Fantastic news! We can confirm that a Sprint distance race will be included in the MTBO Champs programme, so a full suite of events with Middle and Sprint on the Saturday, and  Long on the Sunday is definitely taking place. 

The Sprint will be on a brand new map in Rotorua, with more details to come soon. We are especially pleased to have a great setter and controller combination on this event - Grant Unkovich and Greg Flynn bring heaps of experience, so we can expect a fantastic set of courses on a new map!

We are delighted to confirm that a 2022 NZ MTBO Champs will take place in and around Rotorua, hosted by Orienteering Bay of Plenty with support of Taupo Orienteering.

Details are still being worked through, but we can confirm a Long Distance event and Middle Distance event, with a Sprint event yet to be decided on. 

​More information will be available later in June, however for now please mark your diaries and put aside the 19 - 20 November 2022! 

​What an amazing variety of maps over the three days and a variety of ages participating. The amount of people coming together to attend the event from all over NZ means a lot to us, and really made the competition and event go well. Send us any comments or feedback, it really helps us. 

All the results are up and linked: https://www.mtbochamps.nz/results.html
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A big thank you to our organisers, event planners and controllers for the 2021​  NZ MTBO Champs:
Naseby long event  | 18 Apr 2021 -  Planner: Conal Boland-Bristow  and Controller: Matt Bixley
Chatto Creek champs middle event  | 19 April 2021 - Planner: Viv Prince and Controller: Dave Armstrong
Ngapara Ponds sprint event   | 20 April 2021 - Planner: Joe Sherriff  and Controller: Alister Metherell 
And many helping in other ways:  a special mention to Peter Swanson on THE ONZ committee backing us all the way, and all others on the MTBO Commitee.Graeme Read for his work bringing and operating the caravan for organising our online entries, downloading and presenting results each day, and Dwayne Smith who travelled out just to help Graeme from Wananka, but not sure if he even tried a ride with a map - maybe next time!  There are also key people from Dunedin including Jeni Pelvin, but there were many more helping the crew from Central Otago orienteers. And special thanks to all our landowners and liaisons: Earnslaw One Ltd; Central Otago District Council; Central  Otago 4x4 club; and the landowners at Chatto Creek. 
Here are digital versions of the course one maps.

Wanting to know your start times, and pecking order with your fellow competitors? Start times now up in the "Entries & Start Lists" section....
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Joe and the team have been working pretty hard, and this series of photo's shows some of the clearing work that has been happening to deal with some the windfall on the sprint map, which came down in recent storms. It also provides a good view of the tracks, so worth checking out! 

A sharp eyed competitor has pointed out an error in the Bulletin that was sent out and published yesterday - the Middle Distance event at Chatto Creek is on Monday 19th April - not Saturday 19th April. I'm sure most of you are smart enough to figure it out, but just in case not, we hope you read this! The updated bulletin is now available on this website. Happy reading! 

Previous versions of Chatto Creek and Naseby have been posted on the 2021 NZ Champs Otago page of the website.

The NZ MTBO Champs Bulletin is now available here. This includes details and important information which all participants need to read before the event, including competition details, safety information, and directions. 

The courses are now all planned and ready, and the team are primed for an awesome event in a weeks time. See you all there! 

MTBO is one of those disciplines which when it comes to major events, often involves people being drawn from multiple clubs. This champs is no different, and whilst Joe Sherriff, with the support of Dunedin Orienteering, have been the main drivers to get this off the ground, PAPO have come to the party with both manpower and expertise - most of the organising team happen to be PAPO members, and Dunedin Orienteering will be supporting the event with equipment and on the day volunteers as well. 

Hosting a National event during times of Covid is no easy task, so we are thankful for the team at PAPO to agree to be the main hosting club, using their experience in running events under different Covid restriction levels to ensure the event can happen under both level 1 and 2 Covid restrictions. This means that if any part of the country is at level 2, then the event will happen under level 2 restrictions to ensure everyone attending is kept safe and that we comply with the ONZ and MoH guidelines. Of course we are hopeful the country will stay at level 1, but it is good to know that plans are in place to still run the MTBO Champs should any part of the country move up a level.  We hope this gives people a bit more certainty, and that they will have more confidence to enter and organise travel to the event. 

And on the subject of entries, don't forget to get your entries in before March 27th to be in to win one of 2 Graeme Read Mapboards! Even without the promise of great prizes, this event has such outstanding areas to ride on with awesome maps that any NZ based MTBOers would be crazy to miss out. 

We expect final event information to be up on the website in the next week or two, so stay tuned!