Discussion: Universities with Orienteering

Hi Attackpointers! I'm in my fourth year of uni studying computer engineering and looking to do a master's degree overseas. Does anyone know of any universities in Europe with good orienteering and training community? Contacts would be greatly appreciated :)

Contact Robbie Anderson at Chalmers in Gothenburg. Also Sam/Ross in Uppsala.

Good for you Rhombus! Do you have requirements? Scandinavia? Somewhere with skiing in the winter? Somewhere you can easily get by with only English? Anything else?

Also, are you looking to do a technical engineering degree?

And I'm sure Emily and Will in Finland would be happy to tell you about their experiences there.

Several British universities have orienteering clubs.
But the others are correct. The Scandinavian universities offer the best orienteering training and studying for a man of your caliber.
But if you come to Florida you can start an orienteering club on campus, apply for student recreation funds and meet lots of great fellow students at the same time.

Here is a list of Swedish orienteering elite training centres connected with universities
http://www.svenskorientering.se/Utbildning/elitori...
It is in Swedish. Let me know if you need a translation.

Hey Robbie consider going to Edinburgh. Lots of EUOC members on AP

NTNU in Norway. Info in English on the orienteering club and Masters programs in English. Seems to be the place to go for a technical degree and a lot of orienteering.

Cristina already nailed it: NTNU (formerly NTH) with the NTNUI (NTHI) sports club is (by far!) the largest/best concentration of orienteers in a single university.

When I grew up in Porsgrunn I never had to consider any alternatives at all since everyone I knew in orienteering were also headed for Trondheim. I stayed there for 7-8 years and the period contains many of my most fond memories, like the first time NTHI managed to send 5 teams to Tiomila, something no other club had ever done before:

Not only did we have a marching band and female teams that won several times around that time, we also managed to get all those 5 teams to finish! This was a _lot_ harder back then because there were no restarts, just a cutoff limit after each leg and even for the final finish.

When that 5th team was expected at the last control everyone from NTHI followed our band down the (very long) run-in chute and the band ran through most of its repertoire while we counted down the time to the cutoff. Finally, about 45 sec before he had to be there he ran out of the forest, punched the control and stood still for a few seconds receiving our hurrahs, and then ran to the finish line. While he punched at the finish control several other teams arrived from the forest and ran desperately for the finish only to be met by the guys who pulled a rope across and cut them off.

In the UK: Edinburgh (which I know has a really good informatics/CS/AI department) or Sheffield (maybe Oxford/Cambridge too?)

Mark Nixon is a good person to ask about Edinburgh (he is, or was, the O coach)

This also always becomes a question about what you care about more, the university or the orienteering? ;)

In the UK also University of Bristol has a good active club (UBOC) and there is a strong "adult" club in Bristol (BOK) as well. Not the best terrains around there (as in most places in England), but with so many orienteers you'll have no problems finding rides to races.

Edinburgh is a really great mix of world class university and world class orienteering. Not the top of either, but in my opinion the best mix of both.

Of course if orienteering is your primary goal, and the masters is basically a way to facilitate that, then one of the Scandi ones would be the recommendation.

And if Cristina's recommendation is not enough, here's a little audio snippet taken while the NTNUI team was going out for practice...

Hello Rhombus! What about Dresden in Germany for going overseas? We have a excellent technical university at town.
TU Dresden
And in Dresden exists the biggest orienteering community of Germany with a lot of trainings.
Dresden Group
USV TU Dresden at 25manna

What becks said.
More details here.

Linköpings University offers good possibilities as well. Contact krister.hultberg@liu.se if you are interested.

Nice promotion Astrid ☺

If you want to come to the UK, then Edinburgh is the only sensible choice. Whilst we don't have the academic pedigree of Oxford or Cambridge, it is still a highly respected university consistently at the top of UK and World Rankings:
AWRU 5th & 32nd
QS 5th & 23rd
THE 6th & 27th

In terms of terrain, we have some amazing sprint maps around the city. There are a few "forest" maps, but the good terrain in Scotland is up north. Stirling and Perthshire and 1 hour away, Aviemore and Deeside are 2-3hrs away. The terrain there is world-class.

We have a very strong club here. We have won the British University Champs 10 times in the last 12 years. We are reigning British Champions in both Men's and Women's elite. We had 14 different athletes run in international competitions in 2017, including WOC, WC, JWOC, EYOC, JEC, and Euromeeting. We were also the first orienteering club in the UK, and are actually older than British Orienteering.

Edinburgh hosts the National Performance Centre for Orienteering, lead by myself, the only full-time professional coach in the country (I'm also the GBR Technical Coach). We have a Performance squad of 15 athletes, and a Development squad of 8 athletes, as well as an open club. We have a dedicated physiotherapist (free for performance athletes), S&C delivered by the university's head-coach, and a specific running coach (also the elite coach for uni XC team).

There are 7 different team training sessions (orienteering, running, S&C) Mon-Fri, and we head away for training and racing most weekends. There is also a series of seminars on Performance Sport on an almost weekly basis. Last week was Injury Prevention & Management, next week is Sports Nutrition. The university offers academic dispensation to performance athletes, meaning they can get extensions or move course-work when it coincides with important orienteering competitions. We have the ability to flag performance athletes to the admissions department. We can also put athletes in the Performance Sports flats in halls of residence. These have bigger/better beds, more fridge space, and flatmates who are also performance athletes in their own sports.

I think that's everything.

mark.nixon[at]ed.ac.uk

Yes, Germany, e.g. Technical University of Dresden and a couple of orienteering sports clubs with also international runners in town. I would recommend USV TU Dresden ;-).