The last weeks, maps from Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Israel (see map sample to the right), Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden have been added to World of O - in addition to addition of map samples from some other countries. Why don’t you use some of the quiet Christmas time to enter maps into World of O? You find some of the newest additions by following the links below:

• Bulgaria
• Israel
• Finland (Jukola training maps)
• Croatia
• Belarus (quite a few maps)
• Italy
• France
• Poland
• Spain
• Sweden

Click the o-flag for a map, and click further on “View all available info” to get up the page for the map, including a large map sample, for those maps which have a map sample. Note that it is now possible to link directly to a specific location in “World of O Maps”, as shown using the links above. To get the link to a specific place, just click the link-symbol to the right of “Instructions” in the right margin of “World of O Maps” - and you get up a box with the link. You can use this to link to the maps in your area, the map for a competition, or whatever;)

Experimental feature: Bulk addition of maps using Excel file
I know from e-mail correspondence that many of you have a significant number of maps for your club (or even for your federation) which you would like to upload to “World of O Maps” in a more automatic way than just adding one map at a time using the interface. I am now providing an excel file format where you can fill in your maps, and send the Excel file to me using e-mail (later on an upload form will be provided if this service is used a lot). Some added benefits with this method

• You do not have to add location for the maps in the Excel-file. You can upload all maps without location, and use “World of O Maps” to position the maps afterwards. A Google Earth tool for positioning maps added using an Excel-file is also in the works.
• You can assign a unique ID to each map, such that later you can do updates simply by sending a new Excel file including updates of current maps + more maps.
• You can send map samples packed in a zip-file along with the excel-file (Note! Appropriate naming of the map samples is cruicial here!). Map names in the ZIP-file shall be “map_Sourceid.jpg”. For example, a map with sourceid BLR1 shall have name “map_BLR1.jpg”. You choose the sourceid for your maps in the Excel file.

This is an experimental service - but it is tested for some contributors already with success. You find the Excel file here. However, I will not be able to start processing the files sent until in January. Please send me the following:

1. Excel file.
2. Excel file exported as “Tab delimited text”
3. Zip-file with map samples if you like to.

I will soon get a list of all French maps to include into World of O Maps in this way, and there are also similar plans for Denmark. Federation wide additions is the best, but all contributions are welcome!

Google Earth integration
Google Earth is one of the coolest applications out there - and integration with Google Earth has been on the agenda for “World of O Maps” from the start. Until now, you have been able to open a map location in Google Earth for a single map using the link “Google Earth” for a map. Now you can test-drive two new features:

• Addition of maps using Google Earth to set the location. Fly to the map location in Google Earth, and when you stop, a small icon is set up. If you click the icon, you can add a map to World of O Maps at this location with all appropriate information using the web browser.
• Browse the World of O Maps database in Google Earth. Fly to some place in Google Earth, and stop. After a few seconds, the 30 newest maps within your viewport are shown. This function is not yet optimized, and the server load is currently quite high - so please don’t use it too much in this phase.

More Google Earth integration is planned for the future, including overlays of maps and a better map browsing function.

Small Note! Most of the Christmas time, I will not be online for confirming map additions and competition additions.

Off-season time is time for web-page updates. I just got a notice that Simone Niggli-Luders homepage has got a significant update. This also makes it possible to serve you better news from Simone at World of O, including the first part of her news stories (previously only title). Take a look at the page for yourself:

Links

• Simone Niggli-Luder homepage
• Simone’s program for 2007
• Photos
• Fanclub

After three days, more than 1600 votes have been given in the “Best of Orienteering 2006 Poll” staged by World of O and Orienteering Today - of these about 40% in the junior category. Votes have been coming in from all over the world, and this surely must be one of the largest and most international orienteering polls of this kind. But still - we want to give even more people the possibility to vote for the best orienteering achievement in 2006 and the best junior in orienteering in 2006 - to make the poll as representative as possible!

More interviews to come
I hope you didn’t miss the very interesting interview with Kajsa Nilsson - “Kajsa Nilsson - Living the Dream” yesterday made by Orienteering Today journalist Jan Skricka? More interviews with the nominated runners are to come the next weeks, so you will get to know the top Orienteering Elite even better.

