Olympic ambitions – IOF Reflections

The Olympic Dream – lost without a trace

The Olympic Dream was the guiding light of the IOF for decades. It was the driving force for many activities, and a substantial amount of money was spent to chase the Dream. It is still part of the Competition Rules in the form of the Leibnitz Convention. The IOF President has repeatedly confirmed his commitment to pursuing the Olympic Dream.

“Foot Orienteering has a chance and ski orienteering has a realistic chance to be a part of the Olympic Games program”.
Leho Haldna, IOF President (2016)

Yet, in 2022 the Olympic Dream was lost without a trace in the Strategic Directions proposed to the General Assembly by the IOF Council led by the same President. Not a single reference to the Olympics even in the proposed Strategic Initiatives (see pages p164-170 in the General Assembly Agenda)

Compare this to the strategic directions of 2019-2022, where the Main Goal was clearly anchored in the Olympic Dream.

The complete abandonment of the Olympic Dream is a 180-degree change of direction. This is the most significant change in our sport since the IOF decided to award World Championship titles – in the name of Olympic ambitions – to winners of D class street races, in addition to the mentally and physically toughest endurance athletes in the World.

Although there were hints at the last Presidents’ Conference that there could be changes in the Strategic Directions, the haste of complete abandonment of the Olympic Dream is stunning. It is probably best illustrated by the 2022 nomination of one of the IOF’s Vice Presidents (who used to represent Turkey, then Russia, and is now nominated again by Turkey for obvious reasons). As one of the Top 4 in the IOF Council, she firmly declares in her application that “I strongly believe that Orienteering deserves to be in Olympic Games and I hope to be able to make it true.” (p186 of the Agenda and Background Papers) Apparently, things happened so fast that even the IOF Vice President did not realize that the Olympic Dream was dead in the water.

Despite the radical change initiated by themselves, the IOF Leadership keeps a low and silent public profile like a cow drop in tall grass. Not a public word why chasing the Olympic Dream is no longer a good direction. Not a word about the potentially numerous implications of this change on the further development of our sport. Not a word about why the complete abandonment was necessary, not only putting it on the back burner for a while.

Personally, I am happy to hear that the IOF stops the pointless waste of money and volunteer time to pursue this pie-in-the-sky dream. I resigned as the Chair of the MTBO Commission in December 2016 when the IOF Council decided that each discipline commission shall evaluate its progress annually against some hazy Olympic criteria. The IOF Leadership could not give a fine thought to imposing pointless work on volunteers in the name of the Olympic Dream.

It is most interesting when pretty much the same Council (same President, 2 of the 3 Vice Presidents, 7 of the 11 members) suddenly makes a 180-degree turn and pretends as if the Olympic Dream was never there. A remarkable achievement of change of strategic direction that is only comparable to the smartest East European Communists who embraced capitalism and democracy overnight in 1990 just to stay in power.

In the context of this radical change of strategic direction, the silence of the IOF Leadership is a clear message to all orienteering volunteers around the world: it is not your business which way they steer your favorite sport.

Wind of Change

History and the future outlook does not support chasing the Dream of ~~Communism~~ Olympic participation told the ~~Politburo~~ Council to the ~~local party leaders~~ Presidents of Member Federations.

The importance of this statement went almost unnoticed in ~~1986~~ 2021 on the biennial meeting that was typically embalmed in polite boredom. Few realised how significant changes might lure just behind the corner, when (and if) they were still alert at slide 90 of the presentation of the Presidents’ Conference

It is difficult to compare this change in the IOF’s strategic direction to anything less than the Перестройка lead by Gorbachev in the Soviet Union. The Olympic Dream was the undisputable anchor point of the IOF Strategy for decades despite the honest admission in 1992 by the IOF President of 1988-94 that it was a hopeless effort. Until very recently the inclusion in the Olympic Games was a focus area for the IOF. The newly elected Council member in 2020 felt the need to declare that in the next 4 years she “would like to see one of the disciplines become an Olympic sport”. The Leibnitz Convention setting the goal to get to the Olympic Games is even part of the IOF competition rules.

