From: orientear@aol.com (Orientear) Date: 25 Aug 1999 23:29:18 GMT Subject: Re: Day 5, Rocky Mountain 1000 Day Message-Id: <19990825192918.13137.00000197@ng-bx1.aol.com>
Ah, yes! A great event. While my friend Turku was undoubtably detained at the border, I managed to attend the Crystal Relays which , for a small event, were magnificent. Wyoming's vistas were incredible. I have never before experienced such beautiful terrain. As a site for a relay, the multi-tiered natural terrain provided great spectator visibility while not depriving the competitors of a good challenge. Bravo! I also managed to convince one of the later starters to let me run in his stead. it was a great experience running where the highways and roads were the only visible signs of civilization in any direction. Oslo
From: James Lithgow <lithgow@cci.net.au> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 07:30:01 +1000 Subject: Re: Mapping sensitive area? Message-Id: <37C46059.2190A2AD@cci.net.au>
Garingal Orienteers in Sydney have had this challenge when setting courses on the McCarrs Creek Map in the Garigal National Park. This area contains habitat of an endangered frog species (aren't they all) and some rare plant communties. Working with the national parks staff we set courses so that the route choices avoided the area. In areas with sensitive marsh areas we set courses with very few controls common with other courses. while the largest event that this applied to was only about 200 competitors the national parks post event evaluation was very positive. We discussed with them marking sensitive areas on the map. However this was thought likely to increase the risk of damage as people would then know the exact areas with these endangered flora and fauna and may after the event have wanted to look at them and cause damage. James Lithgow
From: "Simon Errington" <simon@sdea.demon.co.uk> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 19:05:57 -0000 Subject: The Agony of the Long Distance World Championships Spectator Message-Id: <935604310.7744.0.nnrp-04.9e985cdd@news.demon.co.uk>
The Agony of the Long Distance World Championships Spectator I started orienteering in 1977, swept up by the membership rush following the World Championships in Scotland in 1976. One year later, in October 1978, the front cover of "The Orienteer" showed "Yvette Hague, Reading OC, just after finishing first in D12 in the Swiss 5-Day event". Twenty-one years later a new photo is needed, with a new caption: "Yvette Hague, Great Britain, just after becoming Short Distance World Champion". This must surely be one of the most popular World Championships victories ever, but it has been a long time coming. Yvettes World Championship debut came in 1983 in Hungary where she ran in the relay. In Australia in 1985 she finished 13th in the Classic Distance. And then we come to France 1987, and the start of my long and arduous campaign to see Great Britain win a gold medal at the World Championships. Yvette went to France as an outside medal chance having won a World Cup race there the previous year. I went to France having decided it was almost on the way home from the Dutch 3-Day. She finished 17th that year. 1989 was Sweden. I took a late decision to go and spectate. It rained a lot. The areas were uninspiring. Yvette had injury problems and only managed 18th. The Brits had gone with high hopes but things just didnt happen. How ironic that my least memorable World Championships should have been in the country where the sport was invented. 1991 in Czechoslovakia promised to be different. Yvette had won a few more races by then (the Nordic Championships and the World Junior Championships for example) and the CompassSport preview concluded that "hopes of a medal are realistic". The IOF had added a Short Race, so that made prospects even better. But it was not to be. Yvette was controversially disqualified for mispunching in the Short Race qualifier. She finished 25th in the Classic. I rounded off the week by leaving my passport behind in Germany. I managed to get back into Britain on the basis of a London Underground travel card and four friends wearing identical world championhsips t-shirts. One of the big questions in 1993 was whether the Americans could really organise a World Championships. CompassSport decided Yvette was "clearly Britains best hope of a medal". Yvette finished 9th in the Short Race, but was upstaged by Steve Hale. He famously "ran the wrong side of a tree" to miss a bronze medal by one second. The organisation just about coped, and many of the British supporters ended up helping at some stage during the week. I volunteered to man a control in the Classic Race, and spent five hours sitting in pouring rain by a crag with Frank Martindale. Franks daughter, Julie, was running for Ireland, but it was Yvette going through our control that almost had him cheering out loud. As we left our control at the end of the race we knew that Yvette had been in third place when she passed us. We arrived at the finish area to find that the result hadnt changed in the last few kilometres, and Yvette had a World Championships bronze medal. How do you beat that? The Mens relay team had a pretty good go, and Steve Hales once-in-a-lifetime last leg got them a silver medal. America is easily my favourite World Championships. Two British medals and superb terrain: what more could you want? Well, a gold medal would be nice By 1995 in Germany the British spectators were simply debating what colour Yvettes medal would be rather than if she would win one. We stood and cheered and got sunburn, and it was all worthwhile as she stormed to