http://orientering.no/nyheter/til-minne-om-bernt-o...Bernt (BOM) was a frequent (and passionate) contributor to many AP discussions.
WOW, That's not right.
Huge loss, and I didn't even know about most of the details covered in the link, which strike me as the tip of the iceberg.
Thanks Rob.
Of course that link is from the Norwegian Federation so it concentrates on what he did in Norway. He was also an IOF SEA- I got to know him when he was assistant SEA at WOC 2005.
And he was an avid historian of orienteering - for example he wrote a series of history articles in the now defunct O Sport magazine in the 00's.
And much more no doubt.
BOM was born in 1957, just like myself (and Ted de St. Croix who just lost his father), we have competed at least a few hundred times, possibly over 1000.
When I made all the base maps for WOC2019, Bernt was the one responsible for all the mapping work, coordinating between me, Kristen Treekrem (same vintage) and the course planners.
My favorite story about him, one that he liked to tell himself, took place around 1980 when he and a friend were organizing a small local meet on a new map, and they realized that they really needed more controls near the finish, in a flattish area with was just white on the map.
They took a couple of spades and a wheelbarrow and went looking for a depression which they could map, and they did find one possible candidate, partly covered with leaves, branches and some dirt. After removing this top layer they saw that yes, it really looked like a depression, so they dug a little bit more and found that this was in fact a nice control location!
Even better, when they turned around, they saw that a new knoll had turned up 30-40m away, so now they had all they needed. :-)
I met him at a orienteering event in Malaysia 2018 and had some good time with him. Always had hoped to met him again somewhere in the world.
:(. This is shocking - Bernt O was just the most knowledgable O person. Last saw him in Feb 2020 before the epidemic stopped everything. Does anyone know what happened?
Shocking indeed.
I found this report-
http://www.orientering.no/nyheter/bernt-olaf-myrvo...Had to run it through a translation, but it sounds like he had a heart attack while running.
This is sad news. I hardly knew Bernt but he was clearly a tremendous contributor to the sport. I did attend an IOF EA seminar with him several years ago, and I was struck by how happily and quickly he promised the Malaysians in the group that he would attend their upcoming WRE (the one Steffen mentioned above). It was the kind of nutty decision-making of someone who really loves orienteering.
It was always easy to get BOM to travel to a new orienteering country, he was definitely on the leaderboard of people who have competed in the most countries with 150+. We both joined the last two sailing cruises organized by PWT and should have been on the ship sailing from Singapore to Thailand last Nov/Dec. It was first postponed to this year, then cancelled a few weeks ago.
If Covid had been over we would have been there together just now.
I used to trade O maps with Bernt, back in the day (late 70s/early 80s?) -- paper maps, snail mail. RIP.