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Mark Overton (OSA) shares his experiences of orienteering in South Africa at the Big 5 O.
South Africa turned out to be an absolute wonderful place to visit especially with the excuse of doing the Big 5 O (the Big 5 are Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Buffalo and Rhinoceros) which is South Africa’s fifth international five-day orienteering competition held every 2 years.
A total of 260 competitors from 21 countries turned up in Graskop, an old historical trade post and gold mining village famous for its picturesque mountains and forested landscapes. Located at an altitude of 1400m above sea level, it is on the touristic ‘Panorama Route’ that follows the Drakensberg Escarpment. The town is only 45 minutes from the Kruger National Park and was a wonderful event centre overlooking the lowveld.
During the five days, the event also hosted two World Ranking Events for the Elite categories and could be considered the European winter playground for Orienteers. Some of the elites were heading to Dullstroom high altitude training camp afterwards, whilst we went to the Kruger! The Big 5 O is a very friendly and social competition with a pub quiz (sadly, the combined Australian, Swiss and German team didn’t do so well at this), New Year’s Eve dinner (a game potjiekos accompanied by thundering rain), a parkrun (for those who had the energy) and a final dinner (which included a night-time guided viewing lift and gorge walk experience down to the lowveld below).
Day 1 was Paradise Berg and the first opportunity to work out how to use the EMIT system which was so clunky and slow in comparison to the SI system but a lot cheaper for the South African Orienteering clubs which suffer from a lack of members and income.
To quote the event information “Paradise Berg is a very large boulder field on gently sloping terrain. Dense vegetation is almost non-existent as short grassland predominates. The density of rocks and stony ground will determine running speed. Areas of the map will be extremely intricate and navigation very testing, particularly amongst some of the rock pillar formations.”
The blurb did not mention the tussocky grassland which was extremely hard to run through without going flying onto your face and we all agreed that the navigation was testing!
Day 2 was Waterval North which is part of a Forestry plantation adjacent to the Waterval Spruit which flows over flat bare rock towards the Berlin Falls. To quote the event information “The terrain is mature open pine forest plantation with very good runnability. Large areas of grassland and rocky outcrops are also present. There are numerous small sink holes in the forest and isolated mining trenches and caves in the rocky areas. Vegetation is negligible but some areas of grassland can have thick undergrowth (bracken/ferns).”
The start was deep in the forest all covered in pine needles.
We learned very quickly to avoid the areas of bracken. And of course, the controls were well hidden on tree stumps!
  
Day 3 was Waterval South which is the southern section of the Waterval Map that was used on Day 2. The event arena, start and finish were all reused from the day before therefore the Big 5 O signpost wasn’t as important as the day before!
The only part that was really the same was the run in from the last control on the rocky outcrop to the finish which seemed just as hard on the second time.
Day 4 was London Plantation which was again on Forestry land and was in a hidden valley at the headwaters of the Treur River. The Treur and Blyde Rivers join downstream at the famous Bourke’s Luck Potholes another tourist site.
To quote the event information “The forest plantation is in a valley bowl with steep slopes on three sides. Runnability is generally very good, but some compartments have recently been felled and brush cuttings remain on the ground, reducing runnability. There is also an open area with significant historical sand and gold mining works. Parts of the open area have notable bracken/ferns.” Runnable yes, steep most definitely and also included a very boggy patch with very deep patches of stinking marsh!
The final day was the WRE Sprint down in Hazyview – and down in the altitude sense as the town is on the lowveld and thus hotter and more humid. The event was held in the Kruger Park Lodge and was a mix of golf course, roads, buildings with the odd herd of impala thrown in.
The finish was situated right next to a swimming pool which was relief to many of the competitors!
Although none of us had fantastic runs and some were downright awful (including falling into that really stinking marsh and someone going out with the wrong map) it was brilliant to experience an international Orienteering event and Southern Africa was beautiful.
A big thank you to Mark Overton (OSA) for sharing this article.
  
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It is with sad and heavy hearts that we inform the orienteering community of the sudden death of James Sheldon, youngest son of Joan and Derek Sheldon, brother to Anna, Helen and Peter, and partner of Kate. James was tragically killed in a hiking accident on Mt Barney in SE Queensland’s scenic rim on Saturday 11 July, 2020.
For some, Mt Barney is a wild and alluring place; for James, having grown up in the nearby township of Boonah, its ridges and ravines were his backyard. Born and raised to adventure, James was a skilled and experienced hiker, mountaineer, orienteer, climber and cyclist. For him, no peak was high enough, no headwind strong enough - always seeking unique and challenging adventures of the path less travelled.
Whilst not a singular passion, orienteering was a sport James loved and excelled at. He was a regular member of the Queensland Schools Orienteering team, with 2005 being an exceptional year for him. James won the Senior Boys class at the Australian Schools Orienteering Championships, was a member of Queensland's winning Senior Boys relay, and was selected in the Australian Schools Honour Team. He continued his interest in orienteering as an elite Queensland Cyclone where he performed strongly at many National Orienteering League events, and was selected in National Development squads. James was a valued member of Ugly Gully Orienteers, always willing to help organise events and collect controls from the most distant corners of the map.
