Published 3rd September 2011

Corrected results are now available.

This year the Sheffield City Race moved out from the centre, taking place in the Gleadless Valley in the south-east edge of town on Saturday. It is a great area for urban orienteering; many different shaped blocks surrounded by grass and a multitude of paths and steps gave the course planner an opportunity to present the runners with many route-choice and fine navigational challenges. About 240 competed, from as far afield as Surrey, Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Published 9th August 2011

The World Orienteering Championships start this coming weekend in France, with SYO members Oli Johnson and Rachael Rothman both in the Great Britain team.  Oli and Rach are both competing in the Long and Middle distance races, so are in action in the qualifiers on Saturday (Long) and Sunday (Middle).  From everyone at SYO, good luck!

There should be good online coverage of the races both at the official website (http://www.woc2011.fr) and on World of O (http://www.worldofo.com/).  Several SYO members are also going out to France to support in person, and take part in the spectator races.

Published 19th July 2011

At the Harvester Relays early on Sunday morning, South Yorkshire Orienteers triumphed in the Men's Open, Men's Handicap, Women's Open and Junior classes. The event was organised by Sheffield University Orienteering Club (ShUOC) at Ecclesall Woods and Limb Valley and was a resounding success. GPS tracking was used and this certainly added to the spectator aspect of the event.

SYO's junior and women's teams were battling it out for 1st place on the B relay and the junior team did well to maintain a 3 minute lead until the penultimate leg where Michael Adams handed over to Adam Bradbury 2 seconds ahead of Clare Baker handing over to Rachael Rothman. Adam and Rachael were both wearing GPS trackers so their progress (and mistakes) were shown on in the marquee. After an interesting leg 9 route choice, Rachael eventually pulled away and 'SYO Night Ladies' finished 7 minutes ahead of 'SYO Who Needs Aidan?'.

The mass start of 26 teams on the A relay at midnight was also interesting to watch with 10 teams wearing GPS trackers. Al Buckley had a great start for SYO NIght Raiders, leading the race for much of his leg, and returning in 2nd place only 25 seconds down.  After Nick Barrable's excellent second leg the team were in the lead, and although Matt Crane for BOK pulled back a bit on leg 3, the SYO team got a 25 minute lead that it never looked like losing.  Meanwhile, the SYO Zimmer Stars (handicap team) was battling amongst other teams in the top 10 of the A race, and trying to maintain a lead in the Handicap competition.  At mid race it was close, but strong runs by Bill, Charlie and Tim pulled out a lead in the handicap, and brought the team up to 6th overall in the A relay.

SYO entered 7 teams into this years Harvester and 4 of those comfortably came back with a trophy, not a bad performance!

The Harvester was also the final race in the UK Relay League and with the results from the Harvester included SYO won the Women's league and was 2nd in the Men's.

Results

Trophy winning teams: