Technique, skill of orienteering

Press, 5 August 1981, Page 16

Technique, skill of orienteering

Orienteering, founded in Sweden but only a New Zealand sport for 12 years, is gaining a toehold in Canterbury. In the first of

two articles, Ray Cairns tells of this strange sport.

Though it has a 63-year history, orienteering as a sport has hardly hit home to New Zealand sports enthusiasts yet. While the Swedish youth and scout leader, Major Ernst Killander, effectively invented the sport in an effort to rekindle in young people their enthusiasm for athletics by involving them in route-finding in the forests. orienteering did not reach New Zealand until Gordon Pirie arrived in 1969. Pirie. as a sometimeextraordinarily successful British athlete, was a wellknown figure, even arriving a dozen years after his rum ning career was effectively oven But to many, and this is probably still the case, orienteering suggests a mixture of the. qualities, of scouting, map and compass reading,. and leisurely jogging or walking.

It is fair to comment'that the casual enquirer into orienteering .should not satisfy. his curiosity by watching an event. It is not. a spectator sport; it is a participant event. But more so, it is very labour-intensive. There is more, much more, work in setting up a 'single event than in the actual participation. Orienteering, in its simplest explanation and that most anathema to the purist, is a car rally on foot. A course is planned, ; the controls (check points is another offensive term) are established and identified, and the contestants are set loose 'with a highly-detailed map. Basically, the only equipment required by a fledgling orienteer is a sturdy but comfortable pair; of footwear.

Compasses, often propounded as essential to orienteering, are rarely used by even a novice contestant; most carry them simply as a safeguard in the event of

getting lost. They are too time-consuming for the topclass athlete.

In a standard orienteering event, the athletes leave at intervals with their highlydetailed maps, visiting in a strict and regulated order the various controls, recording their visits by clicking their cards (much as a bus conductor does), and returning to . the start-finish as quickly as possible.

It is a time trial and that is why an orienteering event does not simply start at 10.30 a.m. in Christchurch; it starts from 10.30 to. say, 1.30 p.m. The maps themselves are a revelation. A New Zealand club, for example, would get a basic map from the Lands and Survey Department, and to many, these would seem quite detailed. But the orienteering people go even further. They add their own landmarks, after physically going out on the prospective course; broken fences, erosion belts, distinctive trees (a wattle among a group of pines, for example), hose-lines, individual boulders (yes, individual boulders), vegetation boundaries and “special objects" all feature. Special objects are such movable items as drinking troughs on farmland.

Then there is the varied nature of orienteering. It can be and often is a sport for families, wishing to do nothing other than taking a stroll together on a fine Sunday. They can do so without feeling they anf getting in the way. » But for those who wish to be competitive, it is as demanding as any sport. Believe it or not, it has been established that the best in the world average very close to a,4min-mile pace, and that is exceptionally fast in anyone’s language. There is just

no time to use a compass at that speed: map-reading ability and exceptional fitness are the requirements. "I suppose people think we are just another group of joggers," says Gaye Boniface, one of the most active and involved of Christchurch orienteers and administrators. “but keeping up public support is very important. We find farmers are very cooperative. however, and we have never been turned down in requests to use farmlands. There are three at Kaituna whose land we use in the course of a single event, and they often don’t know we’ve

been there, even though we’ve had permission to compete there."

Not all the stock are as cooperative. however. Mrs Boniface told of a recent event at Kaituna when “a very large bull decided to sit right at the control."' which is marked by a brilliant orange and white prism. “Fifty per cent went in and clicked their cards; the

other 50 per cent —me included — wouldn't. But if contestants came in and told the story of a lot of bull, and as it was just a club event, we gave them credit for having been there!" Contestants can end up in strange places, too, especially as it is a standard requirement of orienteering that the athletes should not be familiar with the terri-

tory. At the highest levels, an athlete seen in the area of a championship too close to that event is automatically disqualified. Gaye Boniface told of once running through a cemetery, “somewhere up from Lyttelton, I ended up at someone’s back door when they were having their Sunday dinner. I felt so badly about it. I just kept running."