Have you ever noticed that almost every sport has sponsors or advertisers? Sponsors and advertisers who pay for the privilege of having their name associated with an event. One just has to watch a little television to find that almost every armchair athlete drives a new car, drinks beer, does all his shopping for home renovation supplies at one hardware store, and has the best long distance savings plan you can imagine.
Perhaps that's what orienteering needs. Typical advertisers might include manufacturers of global positioning systems or headlamp manufacturers (for those of us who push time limits to the extreme).
With respect to advertisers, one would think that it would be the producers of sugar-coated cereal (like the ones that put those neat tattoos in the cereal boxes) and candy bar companies that would want their products tastefully presented to the armchair athlete during, say, professional wrestling. You know, to pick up the youth and adolescent viewers. But it's the car companies again. Middle-aged men are watching wrestlemania on Saturday afternoons. Orienteering could take a lesson from this. Club memberships would virtually double if every orienteer felt compelled to develop a persona then hire a manager, who would, of course, be expected to hold an ONB membership. With images of Hulk Heron, Gary the Undertaker, Stig the Big Svede, Ed the Mountie and Richard the Lionhearted (that one may have been used before), orienteering may no longer be able to boast that plenty of free parking is available at all meets. Soon little dolls in the image of these characters will be available at fine hamburger restaurants everywhere.
Perhaps orienteers should not take the high moral ground and should instead provide an advertising opportunity to those corporations who until now have been denied such access. This reference is, of course, to the like of Rothmans and MacDonalds, purveyors of fine tobacco products. Maybe if orienteers would light up, a new banner at the finish line could be theirs, albeit with the product sponsor on it too. Maybe the Camel would run course 8.
Maybe a goodwill ambassador or promoter would do the trick. Someone like Don Cherry. Someone who could conjure up an image of the home-grown all-Canadian orienteer, not some sissy shinpad-wearing European who's afraid to mess it up at the controls. The all-Canadian orienteer would run naked through the woods, using the sun or moss growth on trees to find his course, and find honour in taking a race misconduct for something noble, like eating a control once he's finished with it or elbowing some stray wayfarers for stumbling into his path. This goodwill ambassador would be one who could also assemble and promote a video featuring the spills and thrills of orienteering, complete with heavy rock sound track. Scenes of orienteers running off cliffs, or falling from a vantage point up a tree, or fighting off competitors for the punch at the last control. Perhaps the sound track could be played at all events ad nauseam, such that spectators would stand and chant. Oh, where is the Don Cherry of orienteering?
Or maybe orienteering should stay the course. Although it is rumoured that one individual is considering a cape to complement his current outfit. Something to wave in the event of becoming misplaced, or to sleep in ...
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