Orienteering Publicity.... no hope in UK?

[Gross]

Interesting reading the various comments on how / why orienteering will / won't get publicity in the UK... but basically I'd guess we're on a loosing wicket!

Why...? How much have you heard of Eurobasket 2011 in the UK press? Zilch I'd guess...

Basketball is one of the BIGGEST Olympic sports but GB gets zero mass coverage... in 10 days time Team GB will take part in the opening game of Eurobasket 2011 against the hosts (Lithuania) and I bet there will be nothing mentioned in the P&J

So if British International Basketball gets no coverage.... why should orienteering?

[229]

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[Scott]

Basketball is one of the BIGGEST Olympic sports but GB gets zero mass coverage...

Gross, what on earth are you talking? The UK sports pages have been overwhelmed with basketball for a couple of weeks now because of the Olympic test event (is that the same as Eurobasket?).

I have absolutely no interest in the sport, but even I have been unable to avoid learning that GB's star player is Luol Deng, he plays for something called the Chicago Bulls and he is, apparently, Barack Obama's favourite sportsman. And the Guardian sports supplement (I think it was that, anyway) had a big two-page interview a couple of weeks ago with some British young girl about how she had had to move to America to improve her game, how much she was looking forward to the Olympics etc. There was even a piece on the Today programme!

Just try a Google News search for "british basketball". Perhaps not the best example?

[Gross]

Oppps so I missed all the Olympic Test stuff but proves my point.... nothing about Eurobasket

[Gross]

OK... another oopppps.... maybe I'm wrongly comparing the Basketball coverage in Lithuania to the Basketball coverage in GB.... so in terms of orienteering... comparing Sweden or Finland with GB... completely different & something that'll never happen

[Did I get out of that OK? ]

[Scott]

I think that what might be happening is that some of the minor sports are taking better advantage of the Olympics publicity push than others - basketball is the prime example, but a few weeks ago there was a spate of articles on the British volleyball team (including a piece on the front page of BBC News website), despite that fact that they don't appear to be particularly good. And a couple of newspapers have even run "quirky" articles about British Handball.

On the other hand, I can't remember seeing any coverage of archery or fencing in the mainstream media (although the BBC will probably have covered them in the depths of their website). My guess would be that the NGBs for those sports either haven't bothered pushing for publicity, or have tried but haven't done as good a job.

Of course, while British basketball and volleyball will certainly be benefiting from raised awareness in the short term, whether anybody will remember anything about them in 18 months' time is a different matter.

[OCM45]

GB vs Australia basketball currently being streamed live on the Telegraph website (and they also did GB vs China live, too). If you click across to the BBC website you can now watch the GB vs China highlights. Plenty of exposure.

[Taybank]

Assessing British press attitudes to non-mainstream British sport at any level cannot be assessed in the present climate - not just the Olympics next year, but the Olympics in Britain.
The year Britain won olympic gold in curling it gained widespread coverage.
I approached one "national" to see if they would be interested in further curling coverage - (it is a sport I covered pretty widely in the Express, Mail, and Times (Scottish editions) at various times).
"That was just a one off," I was told.
I can remember a time when I could get orienteering into the Guardian, Telegraph, Times and Independent (from time to time).
But those days are long since gone.
Unless you have a really good story _ British gold medalist - you are wasting your time trying unless you make a sympathetic "contact".
It is better to aim for regional and local press/TV with a well taylored local interest piece either of sports page or news section interest.
(The fact that orienteering is a non- olympic participation sport makes it even more difficult in the year ahead.)

[Sunlit Forres]

Sportscotland, in conjunction with Moray Sports Council and Active Schools are putting on a lunchtime schools sports demonstration for Alex Salmond and the Scottish Cabinet when they visit Elgin during the 2011 Summer Roadshow on 6th September. The aim is to showcase clubs that have partnerships with Active Schools in line with the "Active Scotland" initiative. One of the two they've chosen is orienteering.

Gross, you'll be mightily encouraged to know that basketball's the other.

[IanD]

I can't help a wry smile at people complaining that there's virtually no coverage of a minority sport like orienteering in general sports pages (both paper and web).

The reason? We should set our own house in order first. There is virtually no coverage on the BOF web site of a minority branch of orienteering, trail-O. I appreciate that trail-O may not be everybody's cup of tea, but it is one of the four types of orienteering recognised by the IOF, and has it's world championship at the same event as foot-O (*). The British team achieved a podium position last week, but you won't find that news on the BOF website.

(*) except when the WOC is in Switzerland

[Gross]

Gross, you'll be mightily encouraged to know that basketball's the other.

They'll all be interested in this then:
http://www.eurobasket2011.com/lt/default.asp

With orienteering getting in amongst it sometimes:

http://sportas.delfi.lt/national/pasaul ... d=47768155



and get them to watch....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQwmR5KLUI8

[JK]

IanD: there you go, mention of the World Trail-O champs is hidden away in the side bar on the web site now. You can even see a podium photo if you go and click on the article. The IOF pages had the results on their news page in the middle of last week (courtesy of past BOF Chair Clive Allen I believe).

Still no mention of MTB-O [Junior and] World Champs on the page though, I suspect no-one had sent them anything so they couldn't put anything up there. So I suspect if the MTB guys want something on the site side-bar then they'll have to send it themselves and not rely on others to do it.

JK

[AndyC]

Trail -O is presumably pushed to one side because it isn't sexy enough being done by old men (and women on equal terms but there happened to be none in the team this time). The fact that it is possibly the most technical discipline of all the O types and that those "old men" (including my ex-club chairman and the man who got me into orienteering, John Crosby) have often been strong servants of orienteering for many years is irrelevant -not a sport for all perhaps just the photogenic.

[IanD]

Trail -O ... isn't sexy enough being done by old men

The British team happens to be old men, although that wouldn't be the case if Anne Straube chose to compete for her country of residence rather than country of birth. But if you think it's a geriatric sport, have a look at the top of the podium.

Trail-O champ and runnerup.jpg (114.9 KiB) Viewed 4999 times

The truth is that trail-O is the most sport-for-all variation of orienteering, all ages (one of the Ukrainian (I think) team looked about 14), both genders, fit runners and people in wheelchairs, all competing on an equal basis.

IMO it's also the variation which requires the highest level of map reading and terrain interpretation skills. I won't suggest that it's a better sport than foot-O, but it doesn't deserve to be treated as a poor relation either.

[AndyC]

Apologies - I should have pointed out that while the GB team are of mature years (benefiting from experience) anyone can be competitive at Trail O - I even have a certificate on my fridge for Nato's treasurer and myself coming third in a club Trail O competition.
My point was just that the team that won weren't in the target demographic for BOF perhaps