Help us getting out to the corners of the o-world!
Have you got a web page in your orienteering club? Or a personal home page? Put up a link to the “Best of Orienteering 2006 Poll” - and make it possible for everybody to read about the fantastic achievements these fine nominated men and women have done this year - and to decide who really did the best achievement.
This is also a good way to spread orienteering as an elite sport out to the people doing orienteering in their small corner of the world - not really knowing much about the top runners. Feel free to take a few extracts from the poll description for some of the runners to tell what these achievements are really about. What’s in it for you? As you can see at the poll page, Among all orienteering related websites with on average more than 50 visits a day linking to the poll using the small image to the right or writing a news story about the poll, three prizes will be drawn..

Sites linking to the poll
The following pages are linking to the poll or have written a news article about the poll, and are in on the drawing for Orienteering Today subscription and ads at the World of O (see more about prizes at poll page). Thank you to all of you! And for those not in: Link up - write an email to jan@kocbach.net, and you are on the list next time. Still 10-15% chance to get a prize if you join in…

• Orienteering Australia
• Alternativet.nu
• Martin Pongratz
• OPN.no
• Alession Tenani
• Øystein Kvaal Østerbø
• Simone Niggli
• SOLV Spitzensport
• Ivo Danailov
• Danish Orienteering Federation
• JAK TO VIDÍ BÉĎA
• Moscow Compass
• Sävedalen AIK
• Okansas
• OTTOBRE31
• OLG Rymenzburg
• IL Tyrving
• I-OL.nl
• De Laatste post
• FIF Hillerød

PS! If your site is missing on the above list, you have maybe forgotten to write me an email about it? Or to put up the link?

The 24-year-old Kajsa Nilsson has been nominated in the “Achievement of the Year 2006” poll as the comeback of the year. Orienteering Today to her about the 2006 season, in which she managed to storm back up into the absolute elite in women’s orienteering.

Although you say Middle distance is your favourite discipline, it is Sprint and Relay which are the disciplines in which you achieved the best results, at least on the International level.
But it really used to be so, until this season. I think it has quite much to do with the head and time for which you need to keep your concentration high. The first important thing you need in the world of elite orienteering is the speed. And this year I got the speed, but then you also need to be able to stay focused for certain lengths of time - in Middle, Long, Sprint or Relay. And now I know I have the speed, but I still struggle to keep my focus high for longer time. But I guess I have to be patient and take one thing at a time. Another important thing for your self-confidence is the feeling. And this season, in the beginning, I got some really nice feedback from Sprint races, both during the Park World Tour in Italy and also the European Championships in Estonia. And then, after EOC I was running the final of the Elitserien in Stockholm and half of the race a was 20 seconds ahead of Simone, but then I ran into a tree and made some route choice mistakes and was finally 20 seconds after her in the finish. That day I learned that I was able to run as fast as Simone, or even faster perhaps. That day I decided I would run Sprint at the World Champs.

The bronze medal in Sprint in Mindenparken must have been an “out-of-this-world” result for you after all the previous seasons… Was it also a dream race for you? How do you see this Sprint now, with some distance?
I really enjoyed it. It was a great day and even if I think I could do the race a bit better, I think I just should be happy with what it was. In the beginning I made some mistakes. I was I little bit too “hot” and then, on the leg just preceding the long-leg over the horse-racing track, I ran into a big three. The world got completely dark for some moments. Actually I might ended up in a hospital instead of on the podium that day. I don’t think I lost too much time with the accident itself, but I think it took away some focus for the long leg which was just following. But afterwards, I ran really well. I made only bigger mistake on the final loop where I lost about 8 seconds.
But it really was an amazing day no matter what, a real big step for me into the high levels of the orienteering world and I know that 11 seconds is now the distance to the dream come true.

I see. I think, all in all, this season must have been really motivating for you, wasn’t it?
The hole year has been a test of how it is to be a world class orienteer and now I know so much more. If I look back and try to remember how I was thinking and orienteering in Italy or last year in November, the improvement is just amazing.

What is the biggest difference now?
Routine. That you know how good you are, not just in your dreams but also out in the real world. And you know that you don’t have to do anything special in big events; that normal is good enough.

