Orienteering Chinese style! This was the biggest O event China had ever held and their priorities turned out to be slightly different from ours but they still succeeded in producing an event to be remembered for all the right reasons.

Not many major O events programmes have a picture of a soldier, policeman and fireman on the back cover advertising CB radios, with the only other advert being a premium Chinese whisky! The 38 page A4 catalogue, in full colour, listed the 767 players from 11 different countries, all 42 directors and over 90 organising committee members for the event including a director of the execution unit! The Mayor welcomed us all to the ‘Surveying’ and ‘Mobile Cup’ in this intelligent and fashionable sport! So here I was, the only Brit competing in my second Asian championship, having competed in Japan 2 years earlier. I had been beginning to worry as I had booked flights months before, to tie in with work commitments, and confirmation for the event only came ten days before it started. They advised that I was the only competitor that had requested five star accommodations, at £55 full board a night, and therefore I couldn’t have it and would have to stay in the 3 star hotel instead.

     

     

Day 1

I arrived at the hotel to find a large illuminated sign advertising the event, and was told registration and the model event would take place next day. The buffet dinner was from 6pm in the main hall. I arrived a little after 6.15pm to find 100 plus people waiting for me to take my place at the head table before the buffet started. I am not sure if it was because I was alone or because orienteering is a young sport in China and old age is revered!

I don’t mind Chinese food in the evening but the buffet breakfast did not look like anything I could eat before running! My request for a 5 star hotel had been motivated by food where you do at least get eggs on toast for breakfast, even if you have to eat them with chopstick!
I reverted to my emergency porridge in my room.

Registering for the event, took over 2 hours of queuing following a tick box list: 1) sign up, 2) pay a fee, 3) get materials, 4) check the insurance 5) performance statistics, 6) service. This part of the event seemed to take longer than the next 3 days orienteering!

The model event was in a dinosaur park with a Buddhist Monastery in the middle of it. We didn’t have any controls inside the monastery but there was a control in a World War 2 bunker where the optimum route was through the old tunnels with no lighting. It was good practice with the touch, learnjoy dibbers (Chinese equivalent of EMIT). Then a taxi back to hotel via the local Starbucks I had noticed on the way!

There was a stall selling orienteering items in the hotel foyer where the compasses were very good. I also wanted a new control armband holder but when I tried it for size the girl selling them insisted they were elbow protectors and could not understand why I had it on my wrist!!

Dinner at 6pm that night was a lot busier as many people had arrived that day including friends I had made two years ago from Hong Kong, Japan and my chief rival from last event who was from Kazakhstan. Neither of us can understand the other but we greeted each other like long lost friends and gestured about how unfit we were. I injured my knee in the Southern Champs two weeks before and the swelling had only just gone down but my rival’s tummy had swelled considerably since we met last time, so I fancied my chances!!

That evening I had to attend the leaders meeting for the safety and final briefing as I was the official for my team. One of the questions that came up was about control bases as they had been placed on chairs in the hotel’s car park for the practice start, “Would therefore all the controls be on chairs in the forest!” It took about 10 minutes to explain they could not get the stakes in solid concrete and there would be no chairs in the forest!!

I asked what time the start times were as they had not been posted. I was advised that the elite times would be posted tonight and all others would be advised in the morning at the event.

Day 2 Sprint

The Sprint Stadium

The coaches left at 6.30am and arrived at assembly in the grounds of a 5 star hotel at 8am. I found my start time of 8.34am posted on the side of the porta loo with a call up of 8 minutes before. Oh dear under 15 minutes to get ready to start!

It was the fastest change to kit I have ever done, I rushed into the 5 star hotel to use the loos as the queues were the usual length at the porta loos and abandoned my kit under a tree. I arrived at the start hot and flustered but reasonably relaxed. 2 years ago I lost a podium place as the start team were calling the starts as you entered the 3 minute start lane and not the entry time, even though I had enquired beforehand, so did not want to make the same mistake again.

