Orienteering Australia is excited to announce an exciting initiative for 2026: a sprint focused high performance squad. This squad will be selected from the two national squads, with a focus on elevating our athletes to the highest level in sprint competitions in 2026 and beyond!
In recent years Australia has shown its strength in the sprint disciplines on the world stage. Our athletes attend these high-level events with much less preparation/support than most of their competitors. Many nations, particularly those that are European based can travel to event locations for training camps and preparation competitions. Many nations are also able to offer their athletes year-round support and many other training opportunities outside of these specific event preparation.
WOC 2026 is a sprint WOC, being held in Genoa, Italy. Given our recent strength in sprint competitions, a strong junior contingent and many young seniors, we are in a unique position to capitalise on this success and continue to develop our budding young athletes. In the perspective of the HPMG, WOC 2026 is a very important steppingstone to WOC 2028 in Spain where our strong group of athletes will have had two more years exposure to racing on the world stage and should be very competitive. If provided with appropriate support and coaching,
our young athlete cohort will be in a good position to have exceptional results on the world stage.
More information about the 2026 Sprint Squad can be found here.
Information about national squads in general, can be found on the OA website here.
Apply to be a squad coach! EOI due 26 October
OA is seeking expressions of interests for squad coaches for not only the sprint squad, but also the two annually selected national squads – the High Performance Squad and the National Development Squad.
Coaches can indicate their interest in being a part of this key aspect of OA’s high performance program by filling in the Google Form here before 26 October 2025.
