On the 17 June this year it is
exactly 50 years since the British Orienteering Federation came into
being. The occasion is being marked by the cutting of a celebratory
cake, production of a short film, and a special multi-page feature in
British Orienteering’s member magazine Focus.
Organised orienteering started in
Scotland in the early 1960s with the help in particular of the Swede
Baron CA Lagerfelt from Stockholm. The Scottish Orienteering
Association was founded on 24 June 1962, with the first Scottish
Championships held on the same weekend at Craig a’ Barns (Dunkeld)
as part of a ‘demonstration event’ by visiting Swedes. Over the
following couple of years, growth of the sport in the south-east of
Scotland was particularly strong.
In 1964 orienteering was featured in a
7-minute film on Scottish TV. The book ‘Know the Game:
Orienteering’ was first published in 1965; it ran to several
editions and, updated, was still on bookshop shelves in the early
1980s.
First steps in England
In England, the West Midlands
Orienteering Association was set up on 13 October 1963 following a
‘practice race’ in the Wyre Forest. The first orienteering club
in England was South Ribble OC in the north-west, in 1964. This
followed closely on the first ‘proper’ o-event in England, held
at Whitewell near Clitheroe in late 1963.
In the south of England, a group of
well-known ex-athletes – Roger Bannister, Chris Brasher, John
Disley, Martin Hyman, Gordon Pirie and Bruce Tulloh – started
orienteering after attending a training course led by Disley, who had
first taken part himself in Sweden. They soon found that speed and
fitness alone didn’t bring success! Southern Navigators was the
first southern club, formed in 1965.
Scots and English collaborate –
but process is slow
The next big step was the formation
of the English Orienteering Association in October 1965. The Scottish
Orienteering Association’s suggestion to have a joint meeting in
Edinburgh with the new English OA, to consider affiliation to the
International Orienteering Federation (IOF), was welcomed. However,
for one reason or another it was not held until March 1967, in
conjunction with the 1966 Scottish Championships which had been
deferred, from the autumn before, because of an outbreak of foot and
mouth disease.
The joint meeting agreed on the need to
form a British Orienteering Federation, because “it had been made
abundantly clear that membership of the IOF could only be obtained
through British membership”. A meeting of the English Orienteering
Association in April 1967 recommended the change and agreed to the
disbanding of the English Orienteering Association at the time
British Orienteering Federation was formed.
First World Orienteering
Championship participation in 1966
Enthusiasm for competing abroad was
high, and the main goal was participation in the World Orienteering
Championships. In May 1966 the IOF Council accepted both England and
Scotland as temporary members, pending the formation of a British
federation. The English Orienteering Association paid an IOF
affiliation fee of 400 Swedish Crowns, and selected a team of ten
athletes to take part in the World Orienteering Championship.
The team was astonished to find, on
arrival at the venue in Finland, that the Relay team had to be
selected from amongst the six participating in the Individual race,
as opposed to being four additional athletes. It seems that a vital
Bulletin giving this information failed to reach the team beforehand.
After much representation it was accepted, on the basis of giving
more runners some international experience, that the rule could be
broken in the circumstances. However in the end, two of the team,
Toby Norris and Chris James who were down to run third and fourth leg
respectively, never got a competitive run because the team was timed
out at the end of the second leg.
“Within 50 miles of Kendal”
The ground was laid for the
formation of the British Orienteering Federation. Tony Chapman and
Chris Brasher, Chairmen of the Scottish and English Orienteering
Associations respectively, began the invitation to the first British
Orienteering Federation Championships and Annual General Meeting with
the words: “This is the preliminary announcement and entry form for
a championship, run by an organisation that does not exist. So let us
explain.”
Intending participants were told that
the Championships “will be held within 50 miles of the town of
Kendal, Westmorland on Sunday 18 June 1967” and that “the
inaugural meeting of the British Orienteering Federation will be held
at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday 17 June 1967 at a venue within ten miles of
the Championship area.” The Annual General Meeting venue, revealed
just a week beforehand, proved to be in Barnard Castle, 45 miles from
Kendal, with the Championships venue, Hamsterley Forest, the full 50
miles away. Such was the secrecy felt to be required at that time!
