Over 1000 have signed the petition

We are happy to announce that over 1000 individulas have signed the petition! Thanks to everyone who took the time to sign, but our work is not done yet! What are we going to do with the petition? I have spent a great deal of time thinking about it, and have arrived at a soltution I believe to be effective.

If we were to submit the petition immediately, our chances of getting the results we desire are rather small. I am going to gather information about IOF processes in order to determine the best course of action to solve the problem. Being a Belgian junior, my voice doesn’t carry the weight of an elite orienteer and so, In addition, I will reach out and find two elites (M & W) who would be willing to speak on behalf of the 1000+ supporters when we official put forth our notion to the IOF. I am currently thinking of 2 persons, But if you want to do it, you are of course, more than welcome to mail me.

 After speakers have been contacted and agreed upon, we are going to send the petition to the IOF so we can get on with the process of change. If anyone can help me with this process or has other ideas, please feel free to comment or send me an e-mail at toonmelis@hotmail.com.


Some intresting facts/stats related to the Petition:

- There is a competition in Switserland that has the same thought about orienteeing as the petition has: classic-o. It is a competition in technical demanding terrain over 2 days with a course setting/vetting team that is composed of WOC long-distance course setters and a WOC winner.

- It took just under 8 days to get from 1 to 1000.

- Our 1000th signer was Annika Kottonen, but also worth mentioning is number 1000 on our list Jakob Ødum (there were 5 fake accounts that I had to delete).

- These Big Names:
Olav Lundanes, Thiery Gueorgiou, Fabian Hertner, Eva Jurenikova, Graham Gristwood, Edgards Bertuks, Lina Strand, Eskil Kinneberg, Tue Lassen, Jarkko Huovila, Anders Norberg, Hannu Airila, Anne Margrethe Hausken Nordberg, Olli-Markus Taivanen, Anna Forsberg, Erik Rost, Philippe Adamski, Carsten ørgensen, Gustav Bergman, Jan Prochazka, Tero Föhr, Gernot Kerschbaumer, Yngve Skogstad, Matt Ogden, Topias Tianen, Milos Nykodym, Antonio Martinez Perez, Lucas Basset, Ivar Lundanes, Gaute Hallan Steiwer, Marcus Millegård, Ola Martner, Albin Ridefelt, Mats Troeng, Tomas Dlabaja, Ausrine Kutkaite, Helen Palmer.

- There are 75 websites who were linked to the petition, the largest of which was Suunistusnet with a link that received over 500 hits.

- The petition is translated into french on this site: asope.info

-The youngest signer: Pyry Sëppällä 1999
- The oldest signer: Andre Hallouard (who started orienteering in 1966)

- Most signers/visitors: Finland

200 people (including 12 world champions) have signed the petition

200 people (including 11 world champions) have already signed the petition, after launching it only 2 days ago. These voters are living in more than 20 different countries. This large amount of voters proves that the orienteering world should think about the new evolution in this very nice sports. It's for sure that many athletes don't agree about the new format.

Below you can see which famous orienteers support the petition:

WOC winners :
Olav Lundanes
Thiery Gueorgiou
Phillipe Adamski
Thomas Dlabaja
Graham Gristwood

JWOC winners :
Mats Troeng
Lina Strand
Eskil Kinneberg
Yngve Skogstad
Topias Tianen
Lucas Basset
Matt Ogden

Also very good:
Anna Forsberg
Anders Norberg

What about your name?
Petition

Real orienteers care about challenging competitions

Recently IOF announced that WOC will include a mixed relay competition (woman - man - man woman) in the close future. Not every athlete is happy about running more sprint races instead of enjoying the challenging forest. Already some famous runners (Nordberg, Kinneberg, Troeng, Skogstad,...) signed the petition below.

Petition:
Are you also fed up by the fact that IOF is making sprint orienteering more important than the traditional disciplines middle and long? This petition is not meant to take sprint/urban orienteering down but we think that the real soul of orienteering is in a forest, where the challenges are much greater. IOF, please don’t try to "rape" our sport because you want more media-attention. In fact, we think you should try to find a better way to broadcast forest orienteering, without making too many compromises to the essentials of our sport.
 
What is Sprint orienteering doing to our sport? It’s removing more and more of our characteristics, and eventually it will just turn out to running with a map. I think running is a great sport, both 100 meter and marathon, and it is definitely interesting to watch on TV, but it’s just not what we do and why we started orienteering. A lot of international athletes aren't hoping for a mixed sprint relay at WOC. Even at national level (Belgium) physical testruns and urban sprint races are more important (> 50%) than technical orienteering selection races.

For us orienteering is about challenges. I love orienteering because of the challenges the sports give me. Continuously making the right decisions in a 90 minutes long distance, complex orienteering on the middle distance, constantly living on the edge between speed and security, is the reason why we keep doing this wonderful sport. Of course the physical part of our sport is very important, but in our opinion not the one that makes the difference between the good and the best.

I will send a mail to IOF when we reach 1000 voters!

This is your chance to protest against the sad new trend we are going through! Anyone noticed that the courses suggested for the Course of the year are mainly challenging long or middle distances? We hope that, in the future, we can all meet up in the middle of nowhere as much as possible!

Petition website