Dane Thor Norskov was one of the first coaching scholars in Melbourne Victoria in 2014/15. He travelled all over Australia and New Zealand and fulfilled his plan to run on some of the best maps in the Southern Hemisphere. His favourite Victorian maps were Kooyoora used for the 1985 World Championships and the infamous Rowdy Flat (gold mining) which he said was “crazy”. Whilst here he ran for Denmark in the World Cup in Tasmania. He helped with junior coaching, running training camps, sprint coaching, mapping and course setting. Since returning to Denmark he has represented Denmark at WOC 2015 so the training must have helped. He continues to coach one of the Victorian juniors from Denmark.
Danish sprint and middle specialist Jakob Edsen visited Melbourne, Victoria to coach and train in 2014/15. He led coaching sessions at Victoria’s sprint series and set courses and trainings across the state. and got to compete and train on maps in four states in Australia. He says of his trip “I made some great friends and had an amazing time visiting some great parts of Australia”. He competed in Australian championships, state championships and World cup races. He and his Danish colleagues did a four week road trip over the Christmas holidays but loved having Christmas in the summer.
“Living, training and coaching in Australia has been the highlight of my orienteering career so far! It has been an amazing 6 months running in the sunshine – I just wish it could have lasted longer! Victoria state, and Melbourne in particular, is extremely varied and exciting – there is always lots going on. If I’m honest, I wasn’t expecting much from the orienteering terrain and was very pleasantly surprised by the complexity of the gold mining and granite forests (including WOC 1985 areas which are simply awesome). Being able to focus on orienteering for such an extended period has meant a great increase in my physical and technical ability, and a long break over the Christmas period meant there was the opportunity to travel, train in other states and see a lot more of this amazing country.
The host families were extremely welcoming; they are a great bunch of amazing people and I felt very much part of the family. I’ve certainly made some friendships that will last a lifetime. Victoria is full of great orienteers and it was pleasure to coach and give back to the sport I love.”
“Australia was awesome. If I had to describe it in one word it would be “easy”. It was easy to live there for nearly 6 months, the people were very friendly, relaxed, and helpful; I had a lot of fun living with my host family. The weather was easy, it was warm and comfortable the whole time, just stick on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and you are ready. I had lots of spare time in which to do whatever I wanted, this was really nice for focussing on training or just simply relaxing. I got a lot more out of the orienteering than I thought I was going to, it was a lot more technically demanding than I had expected. I also got a feeling on a couple of maps of total wild remoteness which was fantastic and something I have never really felt in Europe. And finally yes, even by the end of the trip I had still not got over running in the forest and having kangaroos bouncing along beside me.”
