O-ringen 5 day orienteering in Uppsala, Sweden July 24-31 2022

I realize there are several "worlds largest" sporting events in Sweden, and I think O-ringen is one of them with over 16 000 participants. It is a classic orienteering competition and a "must do" for most dedicated orienteers. I am so impressed, entry fees are not that high and there is so much complexity in organizing an orienteering event. 

There are classes for everyone, from the littlest doing intro orienteering, play orienteering or just going to the free child minding, to the class for 80+ and everyone imaginable in between. There are full length courses, short length, and easy courses, in every 5 year age group! Then there are elite classes and courses that are age-less. Basically, there is a suitable course for everyone.

All of this demands many checkpoints in the woods (many in difficult to reach places) and a specially produced highly detailed map. The arena has several finish lines to handle the complex class system, (handily named by sponsors to the event.) On top of it all, there is MTB orienteering occurring concurrently on another arena. (This is a sport I have never tried.) 

The orienteers are fit... I have never seen so many people with close to zero body fat... And they have endless energy. Most are camping outside the entire O-ringen week. A typical day starts with parking the car (as in my case) or walking from the tent, to the bus. As competitions are in the woods, there is maybe a half mile or a mile to walk from the bus to the arena. Then you walk to start, which often is over a mile away and now (finally) you do your course. And then you have to get yourself all the way back. I get quite tired just by turning up! The cheerful orienteering folks do this with kids and dogs in any weather.

On O-ringen, there is a competition for each day, but the main event is the compounded 5 day result. Start times are allotted the first four days and the last day the leader starts first and the other competitors the amount of time each one is lagging behind. So, the last day, first competitor to finish each class is the winner!

Competitions were scheduled for Monday Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday with Wednesday as a rest day. I rested, but many did not. I went to IKEA to shop and there was a fun orienteering inside IKEA, amongst all the regular shoppers! 

Then there was a city orienteering on streets, and a maze orienteering. Two mazes were built side by side, a left and a right maze, with see through fencing. Two competitors at a time compete against each other, one starts to the right, the other to the left. When all the checkpoints are found on one side, you switch to the other side. First to finish wins the duel. It looked fun. I think it is good training for reading maps at speed.

I completed my 5 days, but was far behind the winners. I did mistakes every day and it shows that I have not trained orienteering enough, but I still enjoyed it very much. It is very rewarding every time you find your checkpoint.

Punching is electronic and at finish you get a printout of your time to reach each checkpoint. On-line, you can follow the progress of other competitors. Some upload their GPS tracks, and you can see their choice of routes and where they made mistakes or got ahead. As I said initially, it is an impressive organization!