Only four years ago, the Finnish Vice President of the IOF, at the time, called everybody who was not fully committed to the Olympic Vision to leave the session of the Council – Commissions joint meeting on IOF Strategy. Seven of the eleven members of the current Council were present, including the President and two Vice Presidents who still hold those positions. None of them voiced their concerns about the aggressive imposition of the Olympic Dream on the IOF strategy discussion. Just like before Perestroika no party official would have voiced any concerns when an aggressive apparatchik declared that people who did not believe in the Dream of Communism should leave a discussion on how to develop Russia.

Parallels to Perestroika

The parallels with the onset of Perestroika are numerous.

There is an emerging concern that the IOF strategy is not deliverable in scope, and particularly not with the resources available. Makes you wonder who proposed those strategic action plans to the General Assembly over the past two decades…

There is a sudden awakening that there is no clarity around the terms used in the most fashionable slogans of the IOF (cf. world peace; the victory of the proletariat; workers of the world, unite!, etc).

There is an emerging understanding that the decade long “professionalization” of the IOF (and the corresponding alienation of volunteers) leads to difficulties when the money runs out.

These concerns must have been amplified by the lack of qualified applicants to replace the CEO/GenSec who announced his retirement earlier this year. It is unclear whether there were any qualified applicants for the re-announced split positions, but that would be a rather pleasant surprise.

When there are little funds left, it is time to attract volunteers, as it happened before when the delivery of great ambitions got slowed down due to a shortage of resources.

Perestroika – is reliance on the natural creativity of the masses

The future is bright

Before launching the full fledged Perestroika in 1987, Gorbachev was a member of the Central Committee (i.e. the party elite) from 1971, Secretary of the Central Committee from 1978, and the leader of the Party from 1985.

The President of the IOF has been a member of the Council since 2002, Vice President since 2010, and President since 2016. With all this experience (including his personal exposure to Perestroika), he is perfectly positioned to reassess the situation of the IOF, point out the mistakes of the past, re-energise the organisation, and set a new strategy for the development of international orienteering.

We shall have all the confidence that the re-evaluation of the IOF strategic direction will be a resounding success.

Deep Trust, the Cornerstone of Orienteering

The various reactions received after pointing out that the results of the EOC 2021 did not look good on the face of it, were akin to ones one may receive on a Sunday Mass after pointing out that some events in the world may give the impression that God does not exist. “How dare you???”

That made me realize that there are two important cornerstones of major international orienteering events: deep trust in Fair Play, and willful blindness to acknowledge that this trust is supported only by a near religious belief in this very trust itself.

Deep trust that makes international orienteering so special and so different compared to other sports. Deep trust is also the Achilles heel of international orienteering that will bring it down in the quest for more money, more fame, and the Olympic dream.

In this post I write about the nature of this trust at individual level. In my next post I will write about the nature of this trust at institutional level, including the dangers of trying to build an ever larger house of cards of international orienteering anchored on this trust.

Of course, trust in Fair Play is an essential element of all sports. Without trust in fair competition, few honest sportsmen would invest time and effort into training. There could be anomalies on some events, but those are typically detectable and rectifiable. Rogue players and referees can be banned, inspection of equipment and doping tests can be stepped up.

What differentiates orienteering from other sports, is that some of the most impactful methods of cheating – certain forms of information doping – are both unpreventable and undetectable by practical means.

Nobody can stop an organiser to give a map with a course to their favourite athlete, or stop an athlete to visit the competition area with that map. These days athletes can also make highly accurate maps from publicly available Lidar data, and no organiser can stop them visiting the terrain in secret. Even worse, nobody can prove under normal circumstances that this has ever happened.

