Moravian Orienteers enjoy medal success at Scottish Sprint Championships as part of a spree of national orienteering competitions
Two sporting veterans have raced to glory on the national stage.
Moravian Orienteers sent a representation to the Borders for the Scottish Sprint Orienteering Championships.
The competition isn’t technically challenging but proves to be fast and furious with new decisions often having to be made several times a minute.
Two Moravian members rose to the occasion to win their age categories.
Andrew Campbell produced a peak performance to win gold in the men’s 55+ category.
Team-mate Colin Hall was disqualified having visited a wrong control.
Campbell’s success wasn’t the only one, with Eddie Harwood winning the men’s 70+ event, just four seconds ahead of fellow Moravian Rob Parkinson who came second in the men’s 65+.
Moravian’s young athletes also shone in the Tweedbank championships, which is near enough to the east coast to be really cold in the east wind.
Anna Howard won bronze in the women’s 16-and-under category, while fellow teenager Finlay McLuckie ran the elite course coming ninth overall but leading the men’s 18- class, just a short way ahead of team-mate Michael Bishenden who won silver in the men’s 20- category.
In a follow-up Scottish league urban race, Campbell was pipped by one second by Colin Hall for a Moravian 1-2.
McLuckie rose to eighth place in the open class and Harwood repeated his win in men’s 70+.
The second Scottish league race took 11 Moravians to a brand new orienteering route near Falkirk.
Veteran Harwood explained: “The general consensus was that the area was very tough physically with numerous vegetation obstacles and it was also almost impossible to read the map in many areas with the dense tree canopy letting in little light.
“The three longest courses however started in a different area where the roughness of the vegetation surpassed any of this.
“I was running the short brown course for the men 45+ and on one leg of little more than 200 metres I took six minutes without making a mistake so you can imagine how tough it was.
The two stand-outs for Moravian were Rob Parkinson who was third on the short blue route, (2nd men 65+) and Finlay McLuckie, also third on brown (2nd men 18-)
This weekend sees a large contingent going to Sheffield for the annual Easter International festival.