silver in both individual races. Norway in 1997 was another hot and sunny week. Training injuries meant she could only manage 8th (Classic) and 13th (Short). The week ended with a possible hint of things to come with a kilted bagpiper making himself prominent as the women came home an excellent 5th in the relay. And so we come to Scotland 1999. Yvette warmed up by winning the World Cup Short Race in the Lake District, and the crowd went wild. Could she do it again when it really counted? Just to cause confusion, she got married and suddenly we had to learn to cheer for Yvette Baker, She finished the Classic Race with the leading time, and said she was happy with her run. But one by one the rest of the field came in, and it was finally to end up as 4th place. Perhaps the Short Race then The Short Race qualifier went to plan, with Yvette winning her heat, leaving her to start last but one in the final. I spent the race in the forest with a Swedish TV crew. We were positioned to capture the spectator control, and then a quick dash allowed us to see runners at the penultimate control as well. The radio split times sounded encouraging, and suddenly I looked up to see a crowd of runners at the spectator control. Unbelievably Yvette had caught all three runners ahead of her. The four runners set off on the final loop, leaving the crowded finish field to wait in hope. I crossed over to the penultimate control and waited. We already knew that many runners were missing this control and ending up on the hill to our left. I saw a group of three people coming round the edge of the hill. This was it, but Yvette wasn t with them. And then all I remember is a British O-suit flashing past away from the control and towards the finish, leaving the others to loop back and punch. Then the cheering started, and we strained to make out what the commentators had to say. World Champion. Gold medal. Yvette, we never doubted you. But there was still the relay. This turned out to be in probably the best setting of any World Championships race I have been to, and it certainly had the best commentary. Id swapped the Swedish TV crew for a Finnish TV crew, and got to see some of the race in the forest, as well as from high up on the hill overlooking the finish. I will never forget the noise that the crowd made as Heather Monro punched at the last control and brought the Brits into first place after two legs. Yvette was running last. "Relay stalwart in anyones dream team" CompassSport had said in the preview. She went out in fourth place, just seconds behind the Swedes. The radio reports all around the course simply told us that it would be Sweden or Britain for bronze. And by the end it came down to a straight sprint into the finish field. The yellow and blue of Sweden just held off the red, white and blue of Great Britain. Maybe next time So there you have it. Ive spectated at seven World Championships. Ive stood in 26 finish fields, through sun and rain, and watched the Brits pick up five medals. Britain now has a World Orienteering Champion, and its the one we all knew it would be over 20 years ago. Whats left for us hardened World Championships spectators? Well, Im sure Yvette would like a relay medal to add to her collection Simon Errington London OK
From: "Andrew Kelly" <andrewk@dial.pipex.com> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:19:16 +0100 Subject: Re: Media coverage and WC99 Message-ID: <000001beeeff$9d457a80$2396bc3e@default>
Simon Beck wrote: >One thing I would like to point out is that contrary to one message I >read, O is not super healthy in Scandinavia. They're having the same >problems as everyone else in attracting and retaining young adults. >One does indeed wonder whether there will be any O in 30 years' time, >but what are all the young people doing who used to do sport? Are >they just spread out more over a greater number of activities, are >they just too flabby and idle to do any sport, do they do sports that >don't require aerobic effort, are they all sitting indoors playing >computer games? Or is society polarizing into 2 classes: the workers >and the tellywatchers? Its a combination of a number of things, some of which you touch on, some of which is well documented, some gut feel. (You're right about the Scandas, and what's interesting is that some of the work they are doing is stuff that we've been doing for a while in the UK, so we're not quite as backward as some people might think.) However, in summary, there is more competition from competing attractions, be they slothlike or active, than ever before. Where orienteering doesn't help itself in this country is the ongoing general inaccessibility of the sport - not just the geography of events, but the ways clubs operate. To bring more people (especially young) into the sport, we have to take it to them, not get them to come to us. That means much more localisation of clubs, their activites etc. Many of our clubs cover entire counties (or even more!), and spread their activities across the entire area. Some even organise events outside their catchment, which may be productive short term (e.g. financially) but does little for the club long term. It's no good telling somebody (particularly a youngster) who has tried orienteering that the next event accessible to them is 6 months down the line, and that in the meantime there is no training/social activity etc. within easy reach at all. Equally, trying to spread ones activities evenly across the entire year can also be counter-productive. People will travel, but only when hooked (and even then can and do get fed up with it). All the experience of BOF's development officers and others points to the fact that where activities are put on in a localised, focused way with good support work, the results are very positive. Where membership is falling off is where that is not being achieved. Only when we appreciate this more fully will we start to see the move upwards into regional and national competitions. It's surely no coincidence that whilst the largest English clubs generally have the biggest membership losses, the smallest clubs are on the whole actually growing. Andrew Kelly