Early days of the British
Orienteering Federation
The new Federation soon found its
feet, led by Brasher and Disley. Whereas Brasher managed things,
Disley was the technical and ‘field’ expert, and moderator of
some of Brasher’s wilder ideas. “Brasher lit fires; Disley
dampened them down,” as the obituary for Disley in the British
newspaper The Guardian put it.
Brasher led the team that took part in
the 1966 World Orienteering Championships, and was the Event Director
for the World Orienteering Championships (WOC) in Scotland in 1976.
His influence was immense in all aspects of orienteering’s
development in its early days in the UK. Hugh Brasher, son of Chris
Brasher, says: “My father loved orienteering; he called it like car
rallying without a car, the best sport so far invented by man and the
only sport that keeps you completely and utterly stretched both
mentally and physically.”
Disley worked hard to develop course
planning, mapping and training standards. Highly respected the world
over, he was a member of the International Orienteering Federation
Council from 1973 to 1984.
Through the 80s and 90s
Helped greatly by the publicity
gained from WOC 1976, orienteering grew rapidly in the subsequent
years, and became firmly established in all parts of the UK. In
Scotland, helped by the ever-growing Scottish 6-Days event held every
other year, but also in many other areas, the standards of
competitors and competition increased immensely. Competitors such as
Geoff Peck and Carol McNeill were showing the way, and it was in 1993
that Great Britain won its first World Orienteering Championship
medals in Foot Orienteering, with a bronze for Yvette Baker (née
Hague) and silver for the men’s relay team. Yvette went on to win
two silver medals in 1995 and then the gold medal in Short Distance
at the next World Orienteering Championships held on home soil, in
1999.
Great Britain also contributed much to
IOF work, in Council, on various Committees and in other ways. Sue
Harvey became the IOF Secretary General in 1983, working from home.
She held this role until 1986. In 1988 she was elected as an IOF Vice
President and then from 1994 to 2004 she was IOF President, and is
now IOF Honorary President for Life.
Growth and development in the new
century
British Orienteering Federation
moved with the times: it is now known as British Orienteering and has
changed its logo to a more modern design. Domestic championship
events have grown in number as in the IOF, and urban orienteering has
become a popular alternative to outings in forest and open terrain.
The number of clubs has remained much the same for a long time now,
and the average age of competitors is getting steadily higher, but a
number of initiatives have been introduced to create new forms of
competition and bring new people into the sport, and these are
beginning to bear fruit.
More World Orienteering Championship
medals have come Britain’s way, including Gold for Jamie Stevenson
(Sprint, 2003), the Men’s Relay team in 2008, Dave Gittus in TrailO
in 2006 and the TrailO team in 2004 and 2005. Most recently, in 2016,
Emily Benham won two gold medals in the MTBO World Championships.
GBR staged the World TrailO
Championships in Scotland in 2012 and then the World Orienteering
Championships, for the third time, in 2015. Here the same assembly
area as in 1976, a field in front of Darnaway Castle in NE Scotland,
was used for the Middle and Relay races.
Brian Porteous became the second IOF
President from Great Britain and held the office from 2012 to 2016,
having been a member of IOF Council from 2004.
Looking forward
Over the last 20 years British
Orienteering has benefited greatly from government and National
Lottery funding, but unfortunately as with many other sports, British
Orienteering has recently lost a lot of the financial support it has
had from government agencies. British Orienteering has had to trim
its cloth accordingly, and become more self-supporting. This is
particularly affecting international preparation for the top
athletes. Sponsorship too is proving extremely hard to come by.
However, there are many positive signs too, and with several top
athletes on the fringe of World Orienteering Championship medal
standard, Great Britain orienteering moves into its next half-century
in good shape.
Text: Clive Allen
