The traditional IOF High Level Event seminar has been organised as a digital meeting in the last two years because of the pandemic: It meant increased participation, but no opportunities for personal meetings and small talk. On 18-19 February in Milan, it was finally time to meet in person after a 3-year gap.
The seminar, which primarily targets appointed organisers, potential future organisers and key persons involved in IOF High Level Events, including already appointed IOF Senior Event Advisers and Assistant Senior Event Advisers, attracted 70 participants from 17 National Federations across 3 continents. The organisers were the IOF Foot Orienteering Commission together with IOF Office.
The main focus was on the organisation and lessons learned from the first ever sprint-only World Orienteering Championships in Denmark in 2022 and different issues regarding the presentation of our sport. There was also enough time to dive into course planning issues for different forest, sprint and JWOC competitions. As always, athletes were invited to present their views about their experience and expectations, this year it was the turn of Simona Aebersold, Kasper Fosser and Florian Howald.
Presentations are continuously onto the FootO Event Advising Clinics and Seminars section of the IOF website: https://orienteering.sport/orienteering/internal/event-advising/footo-event-adviser-clinics/
“The energy coming from the participants was fantastic to experience and I’m sure we’ll have a great deal of excellent high level events coming our way in the next few years” – concluded Aron Less, IOF’s WOC Project Manager, the person in charge for the seminar.