From: Gale Teschendorf <gdt@megsinet.net> Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 19:33:43 -0500 Subject: Re: PORNOGRAPHY ON THE O-NET Message-Id: <37C339E7.D613652B@megsinet.net>
simonbeck6219@my-deja.com wrote: > I'm just getting sick of these people who post messages on our website > trying to get us to visit their porn site... Thanks. I needed a good laugh today. -- Gotta run, Gale +-------------+ Go Orienteering International +-------------+ Go Canada |GO /| 1920 Schiller |GO /| Coming Soon | ///| Wilmette, IL 60091 USA |CANADA ///| | /////| | /////| | ///////| Phone: (847) 251-2934 | ///////| | /////////| Fax: (847) 256-1476 | /////////| | ///////////| | ///////////| |/////////////| Web: www.megsinet.net/~gdt |/////////////| +-------------+ E-Mail: gdt@megsinet.net +-------------+
From: simonbeck6219@my-deja.com Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 23:50:28 GMT Subject: Re: Media coverage and WC99 Message-Id: <7pvb40$oce$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
> > Welcome to non-sport > There is a similarity between this comment and the attitude to O I recall from the unhappy days of my youth. I was unfortunate enough to be incarcerated in a different annex of the same prison (aka boarding school) as Richard Webb in the 1970s and we had to fight the prevailing attitude that O was more a way of getting an extra unwarranted weekend parole rather than a real sport, fortunately things have changed now the offending school has a real orienteer on the staff, too bad I wasn't born 20 years later. But the conclusion of the messages I've seen on the newsgroup re WOC publicity is we didn't do too badly after all, so thanx and well done to those responsible. One thing I would like to point out is that contrary to one message I read, O is not super healthy in Scandinavia. They're having the same problems as everyone else in attracting and retaining young adults. One does indeed wonder whether there will be any O in 30 years' time, but what are all the young people doing who used to do sport? Are they just spread out more over a greater number of activities, are they just too flabby and idle to do any sport, do they do sports that don't require aerobic effort, are they all sitting indoors playing computer games? Or is society polarizing into 2 classes: the workers and the tellywatchers? Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
From: simonbeck6219@my-deja.com Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 23:46:31 GMT Subject: PORNOGRAPHY ON THE O-NET Message-Id: <7pvask$oa0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
I'm just getting sick of these people who post messages on our website trying to get us to visit their porn site. So sick, in fact, that I've posted a message about orienteering on the alt.sex discussion group (in the sin city community, if that's how it works) And I'm going to post a whole load more messages re O on the sex sites, every time a sex message gets on the O website. After all, everyone knows O is far more satisfying than sex, and far more frustrating when it all goes wrong. Anyway, here is the porn-O message, in case anyone wants to read it "NEVER MIND SEX!!!!! ORIENTEERING IS FAR MORE CHALLENGING, SATISFYING, INTERESTING, AND YOU CAN DO IT IN GROUPS OR A 121 OUT IN THE WOODS WITH LOADS OF GOOD LOOKING YOUNG THINGS WHO WHOLD NEVER DREAM OF HAVING SEX WITH AN UGLY OLD PERVERT LIKE ME!!!!!!" Find out what happened at the 14th control of the Whippendell Woods permanent course..... She took off her clothes and asked to see my compass. "Oh wow that's a big one" she gasped. "Yes, it's a type 2" I replied. (Haven't seen those for a while, do Loneranger still make them?) "But... but how are you supposed to use it? Do you turn the dial until it points north? " " No you don't, you idiot, I shouted, can't you read the instructions you idle cretin? " To continue the story, call 0891 973 WHIP or, for the alternative amazing compass technique, 0891 973 PERM. DON'T BOTHER WAITING FOR THE NEXT ISSUE OF THE BOF RANKING LISTS!!! For immediate up to date info on how high your position is after the latest computation, call 0891 973 RANK. SADOMASOCHISM!!! SADOMASOCHISM!!! SADOMASOCHISM!!! (AND EVEN MORE SADOMASOCHISM!!!) Don't bother phoning expensive 0891 numbers, you can have the real thing in Clumber Park, Whiteleaf Woods, Afan Argoed, Cadeira Beeches (and most Welsh forests), most SAX areas...... MIXED MUD WRESTLING LYCRA SUITS 0891 973 DEFFER HOW BIG IS YOUR COCKUP? I bet it isn't as big as mine! 0891 973 JK98 DID YOU ENJOY THE ELECTRONIC PUNCHING SYSTEM AT THE SCOTTISH 6 DAY EVENT? Great. Welcome back to the world of old fashioned events with teams sitting in portacabins (if they're lucky) checking pinhole patterns... ...And at the end of the event, when everyone else had gone home or set off 3 hours ago to collect half a dozen controls and hadn't finished yet, there were just the 2 of us checking the cards.......... 0891 973 PRICK GET THE INSIDE STORY ON HOW ROBIN HARVEY GOT THE CONTRACT TO SURVEY 2 OF THE WOC99 MAPS!!!!! 0891 973 DICK Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't.