As far as I can remember, I don’t think I saw you in bad mood this year.
I really enjoy what I do and the biggest gun I have is my big big smile. I try to have my bad days at home. There is not so many of them anyhow, but I think that you you should have your tough days at home and then, when you are out and compete, just relax and enjoy life. I think that I could have never been able to take all these steps this year, if I hadn’t dreamed about it for years and years and had believed it could be possible. And my injuries had been a big help to see life from another side. Orienteering is really not all in your life. Of course it has to be the most important thing for a while if you want to achieve something in it, but not for your lifetime. And I m happy I found this out when I was in my early twenties and not late thirties. Maybe this is what makes me so happy.

Are there more people interested in you now?
I’ve been away from the real orienteering world for a long time and there are people who really had faith in me all this time, they are the ones that I really like to spend time and work with. I know that quite many people had forgotten me or thought that I was rubbish. But after the Sprint at the World Champs, I got 35 SMS’s – most from people I almost didn’t know. And can you guess how many I got after my 9th place in the Middle distance…? The answer is: 0,00. :-)

Such is sport…
Quite amazing. And another thing is that during this autumn, many, many people were interested in me. And just five months ago, in July, no one cared. It seems like most of these “new fans” don’t understand what work there was behind the medal. You know, I really hope that people like me for the person I am and not for my results.

Kajsa Nilsson - Achievement of the Year 2006
Nominated for: Comeback of the year. After four years of struggling with injuries, Nilsson managed to get in shape and win a bronze medal at the World Championships in Denmark.

Other achievements: Two smashing runs on second leg in Relay at European and World Championships. Silver medalist from WOC Relay in Denmark. 4th place from Sprint at the European Championships.

Story: Back in 2001, Nilsson was considered one of the greatest talents and hopes in the Swedish women’s orienteering. Hoever, the bronze medal from the Junior World Championships in Miskolc in Hungary was meant to be her last for a long time. Starting from 2002, she could never train for time long enough to get in her top shape. Whenever she started, soon an injury came and she was out of training and competitons again. This struggle was brought to an end this season, when she finally managed to stay away from injuries and could show what her true level was. She was nominated for the European Championships in Estonia, where she was 4th in Sprint and displayed a great run on the second leg in the Relay with which she managed to bring Sweden up to the fight for top positions. The peak of her short senior career so far came at the World Championships in Denmark, where she won two medals - bronze in Sprint and silver in Relay. At the age of 24, this Swede who lives and trains in Halden in Norway still has a lot ahead of her.

Written by:

» Runner profile Kajsa Nilsson
» Poll: Best of Orienteering 2006

An Orienteering legend, that’s what Hanny Allston became last year, despite being mere 20 years of age. In the 2006 season this young lady from Hobart was living through a dream of a kind. She became the junior World Champion in Long distance and then, a couple of weeks after, she smashed the whole elite orienteering world by claiming the World Champion title in Sprint among seniors, which certainly became one of the headline stories of the 2006 World Championships in Denmark. Here we are bringing you an extract of the interview published in Orienteering Today, the international orienteering magazine.

Winning a World Champion title at the age of 20 must be a very nice thing. On the other hand, it can also bring possible threats along, especially in terms of motivation. What I mean is, once have become a World Champion, then a fourth place would hardly be enough any more… and it can happen, that runners who achieve something like this at such a young age, get discouraged… It is in sharp contrast to what most runners experience, when they have to go all the way up, step by step, improving maybe from a 30th place at the age of 21 to win the title one day, maybe when 32 or something… This may seem like a tedious process but on the other hand, it certainly helps the motivation as you can feel you are making progress all the time. Aren’t you afraid of this?
No, I have won the world title but I am still hungry. To me, I won’t feel like I am the World Champion till I achieve it in the Long distance. To me this discipline is the top of our sport: the ultimate goal. So long as I still have goals to focus on I am sure that I can continue to improve and strive.

Is there anything you will always remember from Denmark? A thing or a moment, which always comes to your mind when you think back about the WOC 2006?
Yes, and it has nothing to do with orienteering. It was when my good friend Grace Elson was about to present Prince Fredrik the boomerang. We were waiting to go up onto the stage when she muttered in my ear, ‘goodness me, he’s hot!’. I just looked at her and got the giggles. And I also started laughing a lot when a certain British female runner accidentally kissed him on the lips. It is the moments like these that I savor the most. Our relay also had to be a highlight. To run up that long finish chute with the girls was a wonderful feeling because we have been striving for that moment for a long while.