Everything was well controlled moving forward 50 metres every minute and arriving at the start block with 2 minutes to go. 1 minute to go I went to pick up the control descriptions. Unfortunately there were none in my lane so an un-experienced helper gave me a set from the next lane and said, “Use these!” After a little bit of shouting our lanes descriptions were found to have blown two lanes to the right, but I managed to get sorted before the 5 second countdown.

Nice easy first control 500 metres straight down the road, control inside the wall, fly round the next 3 before passing the competitor 1 minute in front. Route to no.5 through a tunnel under the road having to avoid competitors returning from the far area, nice dead running to work out routes for next controls, direct route to no.6 was up a black cliff, which on yesterday’s practice map was under 2m tall and easy to scale, but this was a sheer cliff about 10m tall, so round the cliff passing my next control on the way.

9 to 10 direct route could have been through a pond which was dried up but you had to drop off a boardwalk 2m to the pond floor so I ran round, 10 to 11 took a bad route as I got pushed on to the bridge and did not see the small path to the right which was more direct.

It’s a pity my whole class of 12 people all started 1 minute apart. I ran out of a little puff on my course of 2.4km 20 controls but managed to smile at the camera featuring you on the giant screen as you ran across the stage of the arena, and avoided hitting my head running through the Chinese pagoda. We finished in front of all the athletes in the arena and I was pleased with my run as no mistakes and kept up a good momentum in my time of 20 mins 11 seconds.

I started to get a little cold after my run even though the temperature was in the low 20's so jogged back to the assembly area only to find my kit had all gone! The Chinese had packed it all up and transported it to the finish area, still a good little warm down run.

Final results were up. 2nd. Great.

We watched the elites on the big screen and then had the very official and elaborate presentations including dancing, flag raising and speeches by quite a few of the 42 directors including several majors and generals. The medals were then awarded with the help of several very pretty Chinese ladies.

It felt just like the Olympics!

Silver medallist!

Day 3 Middle Race

Today started with a wake up call for the whole hotel at 0500 with the coach leaving at 0540. Our convey of 21 coaches had a police escort, who stopped traffic at the motorway junction to allow us to join from the slip road. The Japanese coach had several police cars escorting it due to the recent difficulties over the islands dispute.
I was also told the whole area for the middle event was cordoned off by security personal and we would be unable to take our maps away today due to national security but they would be sent on later.

We arrived at the assembly area after a two and a half hour coach journey. It was sited in a small mountainside village. I found I had a whole 40 minutes to get ready today.

Normal long loo queue for flush and rush style loos which is difficult with dodgy knees! Then I warmed up in front of the whole village who had turned out to watch us.

The M55 course today was 3.4km, 135 metres climb with 15 controls. A fair part of the course was dead running through the village with a spectator control before a final small loop and special constructed bridge into the finish. The forest was bamboo with only a small amount of vegetation on the floor but you did have to look out for where the bamboo had been cut down to about 3 inches which was very sharp. The bamboo is useful up the hills as it is small enough to hold on to and pull yourself up, but it is best not to try to climb over bamboo fences as I did between 3 and 4, when I put my weight on the top pole of the fence and it shattered as did the other three poles underneath, still it then made a good gate for anyone following.

The course also included a direct route through a concrete cemetery. It was also very helpful to realise that every control in the forest was guarded by a volunteer usually wearing a high vis jacket within 5 metres of the control! I ran out of a little steam today as I had been unable to train for 2 weeks but was very pleased with a third place finish in a time of 44.38 to get me onto the podium again.

Middle Distance map

It was my last night so made many new friends by taking bottles of beer at £1 litre to various tables and toasting in Russian, Korean and Kazakhstani.

Would I go again? Yes, definitely. The sport in China is very young but all the youngsters are very enthusiastic. They are keen to learn, all the organisers and volunteers were like the 'Olympic Games Makers' so the event had a great friendly feel about it.

I understand the next Asian champs might be in Kazakhstan in 2015 so look forward to seeing you there!

Kevin Pickering