O-festivalen

One of the biggest jobs associated with an event like the O-Festival is planning the courses. As in 2006, when the O-Festival was arranged at Gardermoen, Bækkelagets SK is the club responsible for making sure that the controls all end up in the right places.

- We are way ahead compared to last year. Then almost all the work was done in May and June - There was snow on the ground till the end of May and the work was really hectic. Now the courses are pretty well in place and there’s still over four months left, says the course boss Jørn Sundby, who has responsibility for planning the courses for all three competitions.

In addition to Sundby, the team includes many of the same people responsible for the courses in 2006, with Tor Brenna, Ulf Brenna and Elin Bjerva playing central roles. In addition, Hanne Staff and Bjørnar Valstad have already tested parts of the courses, making sure that the World Cup and Elite courses are of the highest standard. A new element in 2008 is that the senior classes W21E and M21E will also have a chasing start on Saturday, based on the results of Friday’s middle distance course. Both courses count in the Norwegian Craft Cup.

Bækkelagets’ course planning team have spent the autumn getting aquainted with the terrain and during the last couple of months there has been lots of activity at the computers planning the different courses. Now all the courses have been placed and most of the control points have been visited on the ground. In addition, the long autumn made it possible for cartographer Dag Amundsen to complete the mapping of the entire event area before the end of 2007.

The course planning team are in close cooperation with the cartographer and by April the work of marking the controls and adding the final touch to the maps will begin. There will be around 300 controls altogether on the O-Festival weekend and some of the controls will also be used on several days. There will be less re-use of controls this year than in 2006.

- We have quite a lot more terrain available this time and the arena is centrally placed. For most of the courses we can use mainly separate areas for the three days. Runners will notice the different characteristics specific to the different distances. The terrain is varied and that means that we can place both highly challenging courses for the elite and the right level of difficulty for the youth courses and the C and beginner courses. The terrain is generally really nice with good runability. Nevertheless, there are areas that are technically very challenging and the ability to adjust speed according to the terrain will be important in this year’s O-Festival, says Sundby.

This means that Friday’s Middle Distance will be held in an area of good runnability, with technical orienteering and lots of controls and changes of direction. Saturday’s Long Distance will be in hillier terrain and will be more challenging both physically and technically. Sunday’s Relay will be in a flatter area with lots of paths.

- We can promise a high speed Middle Distance on Friday. On Saturday it will be tougher - proper Long Distance courses with fewer controls and route choice legs for all courses. One experience from 2006 was that several of the courses for classes 35-60 years were far too short and easy. In 2008 the veterans can also expect proper orienteering, promises Sundby, who is counting on winner times from 50-60 minutes for some of these classes.

- The O-Festival’s Long Distance will be extra demanding and we hope that as many as possible will take up the challenge. On the other hand, there are short distance courses too, and new to the 2008 event is that the A-Short classes have their own courses. These will be technically demanding, with more controls and will be more characteristic of Middle Distance courses compared with the A-Long courses, concludes Sundby, who promises more information about the different competition days as the event approaches.