With high-profile events like the Olympic Games and MTB World Championships edging ever closer, it’s easy to overlook less well-known but equally hard-fought championships. Even ones that British competitors have a fighting chance of winning. With that in mind, allow us to draw to your attention the repetitively-named Mountain Bike Orienteering World Orienteering Championships (MTB-O WOC to its friends). It’s not actually as daft a name as it sounds – MTB-O is the governing body, WOC is the name of the event.

The WOC takes place in Ballarat, Australia, from 18-25 October 2004. The competitors aren’t actually riding for six days straight, there’s all sorts of distances and categories and stuff going on. 350 riders from 25 countries will be in attendance, including the nine-strong UK squad – Killian Lomas, Steve Heading, Andrew Simpson, Gary Tompsett, Paul Trott, Andy Conn, Jenny James, Kathryn Newbery and Charlotte Somers Cocks. They’re drawn from a variety of disciplines including adventure racing and foot orienteering as well as mountain biking. Accompanying them will be team manager Colin Palmer.

On the face of it, the UK squad is in with a good chance of some medals – riders like Whyte‘s Steve Heading have a great record in national and international Polaris Challenge events. The slight fly in the ointment is that a lot of UK orienteerers are used to “Score” events in which you choose the route to visit as many high-scoring checkpoints as you can within a time limit. MTB-O events, though, are “Time” events – the order in which you visit the checkpoints is fixed and it’s the fastest rider to cover them all that wins.

There’s no doubt that it’s a strong squad, though, and we wish them all the best. Look out for event updates from Steve Heading on the site, and in the meantime check out www.2004worldmtbo.org for all the details.