Page 8
University Daily Kansan, June 9, 1980
Ann Zimmerman of the Possum Trot Orienteering Club in Kansas City bushwalks through the brush in search of the next course marker.
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In a moment they will race through the woods with only a map, a compass and their wits to guide them.
The contestants prance nervously and anxiously at the gate.
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For the next 100 to 300 minutes, you run, walk, climb and crawl over and around rolling hills and meandering streams. They charge through dense forests, briars, underbrush, rock crevices, walls and fences of barbed wire.
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"I don't know where all those skunks came from."
WE KNOW WHY YOU RIDE
Before sprinting across the finish line, some get lost. Some battle the elements or wildlife. A few give up and bikchick back. Others struggle in the first half, but everyone grin and laugh because everyone who completes the course is a winner.
"Did you see the nude sunbathers around control marker four?"
ONE UNFORTUNATE girl sat on a wasp nest while working out her map and commass bearins.
They are orienteers.
Another orienteer tells about his encounter with a bear during the last meet in Canada.
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Tues-Fri 10-6
Sat. 10-4
They are all addicts of an inexpensive, yet fascinating, sport. Dave Lathicum, Baltimore, Md., graduate in sports calls it "the thinking man's speech."
"The sport has been likened to a road rally on foot." Littencio explained. "Many of the participants control markers—usually nothing more than orange and white cloth bags—up through the woods. The object is to get to each of them and back to the other."
The name of the sport stems from the fact that runners must stay oriented to their position on a map in order to reach a course. This is easier said than done.
CONTESTANTS RECEIVE their maps just as the race begins. Checking the map, the orienter finds his own location. The first marker lies, say, at the base of a pine tree 500 meters away on a compass bearing of 130 degrees.
NO MARKER can be skipped. At each control point, the runner must punch his card with a mark unique to that marker.
The world's best oviereents are able to cover their courses at a speed of about 6 minutes per kilometer.
"Orientering is called the thinking man's sport because you have to be able to navigate and not just run blindly."
"It's not really difficult to figure out what's going on," Lintich said. "But it is a very involved sport when you get into it.
Now comes the thinking. Does he brownhatch out on a 130-degree slope? Or does the land—taking into account the hills, valleys, streams and marshes? A straight line is not always the shortest distance between two points in this game.
All the while, the clock is ticking.
Every mistake—even misreading the timest nuance in the map—can be costly.
In top meetings, a runner must practically step on a marker before he sees it. Moving quickly through 1,000 feet of brush without deviating more than 10 feet either way from a compass bearing can be intensely challenging.
A well-designed course is always jittered with a variety of obstacles. Control markers may be hidden behind the water, a bucket or ticket in the middle of a beaver pond.
Accompanied orienters can find a number of plausible routes for each leg of the course. The pros and cons of each route are listed in terms of the runner's ability and stamina.
Orienteering began around the turn of the century when a Swedish scout master named Ernst Killander decided to spice up a cross-country race
One of the unique features of the sport is that any one, regardless of sex or age, can enjoy it. Twelve-year-old ladies, 40-year-old girls and 60-year-old kids all find running through the wilderness irresistible.
In Japan, people orienter by the thousands in such unlikely places as downtown Tokyo. Businessmen, on their way home from the office, can be seen each evening jogging—maps and compasses in hand.
The O'ring, a five-day orientering meet each summer in Sweden, is the largest single sporting event on earth. More than 18,000 people from two dozen countries meet to race a mammoth maze of more than 50 separate courses.
SOME OTHER unusual twists the sport has taken are orienteering on skis, on showhouses, on horses, in canoes and sailing boats. To form their activity in every type of weather and even at night—with compasses and compasses with luminous dials.
Today, orientering has spread throughout Europe. There are more than a million participants of the sport in the Scandinavian countries, Germany, France, Britain, Switzerland, Russia and Switzerland. Orientering is conducted Swedish public schools and is considered the Swedish national pastime.
through the woods by throwing in soins maps, compasses and checkpoints. The sport was soon taken up by the Army as a field exercise.
Although Linthicum is seriously involved in competitive orienteering—he has been selected to represent the United States this July in the World University Orienteering Championships in N.Y. Gallen, Switzerland—he promotes orienting primarily as a family sport.
Most of the participants in an orientering meet know that they do not want to face the situation said. People orienterethe for the fun of it and because they are really only competing against themselves. "I am not a part of the family nature of the sport," he said.
that it requires virtually no equipment," he said. "All you need is a compass, a good pair of track shoes and a pair of long sweat pants. If someone bought the very best everything, he would spend more than 40 or 50 buckles."
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There are still only a few thousand American orienteers. Kansas probably has only a few more than 100, most of them are orienteers from Kansas, the KU orienteering club.
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But the chief reason the sport has grown so slowly in the United States, he said, is that it is difficult and time consuming to make good orienting maps. The map used for the recent KU-sponsored. Kansas Orientering team was used as a mock, for example, required more than 200 man hours to draw and field check.
Linthicum, who became involved with the sport as a Boy Scout in 1972, said that part of the reason orientering them was the more sedentary American life style.
"The map is by far the single most important element of a good orient- eering meet," Linticum said.
Linchicus is currently pursuing a master's degree in cartography at the University of Kansas. He will use his experience with orientering, he said, in writing his thesis, which will suggest ways to improve topographical maps.
It was probably Linnicum's fascination with maps that, more than anything else, attracted him to the sport. He said he could not remember when he did not want to be a geographer or cartographer.
*ORIENTERING* is also a great way to get into shape almost immediately. You can be as boring as jogging. When you are running with a map through the woods, you have to totally concentrate on your path, so you don't seem to get tired as quickly.
The chief reason people orienteer, however, has nothing to do with fitness or maps. Orientereer offers a unique, intriguing challenge that is just plain beautiful. Orienters attract one of the loveliest, sharpest, most sportsmanlike groups around.
The fastest runner does not always win, however. Often, races can be compared to the tortoise and the hare to a snake, slower more orientate winning.
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It's 50 percent navigation and 50 percent running ability as to who wins," Linthicum said.
LINTHICUM ALSO believes that orienteering is the perfect sport for the money-minded.
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"One of the beauties of the sport is
Orienteering seems to do strangle things to most of those it touches. It makes "winner's" of those who finish even "of those who get hopelessly lost."
"I can't describe the elation of locating that first marker," one orienteer said. "It's sort of like finding the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. When you find that first control point, you'll be hooked."
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