James could perhaps be described as an enduring character, not just because of his amazing physical capabilities, but more so of his strong relationships with family, friends and loved ones. His goofy smile, his quick-wit, his enduring warmth and companionship. At age 32, recently engaged, and with a promising engineering career, it is a life cut way too short.
The forest sighs as we grieve for his family and for the loss of James - a beautiful son, brother, friend, lover, brother-in-law and uncle.
Thank you to Wendy Read for writing this tribute.
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Several new features have been introduced in the latest version of MapRun, the smartphone orienteering app developed by Ugly Gully’s Peter Effeney. The most exciting is “MapRunG”, a Garmin app you install on your watch. This allows your phone to send the MapRun course to your watch, so that you can run without a phone and let your watch register the controls. When you finish, MapRun fetches your track from Garmin and creates a result on your phone, as if you had run with your phone.
MapRunG is available via the Garmin Connect IQ store. It is paired with MapRunF (version 5 or higher) on your phone. See http://maprunners.weebly.com/maprung.html
Several other new features have also been introduced in MapRunF:
QuickStart
Check Sites
Start Anywhere
- This enables participants to choose any control as their start/finish control in a course.
- Very popular during the COVID-19 restrictions as participants do not assemble in the same place.
HITMO
- If a control did not register correctly on your route, the "Hey, I Think it Missed One" function allows you to submit a revised result for the organiser to check.
- Use the menu top right on the Results page on the phone to access HITMO (http://maprunners.weebly.com/maprunf---review-results.html)
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Congratulations to OA Board member and IOF Vice President Mike Dowling who was awarded an IOF Silver Pin by re-elected IOF President Leho Haldna. The IOF General Assembly was held virtually for the first time due to the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Mike was first elected to the IOF Council at the 2010 General Assembly in Trondheim, Norway and was elected as an IOF Vice President at the 2012 General Assembly in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is an active IOF Council member with strategic responsibility for the global visibility of orienteering.
IOF Pins are awarded to individuals who have made contributions to the development of orienteering and the IOF. A silver pin being awarded to an individual who has previously received a bronze pin and who has made significant contributions through service within the IOF organisation in a Commission, Council or Senior Event Advising role over an extended period of time.
In making the award to Mike, Leho Haldna thanked Mike for his outstanding contributions over the years, and especially towards the 2020 General Assembly. Leho also noted Mike’s ‘balancing view from Down Under with a touch of humour’.
Congratulations Mike on a well deserved award.
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Following the rescheduling of this year’s Australian Championships, the resultant rescheduling for the coming years has now been confirmed.
The Australian Championships carnival will be held in Tasmania in 2021, Victoria in 2022, Western Australia in 2023 and New South Wales in 2024. Tasmania and Victoria both move back a year from their original allocation, while NSW moves back two years from 2022 to 2024. Western Australia retains its original 2023 allocation.
If the 2022 Oceania Championships is held in Australia (which depends on whether the 2021 event in New Zealand goes ahead as scheduled), the 2022 carnival in Victoria is expected to include Oceania Championships events.
The decision had previously been taken to allocate the 2021 Australian 3-Days to NSW and 2022 to Queensland, both deferred a year from the original dates. Allocations beyond 2022 remain to be confirmed. (On the original schedule, 2022 was scheduled for the ACT and 2023 for South Australia).
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With the COVID-19 restrictions, there has been a huge surge in MapRun events and participation. The smartphone app, developed by Ugly Gully’s Peter Effeney, enables orienteering events to take place without flags, SI units or organiser presence. It locates controls using satellite technology, so that your phone beeps as you approach the control, and uploads your result and route. This has allowed orienteers to train and compete safely in their local areas during lockdown. By June 2020, use of the app had increased tenfold on the previous year, with 20 to 30 new MapRun courses added everyday around the world, and over individual 500 results in a single day!
MapRun now has local administrators managing events in 27 countries across Europe, the Americas and the Pacific. Events range from the Street-O series in Melbourne, to Park-O in North Staffordshire, forest courses in Canada, MTBO in Paraguay, and even Horse-Riding Orienteering in Hungary. Perhaps we will even see a MapRun Ski-O later in the year!
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Thank you to Ken Thompson, Technical Officer of Tintookies OC, who has written this article based mainly on IOF documents.
In a previous article What is ISSprOM 2019 Ken described the new mapping standards for sprint maps. ISOM 2017-2 is the new international specification for general orienteering maps. It replaces ISOM 2000. Existing maps are being progressively converted.
One of the changes is that the map type should be shown on the map itself so look out for Conforms to ISOM 2017-2 or similar words. Some changes for ISOM 2017-2 are the same as ISSprOM 2019. Where this is the case there is a # at the start of the comments column.
