Tall Stories

Orienteering is an sport which can have some great true (tall) stories. At nearly any event there will be some competitor telling in great length and detail to anyone who will listen what happened on the course - mostly explanations of how they came to make an error and usually not their fault.

Here are some of the more unusual stories I have heard (most of them about night events and relays):

• At one night relay one team member came in late because she had to come to the help of a person who had fallen down a deep tomo (pit) and couldn't get out. What made this rescue story more interesting was that the person in the pit was standing on a live cow also stuck!
• There once was a world-renowned follower who at one night event was shadowing another competitor very closely for several controls. However for some reason he lost contact and waited around for others so that he could carry on. He thought he was lucky as he quickly latched onto a group of runners and they ran very fast on the rest of the course to finish in what he thought was a good time. He looked around the finish area and couldn't recognise anything. He soon realised his mistake - he had followed runners that were competing on the same map but for a different club and he was actually 7 kilometres from his own finish.
• At one night relay a pack of 20 runners came to a high fence that was almost impossible to climb. The lead runner spotted what looked like an old abandoned car next to the fence. In a flash he jumped on the bonnet, onto the roof and hopped over the fence. Every single one of the pack did the same leaving the car with its roof caved in and bonnet dented. To this day the irate landowner and owner of the car whenever he sees Orienteers runs and gets his shotgun and tries to shoot at them.
• Again, the herd instincts of a pack of Orienteers came into play in this story. A group of runners were running very fast trying to keep up with the leading runner. The leading runner was running very fast and trying to keep ahead of the pack. He was not reading his map and went on the wrong side of a lake. By the time the group realised something was wrong they were 500m off course and facing a 2km extra run around a long narrow lake. One of the runners hit on a good idea and the rest followed. They 'borrowed' the canoes from a small village to get accross the lake.
• Still another lake story. A small pack again were led astray by the herd instinct and ended up on the wrong side of a long narrow lake. They decided to all swim the 10m or so accross the lake. This relay must have been a grudge match between competing clubs because the runners had to win at all costs. Everyone threw their maps accross the lake so as to not get them wet. There was a ferocious battle to swim accross the lake. The first one out of the lake picked up all his competitor's maps and threw them back accross the lake.
• Another Night Relay. It was the start of the first leg of a huge night relay. All the runners had to run a small distance to collect their maps. On GO, everyone rushed to get their maps but ran in the WRONG direction. Only a few had the prescence of mind to realize their error and turned around to go the right way. The spectators started yelling hysterically at them to 'go back, go back - you have to follow everyone else!'. The pack ran for 1 kilometre before they realized they hadn't picked up their maps yet. The radicals who realized early what had happened and who had to overcome almost insurmountable opposition from the crowd and fellow runners ended up 5 minutes in front.