Orienteering in the Olympics in 2012?

Posted by Grant on 13. August 2009 23:23

How about orienteering in the Olympics for 2012?  No thanks, said the Olympic organizing committee yesterday.  The 2012 London Olympics will, however, showcase the new Olympic sport of womens boxing.

Yes, womens boxing! 

Maybe I'm out of touch, and I admit I live an endurance/outdoor slanted existence, but what will it take to get Orienteering onto the same world stage as Badminton and Curling? 

I've long felt that there is a difference between a "pasttime" and a "sport" -- with a "pasttime" being something you do at a picnic or after a few beers on vacation . . . the current Olympic sports of table tennis (c'mon, it's called "ping pong") and beach volleyball are clearly pasttimes, yet they are tried and true olympic sports at this point.

1. Discard the typical orienteering suits; they look like pajamas and nobody is taken seriously when wearing pajamas.  I know they're functional, but we need to remake Orienteering into something more like . . . beach volleyball . . . so lose the bright coloured suits; men must race bare-chested and women in sports bras.  
2. Forget the Sprint-O and Park-O formats; Sprint is too short and Park-O is something you do with your dog or when a kite gets loose.  Running around a manicured park is not a sport, it's a pasttime (see above). Instead, emphasis should be on the longer distances and rugged terrain.  Dense vegetation and rocky cliffs makes for drama, and drama is what we're looking for.
3. Speaking of drama, let's manufacture some drama by permitting GPS devices.  We all know that there is no way a track sprinter with a GPS can beat an above average orienteer on a long course.  Time spent fiddling with the GPS is time lost, and it will blow the minds of those unfamiliar with Orienteering when orienteering man (or woman!) beats the people with the GPS devices. 
   
4. To ramp up the spectacle factor, we need big personalities to make outlandish claims and trash-talk.  There's too much mutual respect in orienteering and we need competitors who want to physically punish their competition (hey, this must have worked for womens boxing, right?). 
   
5. Infiltrate an organizing committee.  I understand each Olympic host has signficant input into event scheduling and calendars.  A great way to make room for an O-course or two in the Olympics would be to have a genuine O-advocate on the inside.  This boils down to either getting some orienteers into politics, or getting politicians to O-meets!  The QOC may be our best bet with this since they're based in the Washington DC area.  Like Lenin said, "Infiltrate and Subvert!"

Now, I'm laying on the sarcasm here but there are some kernels of wisdom beneath the surface. Womens boxing is in the Olympics because it's easy.  It's easy because they already have the facilities and arenas for it; it's easy because people understand the simple idea of boxing; it's easy because the format is soooo TV friendly (fight for 90 seconds, then we'll take a commercial break!). It's a commercial-friendly slam-dunk, from an "easy" standpoint.

Orienteering, on the other hand, is anything but easy.  It's not a made-for-TV event and most people have no clue what the sport is about.

We can all play a part in changing this: get some friends into orienteering, or come out of the closet at your office -- I mean, of course, that we shouldn't be shy that we enjoy the sport of O and we all can be evangelists.  Get active with kids orienteering programs, or initiate some if your community doesn't have any.  I realize that many orienteers are fit, but cerebral folks, and the extroversion required to spread the "gospel of O" may be asking too much.  But if the aim is to break into the Olympics (and usher in a new era of ubiquitous orienteering -- that's the theory as I understand it), we need to break out of the mold.