Discussion: STL Post Dispatch article

Great pair of articles on orienteering in Monday's PD. One is on the sport (with quotes by Anna S); the other features Eric Buckley.
Former: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/lifestyle/stories...

Latter: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/lifestyle/stories...

I've heard a lot of people try to describe the attraction of Orienteering; Eric put a new spin on it:

...when you're out there running, it's all about measuring your effort. But when you're orienteering, you're thinking about terrain, about reading the map, everything but how hard you're working. You're still running hard, but having your mind severed from what your body is doing is an interesting experience....

Nice article. My only quibble is that it seems to suggest Eric discovered orienteering (or perhaps orienteering discovered Eric) in 1996. Yet I distinctly remember Eric competing in ski-O at the Empire State Games somewhere back around the 1986-1987-ish time frame.

And my only quibble is that we do not call controls "markers". ;-)

Orienteering is a timed, cross-country competition in which competitors scurry around for hours in a forest looking for checkpoints called markers.

I don't call the markers "controls," but I don't call the checkpoints markers, either. :-)

Checkpoint = control point = spot marked by a marker/flag. You're looking for the feature, not the flag (though that makes finding the point easier, sometimes).

That reporter got enough wrong without me bringing Ski-O into the mix. Probably about as good an article as one could hope for from someone who knows nothing about the sport. Most of the folks at work who have seen it came away with the main points straight.

That's an excellent point. Any of us who've ever tried to explain this sport (or for that matter any subject) to a reporter, thought we were getting through to them, and then read what they turned it into after hanging up the phone, would have to agree that this came out very well indeed!

Nice articles, but I wish the reporter had managed to stay away from lines such as "Shafer-Skelton says she's ready. She's able to memorize her route at the starting line. " and "She recalls a competition where her calculations were off a few degrees."
And surely, a picture of Anna racing would be a much better representation of the sport than the shot of the two recreational orienteers walking. Oh well, some exposure is much better than none!

The picture of Eric, though, looks really good. Cool.

Well with the Europeans, and their strong Euro, planning an unfriendly takeover of St Louis' favorite beer company, it is surprising that Eric and the sport received any space at all!

not to be confused with 'favorite beer' company....

Individually those two articles and accompanying photos could both leave a pretty confusing image of orienteering. Together with the sidebars, I think they paint a pretty good picture of the scope of the sport.

Rumour of a European takeover of St Louis beer company: Will that be a Busch Pusch or prove to be a Bud dud?