The Norwegian orienteer Kjell Staxrud, the founder of the pictorial control description, has passed away aged 94.
It was at the 8th IOF congress in 1975 that he took over the chairmanship of the IOF Technical Committee. In 1976 he presented the first draft of pictorial control descriptions with their distinctive symbols. In the period that followed, the control description symbols were developed further by the Technical Committee, and they were finalised and approved for use in 1978.
This was a great step forward for fair international competition, enabling orienteering to leave behind the hassle of often wrong or misleading translations for the description of controls.
During his period leading the Technical Committee, the development of the International Rules for Orienteering made significant progress. He was Chairman until 1982, when he handed over this position at the 11th IOF Congress in Lüttich to Rolf Heinemann.
In recognition of his ground-breaking work within IOF, Kjell Staxrud was one of the first to be awarded the Silver Pin of Honour, in 1981.