WAO England team

The 2019 World agility open WAO has now finished, and the England team produced some amazing results, this year 38 countries attended the event and the level of skills on show from both dogs and handlers was truly breath taking.

The WAO competition has the following 4 elements, individual pentathlon, biathlon and games, plus team pentathlon.  Each height division 300,400,500,600 compete in team and for individual medals.

The individual pentathlon is a competition that consists of 2 jumping, 2 agility and a speed-stakes round. The time in seconds for each round is added together with each fault (knocked pole, missed contact, refusal etc) + 5 second time penalty. An elimination in a round adds 100 seconds to the cumulative time.  Each of the 5 rounds have individual prizes, the overall winner is the dog/handler combination with the lowest time.

Team England results for the Pentathlon were as follows:

  • Pentathlon jumping 1: 5 top 10 places
  • Pentathlon jumping 2: 7 top 10 places including Marita Davies & Harvey 3rd , and Steven Richardson &Digit 3rd
  • Pentathlon agility 1: 5 top 10 places including Anthony Clarke & Ava 3rd
  • Pentathlon agility 2: 7 top 10 places including Anthony Clarke & Ava 2nd
  • Pentathlon speed-stakes: 6 top 10 places including Steven Richardson & Digit 1st, and Marita Davies & Duka 3rd
  • Pentathlon overall results: 7 top 10 places including Nicola Garrett & Z GOLD MEDAL, Sarah McLean & Milo SILVER MEDAL

Unfortunately Lucy Osbourne and Fling had to withdraw from the competition due to an injury that Fling sustained in one of our practice sessions.

The Team Pentathlon has a similar format as the individual event 2 jumping, 2 agility but instead of a speedstakes round there is a baton relay. In each of the first 4 rounds each country has one competitor from each of 3 height divisions, and all 4 heights compete in the relay

Team England results were as follows:

  • Team jumping 1: 10th place
  • Team jumping 2: 1st place
  • Team agility 1: 3rd place
  • Team agility 2: 13th place

Team pentathlon overall results:

  • 1st Germany
  • 2nd France
  • 3rd Spain
  • 4th England

The biathlon competition consists of a jumping round and the top 40 dogs then go through to the agility round.  The times for each section are then added together to determine the top places.

Team England results in the Biathlon were as follows:

  • Biathlon jumping: 4 top 10 places including, Ashleigh Butler and Sullivan 1st
  • Biathlon Agility: 5 top 10 places

The games competition has 2 rounds,  starting with snooker,  where each dog/handler combination must negotiate a series of obstacles within a set number of seconds.  Each obstacle or series of obstacles has a points value.  There are 3 red jumps worth 1 point each and then 6 colours.  Handlers look to score as many points as they can within the set time, starting with a red then a colour, a second red and colour, the third red and a colour, then the colours in order yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, black.

The top 30 scoring dogs then go forward to the gamblers section.  Each gamblers obstacle has a points value, single jumps 1pt, tunnels spread jumps, long jump, wall and tyre 2pts, see saw 3pts, A frame 4pts, weaves and dog walk 5pts.  Handlers run their dogs over a course of their own design, accumulating as many points as they can.  After 30 seconds a buzzer sounds at which point they attempt the gamble.  This is a choice of 2 mini courses, one more difficult than the other.  The easier is worth 10 points and the more difficult worth 20 points.  Handlers have to decide whether to gamble by taking the more difficult option.  To score these extra points dogs had to cross the finish jump to stop the timer within the allotted 44 seconds

Team England results for the Games competition were as follows:

  • 300 Stacey Irwin Burns and Sam: Snooker 43pts, gamblers 51pts   GOLD MEDAL
  • 300 Hayley Tindall and Fifi: Snooker 40pts, gamblers 51pts   BRONZE MEDAL
  • 300 Martin Watts and Pippa: Snooker 43pts, gamblers 20pts
  • 400 Marita Davies and Harvey: Snooker 43pts, gamblers 49pts   GOLD MEDAL
  • 400 Tanya Cooper and Taxi: Snooker 36pts, gamblers 37pts

Apart from the 3 GOLD, 1 SILVER and 1 BRONZE there were several others team members that just missed out on top 3 places and medals this year, also amazingly out of 102 individual runs our team managed to go clear 62 times, this is an extraordinarily high percentage given the level of difficulty of international agility courses.

Team England would like to day a very heartfelt thank you for the support of Nutriment prior to and throughout the World Agility Open Championships.  This has enabled the team to represent their country internationally which is an amazing achievement in itself as well as achieve some fantastic results both individually and as a team.

Next year the World Agility Open will be inviting Juniors for the first time so Team England are excited about working with our top young handlers in the future.