We can only rely on trust in the ethical standards of organisers and athletes. We have to maintain this trust despite knowing that there is increasing temptation, especially for professional and semi-professional athletes, to do everything possible for better performance that brings in more money through better sponsorship contracts.

Despite the cardinal importance of this trust in Fair Play, there was little attention paid to the nature of this trust within orienteering circles. It is taken for granted and no effort was made to understand the way it works in an environment where we can only trust in trust.

For lack of time (rather than lack of interest) to write a PhD thesis on this topic, I would like to call attention to three aspects of this trust at individual level. Trust of this kind is a very complex phenomena, but I hope that calling attention to it, orienteers will start to think a bit deeper about the way it works.

The three aspects discussed below are
– trust as a key tribal identity attribute for orienteers;
– the way affective and cognitive trust works, and;
– the imperative for our tribe to dismiss any doubt about this trust.

These points may help to understand why this trust evaporates quickly in relationship to China and remains unshaken in relationship to Switzerland, irrespective how things may look for an outsider to orienteering.

IOF’s Sudden Rush for eGold

Today the IOF has announced the preparation for the first Unofficial World eOrienteering Championships later in 2020. It is unclear though what, when, and how will be organised. The objective is urgent control over the evolving eOrienteering landscape as stated in the Council minutes. It is a late wake up call to deal with something that has been around for years, but now it is so urgent that the Council decided even to violate the IOF’s Statutes with pushing through a unlawfully late proposal on the inclusion of eSports.

Yet, the question “who benefits” from this panicky rush has no clear answer.

Virtual orienteering is nothing new

Virtual orienteering has been around for many years, though it has started to boom only this year due to the limitations on real life events.

This blog has pointed out already in December 2017, two and a half years ago, that
Virtual Orienteering is orienteering’s best chance to get to the Olympics.

The Council has ignored for years the highly visible emergence of eSports until this month. The sudden rush may remind one of the symptoms of narcolepsy when patients wake up suddenly from deep sleep and feel disorientated.

Virtual O - map

Continue reading “IOF’s Sudden Rush for eGold”

Adieu, Paris 2024!

There will be no orienteering in Paris on the Olympics in 2024. No surprise there.

The interesting bit is how the IOF leadership (did not) communicate the non-delivery of a key objective of their Goal 2020, a target recommended by the IOF leadership to the General Assembly. It was a “no event”. After the failed Paris 2024 bid the CEO of the World Squash Federation resigned. Even the World Flying Disc Federation started serious soul searching.

According to my psychologist friend, the deep silence around the failure to deliver on a key objective may suggest that either the IOF leadership so strongly believed in success that now they are in complete denial, or that they did not believe at all that it was deliverable, so failure is no news.

Yet, for whatever reason, the situation made me remember the old Russian joke about Napoleon’s admiration of Pravda, the newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party.

The Olympic ambition

The Olympic ambition is a core component of the IOF’s strategy as discussed before. This is nothing new. According to the research of Heinz Tschudin, the late President of the IOF, the Olympic dream has been around for 75 years. It has preceded even the foundation of the IOF.

What’s new, is that it has become the Main Goal of the IOF, and not only at a conceptual level. Not only did the Vice President show the door to IOF activists who did not believe in the Olympic Dream before a discussion on IOF strategy in 2017, but very specific targets pop up in IOF documents, like in Goal 2020 – proposed by the IOF leadership to the General Assembly in October 2018 (and duly approved by the GA, as usual).

iof strategic directions 2018-2022

IOF ambition - Paris 2024

So what happened?

Continue reading “Adieu, Paris 2024!”

Olympic Dream – status end 2018

End of 2018 was another busy period for me and I could not focus on this blog. Now I have a bit more time to share some thoughts on recent developments in our sport.

One topic I wanted to catch up with is the Olympic Dream. This a fascinating area of IOF activity: heightened communication around the Olympic ambitions combined with apparently haphazard activities or lack of it, and no meaningful results to show whatsoever. A year ago I already I wrote about the talk vs action related to the Paris 2024 dream.

