ADVENTURE RACES AND ORIENTEERING MAPS

D. Petrovic

University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, Slovenia

dusan.petrovic@fgg.uni-lj.si

Adventure races are one of the most popular stamina sport activities of last years. In less then two decades they become world wide known, attractive for competitors, spectators and sponsors. They usually consist of different stamina sport activities, like running, mountain bicycling, paddling, swimming, inline skating, etc, all in extreme length and divided into several legs, completed with adrenaline and technical activities, such as rock climbing, rope ascending and descending, caving, river crossing, rafting, white-water kayaking, orienteering, etc. Competitors, usually joint in teams of two, three or four members, have to pass all the predefined tasks in right order in shortest possible time. Depending on the type of the race the time may vary from few hours to several days and length from few tenths to more than one thousand kilometres. During the race competitors move from one to another discipline, passing predefined check points using maps. Organizers provide different maps, probably according to availability of existing maps or map sources of area where the race is prepared. Since the competitors usually come from different areas, even from different countries or continents; the local competitors are in the great advantage. In last years also unofficial world championships took place and for such races it is of the key importance that all the teams have equal conditions. Quite similar problem appeared in orienteering sport decades ago, before International Orienteering Federation (IOF) defined the very first standard for orienteering map, latter regularly developed. Consequently orienteering maps are momentary probably the only completely standardised maps all over the world. Obviously, it should be necessary to define also a standard for maps for adventure races. In some points orienteering maps can serve well and such situation would be also the most economic, but, adventure races covers larger areas, maps should be much less detailed, more generalised, in smaller scale. The questionnaire was sent to group of competitors in adventure races from different countries and analysing their responses one step for adventure race maps standard has been made.