What mystery is this, leading
hundreds of people to abandon their “comfort zone”, year after
year, facing the winter and heading to Portugal to participate in the
Norte Alentejano O’ Meeting? The answer comes in the five fingers:
Water, Earth, Sun, Stone and ... Orienteering!
Written by Joaquim Margarido
It was in 2007 that the Norte
Alentejano O’ Meeting presented its credentials for the first time.
Its beginning was in a bet made by Grupo Desportivo dos Quatro
Caminhos, and since the very start one became aware of the
orienteering potential of this inner region of Portugal. There was a
perfect match between the ambitions of the northern club to move
forward, and the proposal to put the Norte Alentejo region on the
world orienteering map The municipality of Nisa was successively
joined by Castelo de Vide, Alter do Chão, Crato, Portalegre and
Marvão, changing the initial dream into an undeniable reality: the
Norte Alentejano O’ Meeting is, today, an acclaimed event
worldwide, both for its technical quality and organisational
capacity.
Over nine editions, NAOM grew and
consolidated itself. It incorporated the National Championships
Sprint and Middle Distance in 2008 and 2012, and has been an IOF
World Ranking Event six times. In 2011 it was part of the Portugal O’
Meeting – one of the prestigious events of the regular winter
calendar - with the presence of all the world’s best athletes
without exception. And last but not least, it has consistently
contributed to the promotion and affirmation of Portugal, and in
particular the Norte Alentejo region, as a tourist and sports
destination of excellence, especially in the winter.
Training Camps complete the offer
To wander through this region of
Portugal is to meet with ancient times when the first men settled
here, making these lands into their “safe haven”. From prehistory
to the Roman civilization, from the Arab and medieval period to the
present day, art and culture have strolled hand in hand with a
preserved landscape of great beauty, appealing to the good taste and
the feelings of each. Reasons why Maria Gabriela Tsukamoto, former
Mayor of Nisa, claims that “much more than the courses planned on
the maps, more than practising a sport, more than a healthy
relationship between the visitors and the locals ... the participants
in the NAOM find here endless beauty, spread over a vast natural and
architectural heritage.”
The charms from a cultural and
landscape angle, combined with a unique gastronomy - where the wine,
olive oil and herbs imposed themselves as excellent complements - are
major attributes of this region. But to the competitor there,
alongside the great competition, there are Training Camps of
excellence. Founded in late 2011 by Fernando Costa, a man with great
experience in the sports associations and event organization,
Orievents has the goal to organise events and to promote orienteering
activities for schools and companies. It works jointly with entities
related to disability, promotes the training of sports agents, does
the communication and sponsorship of events and produces orienteering
maps. But it’s in the Training Camps that lies one of Orievents’
biggest offerings, with a current offer of 21 training courses on
forest maps and 7 on sprint maps, with many of these workouts created
by renowned figures in world orienteering such as Eva Jurenikova,
Philippe Adamski or Oleksandr Kratov.
Norte Alentejano O’ Meeting
From 2007 to 2015
The Romanian Ionut Zinca and the
Finn Riina Kuuselo were the first athletes to sign their names on
the event’s Hall of Fame in 2007, opening a list that is growing
year by year. The list already includes, among many others, names
such as Simone Niggli of Switzerland, the Frenchman Thierry
Gueorgiou, the Czech Eva Jurenikova, the Norwegian Olav Lundanes,
the Swedish Helena Jansson and the Portuguese Tiago Romão. In
2015 it has been the turn of the Ukrainians Oleksandr Kratov and
Nadiya Volynska to be acclaimed as the big winners of NAOM, after
two days of high level competition that attracted over 700
participants from 15 different nations to Castelo de Vide and
Marvão.
To Oleksandr Kratov this year’s
NAOM was, “as always happens every time I travel to Portugal, a
nice experience. I really enjoyed the courses and the terrain as
well. Also the maps were great. Nowadays, the terrain is extremely
well mapped, the maps are perfectly readable and it’s a pure joy
to run and read them. It’s amazing.” The athlete concluded by
saying that NAOM 2015 was “exactly what I was looking for:
really nice terrain, high quality maps, really good competition
and a top level organisation.”
Nadiya Volynska also made a very
positive summary of her participation in the 2015 edition of NAOM
and in particular the second stage: “I really enjoyed the
courses – in a very detailed terrain, greener than usual – so
I had to work on my strategy. I had to be more careful, not run
too straight, find some around route choices, and it worked. The
placement of the controls was something that pleased me a lot,
along with the infinity of route choices offered.” Regarding the
victory itself, Volynska remarks that “It was very motivating”,
adding that, “it was time to take a test race more seriously,
pushing hard most of the time and I think that I succeeded.”
Also a word to the organisation: “the best there is, at the
level of major events in Scandinavia”, she concludes.
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[See the original article in the IOF's
newsletter Inside Orienteering, at
http://orienteering.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/InsideOrient-1_15-3.pdf.
Published with permission from the International Orienteering
Federation]