In this post I would like to recap the current status of the Olympic Dream that sometimes gives a feeling of a black hole for IOF resources. In a separate post I will try to analyse what could make the leaders of the IOF chase this fantasy instead of focusing the limited resources on more practical tasks.

When you look beyond pink cloud ambitions, scratch the surface, and look into the details, it becomes rather obvious that the chances of orienteering being included in the Olympic programme is zero. Not slim, not poor, not little. Simply zero.

Let’s start this review with the new strategy as presented by the Council to the General Assembly in October 2018. The General Assembly – as always – unanimously approved the Strategic Directions and the Activity Plan proposed. One can read the full text in the Congress Binder, but the essence is shown below:

iof strategic directions 2018-2022

I found particularly interesting the “so as to” wording above. According to all dictionaries it means “in order to” or “for the purpose of”. That is, increased attractiveness of orienteering shall serve the purpose of inclusion in the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and not some l’art pour l’art (or rather sport pour le sport) love of orienteering.

The Council clearly set the Olympic Dream as the ultimate goal for orienteering from 2019 on.

To appreciate the difference, compare this with the previous, 2012 version of Strategic Directions, where the goal to position for inclusion in the Olympics was only one of the goals, not the ultimate one.

iof key goals 2012-18

One can also see the difference in the changed approach looking at the Activity Plan for 2018-2020. Specific details of the Olympic Dream are spelled out amongst the focus areas in the same document:

iof focus areas - goal 2020

Great ambitions! The intensification of the effort to throw more resources down the black hole of the Olympic Dream is emphasised by the goals of gaining inclusion in the programme of specific Olympic Games. There was nothing similar in the 2012 and 2014 activity plans. These specifics were first introduced in the 2016 plans.

activity plan 2016-2018

The result was predictable:

Inclusion in YOG games secured – key outcome by 2018 – FAIL
Contact with Beijing 2022 organisers – target – NO RESULT
Contact with Paris 2024 organisers – target – UNCLEAR (but unlikely, see below)

The outcome for the 2018-2020 Activity Plan regarding the Olympic Dream is just as predictable. Let’s look into the details below that can be easily summarised:

The Olympic and Youth Olympic sport selection is secretive with no clear application process, and does not favour orienteering for various reasons;
The Paralympic selection process is more transparent, but the IOF apparently did not even apply to be considered for inclusion in Paris 2024.

Continue reading “Olympic Dream – status end 2018”

75 years chasing Olympic Glory

The biennial General Assembly of the IOF takes place this weekend in Prague. Whoever attended these events before, or at least heard eyewitness reports, knows that it is very unlikely that anything unexpected would happen. There could be a handful of Member Federations who may try to throw a pebble into the quiet pond, but those attempts typically get attenuated by the quiet passivity of the majority, or by the deflecting tactics of the IOF Leadership. It is very, very unlikely that serious debate would take place on the General Assembly around questions of financials or anti-doping activity, no matter how much delegates may gossip about those questions over a beer or two.

I still hope though, that a Member Federation, or the IOF Leadership themselves may raise their voice to correct a very unfortunate oversight in the Strategic Directions and Focus Areas for the Congress Period 2018-2020 regarding the Olympic Ambition as quoted below (original in is in the Congress Binder):

AMBITION: TO BE INCLUDED IN THE OLYMPIC AND PARALYMPIC GAMES
Goal 2020:
✓ Inclusion as an optional sport for the Olympic Games in Paris 2024,
✓ Inclusion as an optional sport to Youth Olympic Games 2022 (FootO) and 2024 (SkiO)
✓ Be elected or appointed to a position in one of our stakeholder organisations

So far this is part of the usual General Assembly process that got established over the past two decades or so. The Council includes “Olympic Ambition” in the strategic plan. The General Assembly approves everything proposed by the Council with no modification. And from then on, the IOF leadership pushes the Olympic Dream, because “we have no choice; that is the mandate given by the GA; we cannot modify it; etc, etc.”

