A few days before the World
Orienteering Championships WOC 2015, some prominent individuals
reported about the intention of the International Orienteering
Federation to split the World Championships in “sprint” and
“forest”, to be held in alternate years. An open letter to the
IOF Council and the national federations that worth to read.
“Are the traditional orienteering
countries ready to organize a forest WOC without the “show event”;
the sprint? Are they ready to organize and finance a forest WOC with
good TV-productions in forest disciplines? Is it possible to get
sponsors for a forest WOC?” These are some of the issues raised by
a number of individuals essentially linked to the training area and
high competition, insert in an open letter to the Council of the
International Orienteering Federation and the national Federations.
Per Forsberg, Simone Niggli, Brigitte Huber Grüniger, Radek Novotny,
Daniel Hubmann, Bruno Nazário, Tom Quayle, Matthias Niggli and Janne
Salmi are the signatories of a letter alerting, especially, for the
care to be when you want to change, radically, “the most important
international Orienteering event in the World.”
“As the World Orienteering
Championship is the most important international orienteering event,
changes need to be considered very carefully. In our opinion, it
would be better to keep the status quo than to change something
without being sure about the consequences. The last changes about the
qualification scheme and the introduction didn’t shake the whole
system of WOC, but splitting WOC will have big consequences for
runners, teams, federations, organizers, media and IOF which we
cannot predict at the moment”, can be read in the Open Letter. The
signatories also make a point to remember the example of WOC 2014 in
Venice and Lavarone: “So it’s even possible to organize a
complete WOC in two places.”
Conclusions and proposals
After disclosing a set of possible
difficulties and risks to take up the new model, Per Forsberg and his
peers say: “If we want to increase the number of places and
countries, we need to give the know-how to these countries, unless if
it is urban or forest. There would thus be a need to build a group
within international orienteering to provide quality and fairness in
all international events, this operation being very expensive for the
IOF. To organize an international orienteering event is not a simple
task and needs lot of experience. But at the moment, there is not
enough professional quality assurance at the events and knowledge is
not going further to the next organizer as it always is a new country
and a new organizing committee”, they note.
The Open Letter contains also some more
conclusions and proposals: To improve the sport of orienteering and
to get more attendance, visibility and excitement, WOC should not
need to be shortened and separated. To show the fascination of
orienteering widely, properly and annually - it is just the other way
round: WOC should actually last 8-9 days, including two weekends. WOC
should be a real orienteering festival and a window to our sport,
shoving all its characters. [...] Rather than splitting the WOC, we’d
(in case of difficulties in finding a WOC-host annually) rather see
WOC organized biannually and simultaneously much effort to be put on
rising the status on EOC and World Cup”, it's said. The risk to
lose the fascination of our best event is too big!”, they conclude.
The open letter can be read at
http://news.worldofo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/The-future-of-WOC_Open-letter-6.7.2015.pdf.
Joaquim Margarido
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