Looking for good weekend reading? The latest IOF Newsletter is already available

Looking for good weekend reading? The latest IOF Newsletter is already available. On it, you can read about the thoughts and feelings of the world stars as the season gets underway, how mappers are the key to spreading orienteering in Asia, the continued success of World Orienteering Day, and much more.

All around the world, orienteers are preparing for coming challenges. The FootO World Cup is about to start in a couple of hours and Wojciech Kowalski, the best ranked Polish runner currently, seems to be ready to fight among the best and is very much looking forward to it. His words can be read in the article signed by Erik Borg and entitled “Kowalski can’t wait for the World Cup” [HERE]. Another great athlete, Helena Jansson, states: “All I do is related to WOC”. Having ‘home advantage’ as an extra factor this year, Jansson reveals some of her feelings: “I am both excited and anxious; I am both longing for it to happen and at the same time it seems like August is approaching too fast”, she says. The article has the signature of Joaquim Margarido and can be seen HERE.

Traveling to distant places where Orienteering, although less significant, is felt intensively and passionately, the IOF Newsletter of April visits the Dominican Republic - one of the newest IOF Member Federations, gaining its provisional membership in 2015 – sharing José Angel Nieto Poblete's thoughts about the National Student Games, most recently held in Gaspar Hernández in the Espaillat province. “The Dominican Orienteering Federation, with the support of sports institutions in the country, has a wide spread project of promoting orienteering throughout the country, which involves creating and updating orienteering maps in all provinces”, is just one of the subjects that can be read HERE. Talking about maps, we are invited to look upon the successful Asian Mapping Clinic, entered by 30 mappers from five Asian Federations. Organised in tandem with the Asian Orienteering Championships 2016, the Asian Orienteering Mapping Clinic (AOMC), with the support of the IOF, opened on the 22nd April 2016 at the National Chung-Cheng University, Chia-Yi, Taiwan. All to know HERE.

As for the competitive chapter, the Newsletter watches the Unofficial European Cup in Trail Orienteering's first round [HERE]. The article is written by Joaquim Margarido and on it you can read that “for the first time ever, Portugal hosted a round and the big winners of the first two ECTO stages were Erik Stålnacke, in TempO, and Marco Giovannini, in PreO. In the overall standings, Stålnacke is the first leader.” Still to articles to read, the first one, behind the scenes, is about “IOF activities come alive at the SportAccord Convention #SAC2016” [HERE]. The last one highlights the “Overwhelming success for World Orienteering Day” and it leads to WOD's latest folder, at http://np.netpublicator.com/netpublication/n33694006.

Joaquim Margarido