Discussion: Hollowell appointed IOF CEO

They got the right guy. Now if they'll just listen to him.

Great news! Congratulations Tom and good luck.

Great news, indeed!

Fantastic! Congrats to Tom!

Congratulations! Best of luck.

Congrats to Tom. Great choice. I'm glad that he'll have a chance to develop also his SOFT vision for O-Ringen Acedemy from 2011.

Wonderful!

That's great news! Tom will do a top-notch job.

Grattis Tom!

Stort grattis!!

Yay! Congratulations, Tom!

Happy news! So great for the sport.

Well done Tom!

Does this make it a Holloween appointment?

Congrats Tom!

Obviously well-known to North Americans, some background please? I hope we won't be required to run barefoot.

Sweet As..

The following is mostly correct, I think….

Orienteering competitive background -- started as a teenager in Halden, Norway, when his dad had a job assignment there for four years. Also met his future wife Tone there. Back to the USA for university (UMass/Amherst). North American champ on M20 in 1980. On two USA WOC teams, 1981 and 1983. Still active competitor and very good.

Orienteering administrative background -- includes substantial time as president of OK Tyr in Karlsberg (SWE), also as O'Ringen boss, also as SOFT boss. And also team leader for USA at several WOCs.

Other -- after university, got married and moved back to Scandinavia, first in Denmark, then to Karlstad. Three sons. Non-orienteering work experience in top-level management in high-tech companies. Very smart, lots of common sense, unquestioned integrity.

And...
The only person on the Billygoat lifetime list (scroll to the bottom) to have never competed in the event -- he was the course setter in 1981.

Tom also helped set up some training camps for US in Karlstad on several different occasions. He was the US Team leader at WOC 2014 and maybe some others?

Another Billygoat connection - Tom was the connection leading to Erik Nystrom coming to the US. Erik was his neighbor in Karlstad and was the 2009 BG winner.

and,,,,he sometimes posts/logs on attackpoint

Tom has also served as a team leader for several US WOC teams. Those teams were blessed with the best team leader ever.

Thanks all for the kind words and congratulations. I really appreciate them!

Peter's short bio is accurate. If anyone is still interested by then the IOF will be publishing a longer article in their magazine which should show up on orienteering.org in a week or so.

I really look forward to getting started, which will happen in earnest in January. I will be doing some transition planning with Barbro Rönnberg in the next couple of months.

Tom's influence is obviously already evident :-) - the WMOC organisers played The Star-Spangled Banner as the "IOF anthem" at tonight's opening ceremony (dropping the jaws of just about everyone present).

Sooo, distances will now be in miles and climb in feet?

I doubt it - somewhat to my surprise, US orienteering appears to be entirely metric even at local level.

You do hear about the occasional 10ft contour interval, but typically it's at least been recast as 3m.

Yes, "Contour Interval 3m" is code for "Don't trust these because they came straight from USGS."

In the short interval between USGS and lidar, there have been some DEM-derived contours without access to the DEM. Those typically came in feet.

(Back to Tom) Issue 5 of the IOF's Inside Orienteering magazine/e-zine has a multi-page article about Tom.

Radio Oringen podcast (in English) with Tom H.

http://www.oringen.se/orter/boras2015/nyhetsarkiv/...

Very informative interview with Tom. Anyone interested in what's going on at the IOF level should listen. The need to increase the visibility of the sport, Olympics, split WOC's, future of World Cups, and other issues were all discussed. The interview is about 48 minutes and only the last 5 minutes were about O-Ringen.