O-Ringen
O- rings is an annual taking place in Sweden, orienteering through 5 stages (5- day event ), with approximately 15,000 participants annually. Due to its high popularity O- rings is more of a sports festival as a competition.
Description
For O- rings there are different categories, which are composed from the age of the participants, the difficulty of the track and the distance to be traveled. The youngest age classes are H/D-10 and the oldest age groups are H -95 and D- 85th For recreational skiers, there are in almost every age group, a so-called "Motion " class, which has a shorter path lengths, but also carries a slightly higher level of difficulty. There are also still open categories and mostly direct 10 classes for which you can register directly on race day.
The two highest and most difficult categories are "masters 21 Super Elite 'and' women 21 Super Elite ". For the 18 -, 20 - and 21 -year-old runners, there are also elite categories. Since these volumes are usually very busy, there are also subdivisions in the classes " Standard" and "long ".
The first four stages take place as a single start. The fifth and last stage is a chase start, in which the leader of the first four stages will start first. Due to the total time after four stages is determined how many minutes and seconds, the other participants start behind the winner.
For better organization of each age class is assigned to one of eight sponsors. Thus, there are at each stage eight launch sites, which are characterized by the respective sponsor. There are also eight parallel finishers, which are also marked by the respective Sponsor, and are usually achieved after the defection of a small wooden bridge stairs. As an elite sponsors were established in recent years Sveaskog and Idrefjäll.
History
The first O- rings 5 -day orienteering found in 1965 in Skåne, Blekinge (Sweden ), and a stage in Denmark instead and it took 156 runners participated. The winners of the elite classes, who wrote thus the first O-Rings OL- winning story, were Inga -Britt Bengtsson (OK Pan) in the women's and Nils Bohman (OK Skärmfinnarna ) in the men.
Since then, the now considered one of the largest orienteering competitions ( and probably the most historic ) is the world renowned 5-day OL O- rings performed annually without interruption in Sweden.
1985 in Falun, the 23,000 subscriber mark was first exceeded this record was in 2008 with nearly 25,000 runners broken.