When you think back about the Sprint… Could you actually believe what you achieved when you had finished the race? When did you actually realize, that you had become the World Champion? I guess this wasn’t something you would even dream about?
No not really. I knew that I was capable of it but I guess when it actually happens it will always be a bit of a shock that you actually DID IT. You just have to see the sequence of photos in the Australian Orienteer (the Australian National Orienteering magazine, issue from September) to see this. It wasn’t until my great friend BJ muttered in my ear that I was World Champion that I realized. I started crying- I think mostly because I was sad that my Dad couldn’t be there to celebrate with me, my mum and my friends. I have dreamt about it. And I still do.

Actually, what were you thinking coming into WOC 2006? I think you must have known you were in a good shape, but what were your goals for the event?
I knew I was in good shape. My training had been perfect as had my preparation. I just wanted to improve on last years performances. I have to admit I was more focused on the long but this just proves you should aim high in all your races. I certainly would have been very happy to go home with a podium or even top 10 finish because my main focus in 2006 was JWOC. Anything that happened at WOC was going to be the icing on the cake.

As for the Long distance… I guess it was very difficult for you this time to get back down to the earth after what happened the day before and get motivated enough. Was it? Or was there any other problem? I’m guessing this, because of the style with which you ran in the Relay, a technical and tough race, where on the last leg you were able to outclass all your rivals…
The hardest part of the long distance was being allowed to refocus. I was woken at 6am by the media in Australia, and continuously hampered by further phone calls. Plus everyone was coming up to me right up to the start congratulating me and patting me on the back. I really appreciated it all but it certainly made it hard for me to focus. Despite this I was very happy with the end of the long distance. I felt I improved heaps as the race went on, I was just not focused enough at the start.

Hanny Allston - Achievement of the Year 2006
Nominated forBy age still a junior, winning gold at the WOC Sprint in Denmark.
Other achievementsGold medal from the Long distance in the Junior World Championships in Lithuania, JWOC silver medalist in Sprint.
Story: Tasmanian orienteer with exceptional talent. This year Allston showed the whole world that it is possible to reach for the absolute top in this sport even when you don’t live and train in Scandinavia or Europe. Last year she got noticed when she achieved, as 19-year-old, a 6th place in the WOC Long distance in Japan. One year later she was back on the WOC scene and at the age of 20 she claimed WOC gold in Sprint and became the first non-European World Champion in orienteering. In addition to this, Hanny Allston also won silver and gold at the Junior World Championships in Lithuania.

Written by:

» Runner profile Hanny Allston
» Poll: Best of Orienteering 2006

Poll 2006 sponsor:

All news stories from the IOF webpage will now be included in World of O aided by improved possibilities with the restructured Orienteering.org site with new design. All information is structured in a different way now - so take a look. The design of the page is a lot fresher than previously - and it seems to be easier to navigate the site. There has, however, already been some discussion in news groups regarding the new IOF page - especially regarding the slogan “Orienteering - At one with nature” displayed at the front page of the new IOF page.

Links

• IOF webpage at Orienteering.org
• Discussion at Attackpoint

Today is the day when the two major sources for international orienteering news - the website World of O and the magazine Orienteering Today start the poll for the “Orienteering achievement of the year 2006″ and the “Junior of the year 2006″.

Interviews to come
In the Orienteering achievement of the year 2006 category, you will vote for the best achievement in the elite orienteering in 2006, in the category Junior of the year 2006 the vote is for the world’s best junior this season. In the next weeks, Orienteering Today will be bringing you - through the pages of the World of O - short interviews with the nominees as well as opinions of orienteering experts.

Big presentation
All winners will be made public in the January edition of Orienteering Today which is published at 31/1/2007, and at the Website World of O in a countdown manner the top six will be revealed from 1/2/2007, one name a day. A big presentation of the winner of the “Orienteering achievement of the year 2006″ and the “Junior of the year 2006″ will be made in the magazine Orienteering Today.

Spread the news
Help making the “Best of Orienteering 2006 Poll” as representative for the international orienteering community as possible! To encourage spreading the news about the poll, all sites linking to the poll or writing about the poll will have the possibility to win prizes. Also, to encourage people participating in the poll, prizes will be drawn among the voters.

Read more about the rules, the poll and the prizes in the link.

