At the Portugal O' Meeting 2012,
we'll have a demonstration of Adapted Orienteering Activity, a sport
for mental disability. Here you can find everything about this
project and less your comments and contributions.
Orienteering, although it's quite
recent in Portugal, it's an organized sport with more than 100 years
of existence already.
Records indicate that it was in
Bergen, Norway, on the 31st October 1897, that the first Orienteering
race ever was organized. The Nordic countries are still, until today,
the ones where this sport has biggest implantation, mobilizing a
number of practitioners that places it between the five most
practiced sports in Scandinavia.
Over this century of existence, this
modality evolved, becoming a highly developed sport that allows
sharing, simultaneously, the same time and space, no matter what the
technical or physical level, the age or sex of the athlete is.
Besides Foot Orienteering, today you
can also practice it on Ski, riding a horse, in a canoe, and Bike
Orienteering or Trail-Orienteering, the latter particularly suited to
people with reduced mobility, who move on a wheel-chair. In this
context, only people who have mental disabilities stay out, most of
all due to the difficulty in structuring a set of guidelines that
takes in count the multiplicity and complexity of these groups and
that can be understood as the “game rules”.
Despite the contingencies, prevails
the awareness that life is made of constant learning. It is from the
boldness of the attitudes of each one of us that results in the joy
of reaping the fruits of their actions and their effort. That is why
we dare to propose a set of assumptions that, in it's all, define
this project work for Adapted Orienteering. The awareness of the risk
surrounding this initiative is offset by the necessary humility to
accept that this is the first step of a dynamic project, willing to
incorporate all the valuable contributions and to improve itself day
by day. With that, may everyone want it.
What is Adapted Orienteering?
Adapted Orienteering is intended to
be understood as a discipline of Orienteering, particularly devoted
to specific groups where intellectual disability and children in
preschool are included.
A map, a course, a natural space of
freedom and a handful of challenges. This is the essence of Adapted
Orienteering “game”, that unfolds over a variable number of
points marked on a map and materialized on the ground that should be
visited in sequence.
Like in Trail-Orienteering, the
choice of the route between each control point is not the athlete's
option. Likewise, the winner is not declared as the one who completes
the course properly and in the shortest amount of time. The meaning
of the time factor is placed in a secondary plan, asking each
participant that makes only the correlation between what is marked on
the map and is then materialized on the ground, in the form of a
color sequence. The answers are indicated in a cardboard shredder
provided to each participant before starting the race. In the end,
the winner is the one who obtains the highest number of correct
answers.
Starting point
In the beginning, each participant
gets one map and one card. On the map, besides the terrain where the
race will take place, will be printed a signage that shows the goals
that are part of the race and the color sequence that corresponds to
the correct answer.
The colors used are green, blue and
red, which allows a combination of six different sequences. To each
one of these combinations corresponds a pictogram. Inspired in a
language of affections developed by Charles Bliss, the total number
of pictograms is five.
The control card can be subdivided
in a set of squares, where you can do the correspondence between the
several control points and each one of the pictograms. The
participant must mark, using a shredder, which one of the pictograms
corresponds to the right color sequence in each one of the control
points.
The existence of a sixth square,
where there is a “x” marked, has to do with the possibility of
none of the sequences in the terrain corresponds to the intended
sequence.
An Adapted Orienteering race
In Adapted Orienteering, the terrain
is of main importance. It's recommended that the distance is under
1200 meters and the route has to be planed on trails in areas with no
or minor gaps, avoiding terrain accidents or architectonic barriers.
In ideal conditions, this course must be marked by appropriate signs
(ropes, strings), allowing the progress of participants in an
autonomous way and without the risk of leaving the trail and getting
lost.
Each control point is materialized
on the terrain by an observation point and, in face to this, by a set
of three goals, in which are mounted the color sequences. Every
sequence, as well as the respective pictograms, must be different
from one another. The goals have to be near each other enough, so
that they can be seen simultaneously.
The participants can do the race
individually or in teams, which must be checked by a coach. The teams
are constituted by a maximum number of five people. The participants
must be stimulated to “invade” the game space, to attentively
observe each one of the sequences and to compare them with what is
indicated on the signage of the map they're carrying. Then they come
back to the observation point and, with the shredder, they mark the
correct answer.
A variant can be created, replacing
the correct pictogram pecking by its drawing. In one or more certain
points, the organization can provide the participants with a sheet of
paper with the requested sequence, leaving blank the box
corresponding to the correct pictogram. Participants are asked to
draw the corresponding pictogram. For the tiebreaker, these points
may be valued differently (one correct answer is worth two points,
for example) or be timed, similarly to what happens in Trail-O, for
example.
Conclusion
There is one key idea that presides
over this project: Adapted Orienteering, a sport for inclusion!
Orienteering is a mean to firstly
reach an end, sharing the same space and the same time, the person's
interaction with others and with the environment that surrounds him,
the development and acquisition of skills, through simple rules that,
as a whole, make Adapted Orienteering a game.
But as might be expected, it is a
whole series of concepts that, in its all, set Adapted Orienteering as a
sport, which is in inducement here. A map, a route, a natural space
of freedom and a handful of challenges are elements that refer
unambiguously to the sport of the forest. There is the final track on
whose ending you can guess the pleasure of discovery, there is the
healthy competition in the rules and respect for each other, there is
our environmental conscience to remind us that the space whose
integrity is our duty to preserve and defend is unique.
And there are the orange and white
goals, waving gently facing a bright cool morning breeze, calling us.
In a fast race or on skis, galloping or paddling, on a bike or on a
wheelchair. All different, all equal!
Project developed by Joaquim
Margarido
www.orientovar.blogspot.com
September.2011
[Translated by Ana Macedo]
