TRAILO.IT - http://portugueseorienteeringblog.blogspot.it: MARTIN FREDHOLM
He is one of the few athletes that has competed in all
the nine WTOC editions. Started in 1998, World Champion
in 2006 and second place in 2004 and 2008. He is 35
years old now, lives in Uppsala and he's still a student
at KTH Royal institute of Technology. There you are, in
brief, some biographic notes of our today's guest,
Martin Fredholm.
What does Trail Orienteering mean to you?
Martin Fredholm
(M. F.)
– To me it is an exciting type of Orienteering. The map
reading and the terrain interpretation are really a
perfect test. And you don’t have to run, because I have
always been good at Orienteering but never been good at
running, so this is the perfect sport for me.
How did you start?
M. F.
– I started in Foot Orienteering when I was young. But
when I got older and the courses got longer and since I
don’t like running too much, I lost interest and stopped
with Foot Orienteering. Many years later my mother
helped organizing a TrailO-competition and thought that
this would be a perfect sport for me. I tried it, my
first competition was a night competition, I liked it
and I have competed ever since.
You belong to a family of trail orienteers, your father
and mother are very involved in this sport and their
excellent work is recognized everywhere. How do you see
this?
M. F.
– Me and many others do
appreciate
all the work they have done and do for the sport. But I
don’t get much influence from them regarding the actual
orienteering because almost all of the time I’m better
than them. But it’s nice to compete in equal terms; you
don’t have to care with ages and gender, or ability in
movement. This is the beauty of this sport. Alias, in
Sweden and the other Nordic countries we only have one
class. We don’t divide it in Paralympic and Open class
because we feel that the fundaments of trail
orienteering are that everybody should be able to
compete on equal terms. So, it should just be one single
class. This is supported very strongly by the disabled
competitors in our countries. We do have more than one
class in competitions in the Nordic countries, but the
classes have different skill levels and have nothing to
do with physical ability (Paralympic and Open). In
Sweden we have Elite-, A-, B- and C-classes. One major
difference between the classes is that zero-controls are
only allowed in the Elite- and A-class and must be very
clear in the A-class.
Please, tell me
something about the development of TrailO in Sweden
M. F.
– For the last ten years we have had between 35-45
competitions each year. About five of these are
night-competitions and about five are
TempO-competitions. Currently there are about 160
competitors on the ranking list, fourty of them competed
more than twenty times last year. To get on the ranking
list you have to participate in at least 2 competitions.
During the O-Ringen, the big 5-day competition in
Sweden, on the rest day the foot-orienteers have the
opportunity to do a TrailO course. This has been very
successful and appreciated and more than one hundred
foot-orienteers have tested TrailO each year. We have
been in contact with handicap organizations and promoted
TrailO but it has been proven difficult to recruit new
competitors, since there are such a wide variety of
other sports available.
What skills
do you think that are essential in order to be a good
trail orienteer?
M. F.
– You need to be very good at reading a map and trying
to match it with the terrain. These are the fundaments
of trail orienteering. Looking at the terrain and
creating your own picture of it, you have to try to
compare it with the map and, hopefully, they are
coincident. If they are not, then you have to try to
figure out why it happens, how the mapmaker has seen
this terrain. There is no secret, that’s it.
Can I ask you what was the best and the worst of the
World Trail Orienteering Championships 2012?
M. F.
– The best part was that this terrain is very suitable
for TrailO. Unfortunately, I don’t think they have used
it in a correct way. They could have used it much
better, making orienteering problems instead of placing
all flags on the same feature and just letting the
center of the circle decide which flag is correct
instead of using the terrain, using map reading skills,
that’s what I think TrailO is. We had this kind of
controls in the Nordic countries 10-15 years ago but now
we have what we call orienteering controls. An example
of an orienteering control: If the control is a spur,
the alternative flags are placed on spurs nearby or on
formations that look like spurs but are unmapped.
And what about your performance?
M. F.
– I must be happy with my performance on the second day,
but on the first day I didn’t do as well as I hoped to
do.
TempO or TrailO?
M. F.
– They are a little different but both have their
merits. I’m not going to choose one of them, I like them
both.
Is trail orienteering moving in the right direction?
M. F.
– The short
answer is yes.
We’ll see Portugal organizing the European Trail
Orienteering Championships in 2014. What do you expect
of this event?
M. F.
– I hope it will have good and challenging competitions.
It will be nice to visit a new country for me. Since
Portugal is quite new to TrailO it is important that
they gain as much knowledge as possible. The best way to
do this is to participate in TrailO-competitions. My
advice is that the planner(s) and controller(s) visit
for example Sweden or Finland and take part in
TrailO-competitions there.
For how long are we going to see you doing trail
orienteering?
M. F.
– I’ll continue doing it, that’s for sure. Hopefully I
will make the selection to our team, so I will compete
on the next years in World Championships and European
Championships. But this is not for sure, because we have
many good trail orienteers in Sweden and it might be
hard to qualify for the team.
Joaquim Margarido
