In 2016, the Hunan Orienteering Challenge for World Orienteering Day and Orienteering Week of China was successfully held in the “thousand-year-old academy”, Hunan University. This race was entered by 2462 participants with an age span of 4 to 60 years. Among all the groups of participants (individual, team, parent-kid), the 400 parent-kid groups were the most active, attracting a lot of attention. What’s more, over 30 local and national media from newspapers, TV, radios to online media have made reports on this event especially with two websites making full live coverage of it and the total audiences have reached over 1.2 million.
This event has created several firsts in China. It is the first orienteering enjoyed by over 2000 runners in the 30-year history of Chinese orienteering, the first orienteering reported by over 30 media and the first full live coverage of orienteering in China.
After the race, most participants said they really had enjoyed the game full of fun and challenge and would try similar event in the future. This event will make a great contribution to the promotion of orienteering in China and we will keep endeavouring for the popularization and development of it.
We will do it again!
Due to the promotion to media, last year’s WOD gained much attention and the organiser Wanhui Tang is happy to see more Chinese cities preparing zealously for this year WOD event. About this year’s WOD, she made a special trip to Sports Bureau of Hunan Province and proposed to expand the scale and influence of the event in Hunan. That means they need more media involvement to promote the development of orienteering in Hunan and China, which further means she needs more financial support to advertise their event and cover the cost of organizing a large-scale event. And they will get it!