Midnight in the Czech Republic’s Ore Mountains. Australians Geoff Lawford and Rod Gray pause for meals, a quick respite after a punishing 12 hours of racing by way of the forests. Another 12 hours of competitors stay. They flip off their head torches to preserve their batteries. It was pitch black, Lawford recollects. “Although Rod was only two metres away, I couldn’t see him.” And then they hear it, the sound of a big animal working by way of the forest in direction of them.
Competitors had been warned of attainable encounters with wild boar or deer. Lawford senses the animal cease in entrance of him. Scrambling, he activates his head torch to find the maw of a “solid German shepherd cross” inches from his face. “Thankfully, the dog proved friendly,” says Lawford. “We had no idea who owned it, but it followed us for the next hour – through the Czech Republic and on towards Germany.” It’s one of numerous anecdotes the two have amassed since teaming up almost 50 years in the past.
Once fierce rivals, this yr, Lawford and Gray will have a good time 48-years as sporting companions and buddies. Both 68, they’re world champions in rogaining, a massively demanding endurance sport, and collectively they’ve competed throughout terrain as various as the Arctic tundra of Finland, the steep slopes of the Spanish Pyrenees and the brutal spinifex and escarpments of Australia’s East MacDonnell Ranges.
Few partnerships boast almost a half-century collectively – not many marriages, maybe some friendships. And fewer sporting groups declare dominance – or consistency – for as lengthy. “We complement each other,” says Gray. “And we don’t argue.”
“At first I didn’t really like him very much,” Lawford jokes (Gray beat him into second place at the 1975 Australian Orienteering Championships). On the podium, Lawford shook Gray’s hand and vowed to himself that subsequent yr the placings could be reversed. But in 1976, when Lawford was on the lookout for a associate for a 24-hour stroll organised by the Melbourne University Mountaineering Club, he requested Gray. “He beat me in that race, so I knew he was fit.” An introvert, Lawford admits he took a bit of a threat; whereas they each favored the similar sport, it was no assure they might get on whereas doing it continuous for twenty-four hours.
Gray remembers the occasion as a bit of a shock, however not as a result of of the tough going. He recollects falling asleep whereas strolling alongside and crashing into bushes. “I was that tired.” Miscalculations discovered them navigating at night time, with out torches, looking the closely forested terrain for checkpoints, generally known as controls, by contact and with out heat clothes.
Despite a mean race outcome, the pair had been hooked. Since that first time, they’ve competed in 17 world championships, 14 Australian championships and numerous different occasions collectively regardless of Lawford’s propensity to faint. “Quite scary,” says Gray. “He goes from flat out to absolutely dead.”
In 2023 they received each the males’s super-veteran (55 years and over) and males’s ultra-veteran (65 years and over) titles navigating the warmth, excessive altitudes and alpine forests of California’s Sierra mountains with solely a compass and a map.
They had been half of a small cohort of Australians who dominated the 2023 world championships- Australians received seven of the sixteen world championship titles and celebrated a number of different podium outcomes.
To achieve success at the elite stage, groups consisting of between two and 5 individuals orienteer a distance roughly equal to 2 marathons throughout 24 hours. Sleep is eschewed, changed by a dedication to maintain going it doesn’t matter what. Unlike orienteering, there isn’t any set route. Teams plan their very own, with maps obtained just a few hours earlier than the begin. They determine which examine factors, generally known as controls, to go to and in which order. Each management is price factors of various worth. The group that collects the most factors from the controls visited, in the time set, wins.
In Australia, it’s one of the quickest rising sports activities that nobody’s heard of. Participation charges are up 10% in contrast with pre pandemic numbers, with the ACT experiencing a unprecedented 78 % bounce.
Rogaining’s creators, Melbourne siblings Rod, Gail and Neil Phillips, by no means got down to invent a sport, however somewhat to fulfill the rising demand for 24-hour group competitions. Drawing on their expertise of the annual occasions run by their Rover’s crew, in 1976 they organised a 24-hour hike and referred to as it a “rogaine” – utilizing the first letters from their names. It caught.
A dry sense of humour has been a cornerstone of Lawford and Gray’s partnership, maintaining even the most intense moments in perspective. One memorable episode was in sight of the end of the 1996 Rogaining world championships in Western Australia. Suddenly, Lawford staggered sideways and handed out. When he got here to, 5 minutes later, “There was an ambulance beside us, and Rod had poured Gatorade all over my head and through my hair,” Lawford says. With quarter-hour remaining on the occasion clock, he recollects Gray enunciating his selections. “You can take the ambulance, or I can carry you, or you can walk to the finish.”
Taking the ambulance would imply disqualification and he didn’t wish to get carried by Gray. Lawford received up and hobbled the remaining 400 metres. While he knew Gray would have accepted his resolution, he additionally knew his good friend was going to be actually upset in the event that they didn’t end. He accepted the award for third place total and the males’s veteran world championship title with hair lacquered with inexperienced Gatorade and pink mud. “That was pretty funny.”
Accommodating one another’s idiosyncrasies has been essential for his or her long-term partnership. “We just understand that’s the way we are,” says Gray, whose nausea in the early morning hours of an occasion is just relieved by throwing up. Lawford is pragmatic. “I just sit by and watch him in his agony and wait till he’s ready to go again.”
Gray describes Lawford as the easier going of the partnership. But not so relating to getting a superb night time’s sleep earlier than occasions. These days they don’t share lodging. “[Geoff] reckons I snore. But I’ve never heard myself snore, so I don’t really believe him,” says Gray deadpan.
For Lawford, a retired land surveyor, maps have at all times held an attract. His first job out of college in 1977 was making orienteering maps in Sweden. And after years of competitors, he says, “I have a few thousand maps and their associated terrains embedded in my subconscious.” He believes navigation is the superpower he brings to their partnership. “[Rod’s] a good navigator, but I think I’m a better navigator,” he says matter-of-factly.
Gray’s energy stems from his affinity with the bush. As a toddler, he might be discovered exploring the wilds outdoors his grandparents’ again gate close to Ballarat. Later, as a mining engineer, he spent years working in distant terrain, together with in elements of Canada, China and Kazakhstan. In competitors, this provides him the capability to decide on the best path by way of thick undergrowth utilizing cues from the floor, vegetation and animal tracks. “He’s really fast,” says Lawford.
Gray describes himself as “the bulldozer” of the partnership and Lawford, the driver at the again, directing. “For the first six hours, I’m generally leading,” Gray says. “I like to get out and go.” Lawford will probably be taking bearings, checking the map and tempo counting. They’ll share the lead so that every has an opportunity to cost their bodily and psychological batteries. “On the way home, I really bolt too,” says Gray. “The last six hours, I’m pushing pretty hard,” he admits. “And Geoff’s complaining a bit. Sometimes we’re going too fast, but if you want to get to the end, you gotta go quickly.”
While rogaining is an enormous half of Lawford and Gray’s relationship, each say their friendship is extra essential. They’ve been greatest man at one another’s weddings and outdoors competitors taken on extraordinary bodily challenges. A milestone in their friendship was a 600km journey from Papua New Guinea’s north coast to the south coast by way of jungles, throughout mountains and down rivers, in 1982. “For six weeks we were making decisions and trying to keep ourselves alive,” says Gray.
“Our friendship was cemented after that,” says Lawford. “It was unbreakable.”
Lawford doesn’t hesitate when requested what he admires most about Gray. “He’s really tough, determined and resourceful.”
Gray is extra circumspect. “I dunno,” he says. “We just get on.”
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