Funnily, this moral stance of fully respecting General Assembly decisions is not observed when the President and the Council regularly modify the approved budget, even within 2 months of its approval. But that is another story.

The point of this post is to call attention to the following oversight in the 2018-2020 plan:

2019 marks the 75th year anniversary of the endeavour to include orienteering in the Olympic Games. The first negotiations with the IOC on orienteering began back in 1944, even though the IOF was not established until 1961.

This somewhat surprising, but nevertheless heartwarming information comes from the article of Heinz Tschudin, the late President of the IOF. In 1992 he published an article in Orienteering World titled Orienteering and the Olympics. I could not get a copy of the original, but here you can read a reprint published in Orienteering Canada in 1992.

Orienteering and the Olympics (1of2) - OrienteeringCanada_Newsletter_1992_Vol20_No2_Fall

It would be really interesting to see more information on this fact unearthed by Heinz Tschudin. It does sound strange at first sight, as we know that in 1944 majority of Europe was somewhat distracted from discussing future Olympic programmes. Yet, if we consider that in 1944 Sigfrid Edström, a Swede was the acting president of the IOC, and that SOFT, the Swedish Orienteering Federation, was already founded 1938, the story starts to look plausible. It would be fascinating to see more details on this either from the notes left by Heinz, or from the the SOFT or IOC archives.

This 26 year old article of Heinz provides superb insights into the process of trying to get orienteering into the Olympics. I will discuss those under separate cover. Yet, I would like to call your attention to the point Heinz made about the core question he faced when tried to negotiate with the organisers of the 1982 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary:

How much money will you bring in?

36(!) years passed, but the IOF Leadership has not even tried to answer this core question that is required just to start the discussion about getting on the Olympic programme. Without a solid financial basis all the talk about Olympic Ambitions feels rather empty.

But now let’s focus on the many unique opportunities offered by this 75th anniversary, as listed below. It would be a major mistake not to use this occasion for the promotion of orienteering and the IOF’s Olympic Ambition.

Continue reading “75 years chasing Olympic Glory”

Esports on Olympics – no joke

I have to admit that when I wrote my modest proposal I was very much focused on the workings of the IOF and invoking the spirit of Jonathan Swift’s original work, including the wording of his disclaimer. I have to admit, that in this process I did not do thorough research on esports, as it looked like more of an illustration that unexpected leftfield contenders may also show up as rivals for inclusion in the Olympics.

I received a few comments that one should not be serious about the prospects of esports; that the quote from the Paris organisers about being open to esports was from August; it was made before they got officially appointed; and in any case Bach, the President of the IOC, voiced reservations even in April about whether esports can be considered seriously as a sport.

So I looked a bit deeper, and I was stunned about the developments over the past months. Both the International Olympic Committee and FIFA made major steps embracing esports.

The direction of the Olympic movement appears to be pretty much 180 degrees to the one that would favour our beloved traditional Orienteering, whether it is done on foot, on bike or on skis.

Continue reading “Esports on Olympics – no joke”

Virtual-O – orienteering’s best chance for the Olympics

In this modest proposal I would like to lay out the key arguments for promoting the virtual format as the headline competitive format for orienteering as an Olympic sport. Thanks to the effort of Peter Furucz, the founder and developer of Virtual-O, now the IOF leadership can promote a truly marketable product for inclusion in the Olympic Games in Paris 2024.

Virtual O - map

Virtual O control

Youth appeal, a key factor for Olympic inclusion, is undeniably much stronger for a computer game than for outdoor activities these days. No wonder that the organisers of the Paris 2024 are open to the introduction of esports in the program.

