to Sharon McFarlane for handling all permissions, and Riley McFarlane for providing engaging commentary and efficiently managing the mass start sequences at several events.

We’re already looking forward to an even bigger and better MetrO Series in 2025-26!

Photo: Most of the Series winners of the Metro24-25 Series, taken by Helen Post.