So what has changed? Ken has focussed on some of the visually obvious changes. There have actually been 106 changes! If you want to know more, particularly if you have an interest in mapping, he suggests you look at the specifications themselves on the International Orienteering Federation (IOF) Mapping website:
Most of the changes aim to improve clarity.(symbols below are enlarged for illustrative purposes)
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A big thank you to Erica Diment (OSA) for this training article.
I recently went down to Kuitpo to orienteer on a training course near Christmas Hill.
The first control was a log near some thickets (many of you may remember this area from previous events at Kuitpo). It is a tricky area, because it is hard to know which thicket you are near. They all look the same. (See Photo 1)
Since this was a training course, I decided to practice using my compass and decided to go on a straight line to the control from the start.
Needless to say, I was slightly off course anyway, by the time I arrived at a place with prickly thickets and needed to negotiate my way around them. By the time I had done that I was not sure where I was, and wasted quite a lot of time trying to figure out where I was.
I convinced myself that I had found the control (even though I had not seen any pink tape as expected), but looking at my run loaded against the map later, I realised that I had found one of the stumps (shown by a green cross) , and not the correct control at all (not even the correct type of feature!!). (See Photo 2)
 
I should have used an attack point!
An attack point is any obvious or large feature near the control. You find the attack point and then use that to find your control. I could have saved myself a lot of time, and actually found the control.
Having spoken to a number of orienteers who found this control I have heard that most of them used the watercourse ends (with the man made feature opposite, which is a post, which could be found by the side of the track). Others used the small watercourse (to the north west of the control), or they used the thickets (I’m not sure how they recognised they were on the right one).
A good attack point is always:
- Obvious
- Unique and distinct
- Close to the control
- Easy going to the control
Looking at this list, I believe that the water course crossing with the track that a number of orienteers used as their attack point was a good one. The only thing to be careful of would have been which one of the two they were at. (not quite unique).
The safest attack point is one that has two line features which cross each other (for instance a fence or creek crossing a track), as the location cannot be mistaken.
You could also use a feature with a unique shape Iike a strangely shaped knoll), or a feature of which there is only one in your area.
It is a really good practice to find an attack point before each control.
Look at your map – what can you find close to your control that is recognisable and easy to find? Aim to locate this first, and then work your way in to your control from there. You might need to find another smaller attack point, closer to the control to get you there.
Here is some practice from the same course – what would you use for your attack point for these controls? (See Photo 3, 4 & 5)
 
This one (See Photo 6) was particularly interesting. Proof of the need for an attack point was shown by one orienteer, who took quite some time roaming through the thick bush in this area, before finally returning to number 9, and, from there, going out to the track, which he followed until he found a good attack point, and then found the control easily.
Next time you are out on an orienteering course, take the time to work out an attack point for each control. You might find that you save yourself a lot of time.
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Orienteering Australia (OA) is pleased to announce that it has contracted Mike McLaughlin of McLaughlin Sports Consultancy (MSC) to deliver both the National High Schools and Primary Schools Projects.
As one of four submissions received by OA , after reviewing MSC’s proposals, a panel interview with Mike, and reference checking, OA had no hesitation in awarding MSC the two projects.
Work has already started on the two projects with States already having nominated a representative with experience in delivering orienteering programs to schools to a Project Reference Group (PRG) to support MSC. The PRG will provide MSC with Orienteering specific technical expertise and context relating to the project to ensure the relevance of outcomes.
The first virtual meeting of the PRG is scheduled to take place later this week.
Based on updated project plans the two projects are expected to be delivered later this year in November.
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The IOF has successfully held its first virtual General Assembly (GA), becoming one of the first international sport federations to hold a major international meeting in this way and the meeting attracted interest from many other sports organisations. A record number of 121 IOF member federations were represented; 57 member nations had registered their intention to take part, an increase of some 30% on previous numbers at a GA.
The GA approved important and far-reaching Statutes changes covering membership of the IOF, gender balance, athlete representation on the IOF Council and virtual Orienteering – more details below. Additionally there was unanimous approval of an IOF Council Resolution reinforcing the basic values of Fair Play in Orienteering, and the need to stay true to the IOF Code of Ethics. Click here to read the full summary.
A detailed review of the IOF General Assembly Part 1 where the General Assembly unanimously adopted a Resolution regarding Fair Play and approved the Focus Areas for IOF work in the next 2 year period can be found here.
A detailed review of the discussions on changes in the IOFs basis of good governance, the IOF Statutes. Athletes representation, gender balance, membership criteria and a reference to eSports can be found in the General Assembly Review Part 2.
A guide to the newly elected members of the IOF Council is found here.
The minutes of IOF Council meeting 200 held on July 9, 2020 can be found here.
The updated IOF Statutes following the decisions of the General Assembly held July 10, 2020 are attached here.
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