Virtual orienteering solves the main concern of IOF’s leadership that the current version of orienteering is still difficult to televise and too complex to understand by outsiders not involved in the sport. Virtual-O fully fits the strategic direction of the IOF. In essence, it is the synthesis of the declared strategic directions. It is absolutely global, visible, attractive, simple, environmentally friendly, and easy to understand for everybody. It is perfectly positioned for the Olympics.

Some may argue that this move may require some additional compromises over and above the compromises that were needed to change orienteering championships from 90 minute struggles in some of the world’s most complex remote forests to a 15 minute run on asphalt in touristy cities on C courses.

We must have all the confidence that the uncompromising drive of the IOF leadership towards the Olympics will ensure that all the required compromises are met to make orienteering an absolutely positively definitely truly virtual sport.

This confidence is also based on the fact that this proposal is fully in line with IOF’s core strategy to meet orienteering’s potential audience in the cities, instead of trying to lure people into the forest. Bringing orienteering out of the forest to city parks was the first step. But that has been proven still not attractive enough for the masses of TV audiences.

To make orienteering attractive to a larger audience, especially TV audience, the IOF has to take orienteering where the people are.

Since most of the TV viewers are on the couch in the living room, orienteering must be brought to the couch!

Yes, there will be resistance in the forest. The supporters of the Ancien Régime will cry foul. They will try to cling to the obsolete view that orienteering at its best is one of the physically most demanding sports on earth.

We should not worry about them. The IOF leadership has a proven track record to ignore requests of groups of athletes regardless the number of world championship titles they may possess. Money talks. The siren call of the millions of dollars promised by Olympic participation talks louder than athletes. We can be confident that the IOF leadership will do their best to make orienteering virtual, if that what is needed to attract more money.

In addition, going virtual will solve many of the current problems of orienteering from long start lists, through following, till environmental impact.

What’s not to love about it?

You may read more about Virtual O on its website, on its facebook page, and even in an interview with Peter on the IOF website.

You may read more detailed arguments for this proposal below.

Continue reading “Virtual-O – orienteering’s best chance for the Olympics”

Olympic Ambitions 2024 – Talk vs Action

There were some fascinating developments over the past couple of weeks around the practical implementation of the IOF’s Olympic vision, and we could get additional insights both into the position of our favourite sport on the world scene and the real level of commitment of the IOF’s leadership.

Just a quick reminder to those sane people who spend their “orienteering time” training and competing instead of reading IOF publications: The vision of the IOF is that orienteering shall be a truly global sport and included in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. This was taken so seriously as recently as January this year, that Mikko, one of the Vice Presidents, requested volunteer commission members to leave the plenary session of the joint IOF meeting if they did not believe in the Olympic dream. He did so before the discussion on the IOF’s strategy, including the Olympic vision. Several participants confirmed that it did not sound like a joke, but a clear suggestion that simply devoting your time, expertise and energies to orienteering is not enough for the IOF’s leadership. You are no good for the IOF, if you do not believe in the Olympic vision.

Yet, when it comes to implementation of the Olympic vision, we can observe something that feels like a refreshingly quiet passivity that may signify a more rational approach by the IOF leadership.

Apparently the initiative to start working on an application for Paris came from the FFCO, the French Orienteering Federation. The public announcement that orienteering becomes a candidate sport for 2024 was made with no IOF representation. There was not even a news item on the IOF website about the FFCO announcement on the meeting with the President of the Paris 2024 organisers. It feels like a stark contrast to the devotion to the Olympic dream expected by Mikko from everybody in the IOF structure.

Of course, this quiet passivity may be the sign of acknowledging reality. L’Équipe, the French sports daily, ran a survey about the three sports people expect to be on the Olympic program in 2024. Orienteering did not make it to the 12 sports to choose from.

The question is whether we see a changing IOF strategy, or a confirmation that the Olympic dream is just a pipedream.

Or could it happen that simply no more money left in the IOF beyond spending on essential tasks?

Continue reading “Olympic Ambitions 2024 – Talk vs Action”