Quiet Times

Well, it has been a little quiet on the masters front with the northern hemisphere just about to come out of summer hiatus and with very limited masters competitions down under.

The first event of the NH season will kick off on the 1st of August with the Trophée Léon Quaglia in Chamonix.

The SH season is about to hot up in Australia with the Duke Trophy to be held in Brisbane this coming weekend (25th & 26th). This event is a teams event with all divisions competing in a round robin style format. This lends itself to a lot of racing over the two days and with three states competing, hopefully all twelve masters positions will be filled.

The Queensland Masters contigent will be Herbie Labiche, Frank Anderson, Sean Bennett and Glen Rosenburg (back on the ice after his quadricep gash).

The Victorian Masters will be Ken Stewart, Michael Attwood, Melissa Kah and one other (maybe Wayne Dite).
With each state only being able to fill four masters spots, a couple of masters will compete in the senior ladies group for Victoria.

As yet, I am unaware of which New South Wales masters will be making the trek to Brisbane.

I skated in Melbourne the last two weekends and the Olympic Southern Flyers masters group is by far the strongest in numbers in the country, with about ten masters taking to the ice.

I would like to thank all OSF members for welcoming me in and allowing me to train with the group - although they all think I was spying for Queensland (of course I was!). Gordon Church runs a well structured training environment and the club appears to be very well supported.

My trip to Melbourne also coincided with the return to the ice of two time Olympian Richard Goerlitz (38) who is considering a return to some competitive skating. Richard is the current Australian long track national record holder in the 500m, 1000m and 1500m distances.

On another note, although I received some positive feedback about a Masters Sprint Event during the week preceeding the Australian Open (September), there was not enough committment to warrant the organisation of this event. The positive though, is that it looks like there will be a larger masters/veterans field in this years nationals with Jim Lynch and Danny Kah giving their tentative interest in competing again, and with a little more persusion, hopefully I can sell the participation factor for some of those Victorian masters to make the trek to Sydney in October along with having a ladies veteran division.

I have updated my links list with my WMST YouTube page that has some old footage from the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics and some other videos as well.
I am also hoping to start a 2008/2009 times list commencing from the 1st of July (to be published after Trophée Léon Quaglia).

I am keen to have more masters send me their profiles and times, as many readers have provided positive feedback and interest in this area.

I have been receiving some very positive feedback about the blog and although I have been busy, I am hoping that this season, I can post some interesting articles and results. Please feel free to email me at thenewbordersecurity@aapt.net.au if you have anything of interest in the masters short track arena that you would like others to know.

Frank