Link

• Poll: Best of orienteering 2006

Just a small not about some new features in WoO Calendar and WoO Maps. The fantastic thing about adding geographic location to items, is that you can easily relate items to each other. Now WoO Maps and WoO Calendar talk to each other! That is, after recent updates, it is now possible to search for maps in the vicinity of a competition in WoO Calendar, and correspondingly search for competitions in the vicinity of an orienteering map in WoO Maps. Thus, you can now check if there are other maps available close to a competition, and if there have been competition previously in the area of maps you are interested in.

A few other new features:

• Each map now has a specific page. If you click “View all available info” in WorldofO Maps, you get up the map page (see example below). This page contains all available information for the map, including the source ID for maps from national map registers.
• In WoO Calendar you can now search for pictures from the website “Panoramio” in the area of a competition. This is useful if you want to know more about the scenery in the area of a competition.
• As I wrote in a previous post, it is now possible to add your own maps to World of O Maps.

Links:

• World of O Maps
• World of O Calendar

It is now possible to add/change map information in World of O Maps, but currently with some limitations in functionality. The two most important limitations is that new maps may not be added for countries which already have a full o-map database (Switzerland, Norway, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Great Britain and Estonia) - however changes and additions of map images, terrain descriptions etc. may be made for maps from these countries as well. In addition, currently new maps can only be represented by a point, and not by their outline.

Notes:

• This is a beta version: The addition of maps is not fully testet - can there therefore can (and will be) some problems, I guess. Please report any problems you find, and I will work hard to fix them.
• It is currently only possible to give map position using a single point. Later it will be possible to draw the outline of the map.
• Ordering of maps is not yet made public, as some issues must be solved regarding protection of email addresses and avoiding spam. These issues are however close to be solved.
• Changes for countries which have an official map register will be made available to the federations. If they choose to not apply these changes, it will decided how to proceed with the information.

• Remember that you are responsible for copyright for all material which is uploaded and/or linked to in the map register.
• Note that no maps are public available before checked by webmaster. This can take from a few hours up to 14 days (usually within 24 hours).
• Addition of new maps for countries which already have a o-map database will be included for some countries later on, but coordination of this work must be done with the local federations before such possibilities are included.

As always: Any comments are appreciated! Use anonymous comments below if you don’t want your name public, or send me an e-mail.

Links:

• World of O Maps
• Form for addition of maps to World of O Maps

For those of you who think there is not enough orienteering related news to read at the frontpage of World of O, a new section has now been introduced: “Page 2: More O-news than you ever wanted”. Pages which do not fit in at the frontpage of World of O will be put in this category, and will not be available at the frontpage.

Newspaper articles
Currently “Page 2″ is not very crowded, but there are already some interesting sites there (in my opinion). The most interesting one is maybe the ‘Google News searches’ for orienteering related newspaper articles. There are quite a few interesting connections to orienteering there which you will miss if you don’t visit “Page 2″ once in a while. Note however that a few of the News search results miss completely, and are not related to orienteering at all - this is however the price to pay…

Narrow audience
There is also the popular Swedish Blog “Asplövet goes H40″, which contains many orienteering related stories - often of the satirical type. However, “Asplövet goes H40″ has also quite a few stories that are not that interesting to the typical orienteer, and this is why this Blog is not on the World of O frontpage (and because the site owner did not want to mingle with Elite Orienteers:). And this is typical for sites included in “Page 2″. These are sites which have some interesting stories - other stories less interesting. And also sites which typically are interesting for a narrower audience - or the extremely orienteering news hungry of you…

Moving to Page 2
A few of the pages which are at the frontpage today will probably also be put into the “Page 2″ category in the future. I have, however, not yet looked into how to decide which pages to put on the frontpage. One possibility is to look at statistics regarding how often news stories from different sites have been read in the past. But on the other hand, I think that the sites from the small orienteering countries should not be hidden away, as it is this mixture of news stories from many different countries which makes World of O so interesting. It is also possible to use the rating system I experimented with previously. Any suggestions in this regard are welcome - please post a comment above (anonymous comments are also possible) or send me an email if you have any comments or suggestions.

Welcome to Serbia
In addition to the “Page 2″ additions, a new country has been added to World of O yesterday - Serbia. Welcome to Dejan Avramovic - a Serbian runner currently ranked as number 370 at the IOF World Ranking - and who also participated at the WOC in Denmark this summer.

Link

• Page 2: More O-news than you ever wanted