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Orienteering Numbers

Show Profile  Lizzie Posted: 13 August 2012, 12:21 PM  
In order to answer some of the IOF athlete of the month questions as accurately as possible; who knows what the current number of active orienteers in NZ is? And number of mtn bike orienteers?

And if someone in the know could please tell me how good the terrain in NZ is for mtn bike orienteering? I'm guessing pretty awesome in areas, but as often as I've meant to, I've as yet failed to get out MTB-Oing, so can't give a truthful answer!

Cheers


Show Profile  Michael Posted: 13 August 2012, 1:30 PM  
Are you the next athlete of the month Lizzie? Bloody awesome!!! Will give you some stuff about MTBO after today's training.

Show Profile  Michael Posted: 14 August 2012, 2:24 AM  
Lizzie please select as you see fit from this. Stuart Payne will give you the overall orienteering picture.

New Zealand is a little less in size and population than Finland and Norway. There are 2-300 people who orienteer regularly on a mountainbike, but they are spread up and down the 2000km length of the country. Typical club MTBO events attract 25-50 riders of all ages. 30 are keen enough to travel to neighbouring Australia for more competition. (Packing bike for air travel - risky!!)

New Zealand is a mountain-biking paradise, but it has to be said that its hard to find good MTBO terrain. Flat land is intensely farmed and forest areas usually quite steep. So even though the community is extremely supportive of all sorts of cycling and track-building, with good relations between walkers and riders, many tracks go a long way between junctions. Areas with a dense track network or good route choice are hard to find.

In spite of this NZ has made 35 MTBO maps since 2000, produced a world-ranked MTB-orienteer (Marquita Gelderman) and beats its larger neighbour in Australia-New Zealand challenges.



Show Profile  Lizzie Posted: 20 August 2012, 10:24 AM  
Thanks Michael! And good luck to you and the rest of the crew for world champs!

Show Profile  addison Posted: 23 August 2012, 10:52 AM  
Hi Lizzie,

Couple of things:
- we are just under 1900 members... so if talking about "active orienteers" the number will be larger than 1900 for all the people that come along but don't join a club
- the unique number of participant counts is around 40,000 (just under)


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