QO at Team GB Selection
Post race analysis with the competition 1
Success for Finley at the Team GB qualifier!
British Orienteering GB team selection races
British Orienteering released the GB team selection policy [2026-foot-o-selection-policy] earlier this year for those looking to represent GB at various IOF and other international competitions in the year. Various selection races are used in the spring to identify those athletes at the peak of their performance, for the juniors the first of these selection races was a dedicated, three day event held in the Lake District from the 20th to the 22nd March. Quantock's Finley Goddard (M16) took part in the event together with around 110 others from across Great Britain, ranging from M/W16 to M/W21.
Friday 20th saw the sprint event in Ingleton kick things off. The weather was unseasonably warm and dry providing great conditions for some lightning-fast times around the courses, Jamie Osborne from Lakeland Orienteering Club took 1st place in 13 minutes on the M16 course with Finley taking a respectable 5th place in 13:57. Saturday 21st moved things to the pristine orienteering forest of Rusland Beeches for the middle distance event. The area provided a great technical challenge which was unforgiving if you lost contact with the map, this time it was the turn of Inverness Orienteering Club's Henrik Borrowman to take 1st place in 27:38 with Finley losing some time, dropping back to 14th at 35:57. The third and final day had the long take place on Holme Fell; again a superb and technically challenging area which took no prisoners if you lost concentration, and together with some grueling courses to test the athletes stamina this really shook up the pack. Eoin Simpson of Leicestershire Orienteering Club set a very tough bar to beat with a winning time of 60:24 with over 2 minutes lead on 2nd place, Finley brought it all together proudly wearing the QO colours and coming in 4th with a time of 63:44. All the details together with GPS tracks from the competitors on Livelox can be found at masterplanadventure.uk
The next set of selection races will be the 2026 Jan Kjellstrom sprint, middle and long held in Perth and the Rannoch forest during the Easter weekend. Fingers crossed for Finley and all those representing Quantock Orienteers at the event.