Dent too strong in Christmas Five Day event ending in Ballarat

AUSTRALIA'S top male orienteer made a clean sweep of the Christmas Five Day event by winning the University of Ballarat leg yesterday.New South Welshman Julian Dent won all five legs of the event and said he enjoyed running in the area."It was pretty good fun; I'm pretty happy," he said."It's really good training - there are great forests around the Ballarat area and Daylesford."Having spent the past eight months in Sweden, Dent was using the Five Day event as off-season training for the Australian nationals, which begin in March next year."It's more your European, Scandinavian sport - it's a lot bigger over there. Although there's quite an active national series here (in Australia)."It's good ... being able to compete here and in Europe."One downside for Dent was the lack of gold on the run."I didn't fall down any mine shafts but I didn't have time to go fossicking."Kathryn Ewels, ranked second in Australia, completed a hat-trick of wins on the final leg but had no chance of claiming the overall women's prize, having missed the first two days.That honour went to South Australian Susanne Casanova, who was using the event to get accustomed to differing terrain."The terrain's been quite varied," she said."We had one day with granite slopes and boulders on the hillside, so you had to understand (how to run on) the rock."Then we had three days in gold-mining terrain, so there was a lot of contour detail on the map."RESULTS: Men's: Course 1 - day five Julian Dent, overall Dent; Course 2 - day five Michael Burton, overall Burton and Ian Lawford; Course 3 - day five Heath Jamieson, overall Steve Flick; Course 4 - day five Ashjorn Peterson, overall Dave Lotty; Course 5 - day five Brodie Nankervis, overall B Nankervis; Course 6 - day five Ashley Nankervis, overall A Nankervis; Women's: Course 1 - day five Kathryn Ewels, overall Susanne Casanova; Course 2 - day five Belinda Lawford, overall Lawford; Course 3 - day five Meredith Gray, overall Carolyn Jackson; Course 4 - day five Janine Steer, overall Sandra Tarr; Course 5: - day five Nicola Blatchford, overall Blatchford; Course 6 - day five Lanita Steer, overall Steer.