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Orienteering is one of the popular outdoor sports that exercises the body and mind. The goal of this sport is for athletes to navigate between checkpoints or controls marked on a special orienteering map.

What makes this sport interesting is that there are no specific routes, so the skill and fun comes from finding the best route to go. But, in competitive orienteering, the goal is to complete the course in the quickest time possible.

Orienteering is a sport that can be done anywhere, including forests, parks, moorland, town centers, school playgrounds and university campuses. 

Foot Orienteering

In foot orienteering, athletes follow a course on a map, looking for orange and white flagged control markers. They are placed in places that correspond to the points marked on the map. The athlete who has completed the course by visiting all the control points, in numerical order, in the shortest time wins the competition.

Interestingly, running fast alone will not make you a winner in orienteering competitions. What you need to do to win is to choose the best route between the control points and finding the markers efficiently.

Different Orienteering Levels

Orienteering levels are sometimes called classes, and there are also age grades for different athlete levels. But, if you are not sure about your skill level, you can try the White course first and if it starts becoming easy for you, follow up with the Yellow course. Here are the different levels:

• White: This is best for beginners and younger children. It has easy navigation, and it is mostly on tracks.
• Yellow: It is a slightly complicated navigation than the White course. It is mainly along tracks but with opportunities to short-cut across country. This is best for older children and adults.
• Orange: This course is mostly off the road, allowing athletes to navigate on features like hills and vegetation. You can advance to the Orange course if the Yellow course is becoming easy for you. 
• Red: This is popularly described as "as hard as the map can make it." The Red courses usually have three different lengths. Short (about 3-4 km), Medium (about 4-6 km), and Long (about 6-7 km or more).

Popular Orienteering Competitions in the World

The International Orienteering Federation (IOF) is the main governing body of orienteering across the world. Some of the biggest orienteering competitions include the following:

• The World Games
• Oceania Orienteering Championships
• Orienteering World Cup
• Polish Championships
• New Zealand Orienteering Championships Sprint
• Canadian Orienteering Festival 
• National Sprint Orienteering Championships
• The Olympics

Orienteering at the World Games

Orienteering made its debut at the 2001 Akita World Games. Subsequently, it was featured at the 2005 Duisburg World Games, the 2009 Kaohsiung World Games, the 2013 Cali World Games, the 2017 Wroclaw World Games, the 2022 Birmingham World Games, and the 2025 Chengdu World Games. 

In the individual orienteering disciplines, athletes start at equal time intervals. For the sprint relay, with four athletes per team (with at least two women), all first-leg runners start all at once. The winner of the race is the athlete or team with the quickest time on the course.

Here are the medalists who won gold at the end of this event: 

Here are some polls about the sport of orienteering

• Rate the important factors for success in orienteering
• Which of the components of fitness is the most important for success in orienteering ?

Disclaimer: These polls are not scientific, and only reflect the opinion of visitors to this website who have chosen to participate.

Related Pages

• List of Sports and Fitness Polls
• More information about the sport of orienteering
• suggest a poll

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