Score orienteering in Shenzhen, China

I went north to the mainland China for this score orienteering event on 18th. It's a local orienteering series, with about 200~300 people taking part. The venue, Lianhuashan Park, is the largest park in Shenzhen.

I'm not feeling well these days so I did the course at a very slow speed. The sequence is:
S>5>19>13>3>1>2>11>16>17>14>10>
4>9>15>8>7>18>12>6>20>F.
I used 59:48 to finish it while the winning time is below 40.

What I have to do now is to recover asap and train hard for APOC.

Back to orienteering

Finally, I finished all of the annoying Advanced Level Exams.!
I started my trainings and competitions since May. Currently I'm preparing for APOC in Korea on 25~30 July, and maybe the All-China Student Orienteering Championships in mid July. And of course the preparation work of Y2Y Sprint keeps going at the same time.

I did the Bank of China (Hong Kong) 51st of Sport - Orienteering 100M Orienteering Championships on 1st of May. I made a stupid mistake, see the video below (I was in yellow jersey).


On 4th I ran a City-Orienteering score competition. Danial, Black Lo and I formed the Black & White Banana team to join the student category's race. There are bad news and good news. The bad news is I could hardly run during the 2-hours race. And the good news is we captured the champion, with cash coupons as the prize.

Two days ago I had an orienteering training at Rotary Park on Tai Mo Shan, which is organized by KK Yeung. Again, I was still too weak to run but I really enjoyed the wonderful course. It was 5.5km/205m with 21 controls. The route choices are interesting and it's tricky to have some map details missed out. I took 101min. to finish it.

Y2Y Sprint in progress

Photo from: http://sports.webshots.com/album/562587564ZGdCkL

Can you see the poster?
Here you are:

In this summer, we are going to organize a series of sprint orienteering competitions.

Looking back to 2003, I was an orienteering novice. What I needed the most is orienteering more to improve my techniques. I was lucky. Aby Lam, one of the top orienteering athletic in HK now,
organized a series of sprint orienteering competitions for the youth called Youth Park Orienteering Tournament 2003. I took part in all of the five competitions, and got the overall 2nd runner up in the class HB. Thanks to Aby, I learned a lot and found my weaknesses.

I would like to do what he did, to let more young orienteers having more chances to practice and improve. I would also like to do more than he did, to let the young orienteers taking part in organizing orienteering competitions. I am sure, they will gain something from it.

The photo below is on 10/8/2003, stage 4 of the tournament. It was my first time being the champion in my orienteering life. The one in blue shorts is Aby Lam. Sitting on the other side, wearing a blue T-shirt is Hei, my organizing partner in the coming Y2Y Sprint.

Photo from: http://cyrushkoc.no-ip.com/main.php?g2_itemId=5198

One more video and WC map in 1988

In this video we can see more runners competing in the field.
Pay attention to the last part of the video. The camera man shot at the Westerners changing their clothes. I think he did so because it was a very special scene for the local orienteers. The conservative culture in Asia makes us not to do so in the public. People rather queue up in a small toilet for a dirty but "safe" space to get change.
When I attained my first JWOC in Switzerland, I saw the Europeans taking off their underwear in public. I was shocked. Then I realized that when everyone think it's OK,
it will be OK...


I found a map of the World Cup 1988 in Hong Kong. Its name is Cheung Sheung. The word "Sheung" in Chinese means up/above/on top of... But I don't know how to translate the word "Cheung". Since I started orienteering in 2002, this map has not been used for any open competition. Someone said that it's because updating the map and holding an event there is a very hard work thus no one to do so. What a pity.

HK orienteering in 1988

This is another 20-years-old video, taken in the same race as another video in the previous post. While I was typing that post, I thought all the Westerns were orientters living in Hong Kong. But I was wrong. In the forum where I found the video, someone pointed out that 2 days right after the race was the first round of the World Cup 1988. That's why we can see so many golden hair in the video. For the number of Western orienteers in Hong Kong, it truly decreased because of 1997. The difference is that it did not decreased from a large number to a tiny number. Is from a small number to a tiny number.
Back to the vidoe. This time the camera man walked to the start area and captured the people running on the hills, not forest. Forest in white colour on a gentle landscape is a luxury for Hong Kong orienteers. Most of the maps we run are in green and yellow. See below:

Our new orienteering club

There will be a new orienteering club appear in Hong Kong later on. It is the Hong Kong Island Orienteering Force(HKIOF).
All of the founders, including me, are once a Queen's College student and grew up in the school's orienteering club, QCOC. Now most of us are no more a QC boy so that we decided to form a new club to keep our "fire of O" on.
Last year, the 5 HK JWOC team members are all from QCOC. We enjoyed it. It is undoubtedly a pride for us. I think we should try the same thing again in a WOC, at least.

A 20-years-old video

This is a video taken in Hong Kong on 1-1-1988, while I was still a baby.
It was the Hong Kong National Orienteering Championship 87/88 cum Hong Kong Orienteering Club Championship '87. The camera man just walked around the event center and shooting at the competitors preparing for the race. I could only recognize Yeung Kwok Keung, not his face but his voice. Since Hong Kong was a colony of the Great Britain at that time, we can see quite a lot of western orienteers in the 4-minutes-long video. I think the number dropped sharply because of the coming of 1997. I hope they are still enjoying orienteering in their home countries.
I started orienteering in 2002. Until now, I can see no more than 10 western orienteers who are living here. As I know, most of them came from an orienteering club called Demon Orienteers. They bring their young children out for orienteering, just like most of the orienteering families in Europe. But vary few local parents do the same thing. I asked them why, most answered me that their children prefer playing NDS/PSP to running around the hills. Some may have interests on orienteering, but not at the top priority. I don't know why... Maybe orienteering is not a famous sport in Hong Kong, some schools even do not treat it as a sport. My secondary school moved the orienteering club from the "Sports Union" to "Recreational Activities" two years ago. Another club in that group is Magic Club. Can you see the reason now?

A legend

I found this in a Swedish blog. I guess it's an orienteering legend made by a Hong Kong Orienteer in1980s. Here is the original text from that blog:

På en orienteringskarta som är utgiven av Hong Kong Orienteering Club någon gång i början av 1980-talet, hittade jag denna intressanta teckenförklaring. Renritaren av kartan har gjort allt för att alla skulle förstå kartans innehåll. Klicka på teckenförklaringen så visas den större.

The pictures are great and useful, especially for those orienteering beginners. I appreciate that a lot!

Good news: a nice map renewed

My friends ran the MSF Orienteering Competitions in Ngong Ping today. I didn't have any orienteering there before but I've seen the previous maps. I suppose that the map using today would be in 1:10000, just like the previous one. Surprisingly, it's a 1:5000 sprint map! And there is some nice "white forest", which is very rare in HK.
I'm sure this map could give me some fun after the exams. Longing for that day!

p.s. Maybe the Y2Y sprint series can be held there?

Another blog

this new blog is for my orienteering stuffs and maybe sometimes other sports...
i don't think this is a good time to start it, since now i'm struggling with the AL exams. and it's nearly no orienteering for me these months. but i just like to do things at the wrong timing.