Event spotlight: British Orienteering & British Relay Championships Weekend 2025

Written by Ali Hooper (LOC), Entries Secretary BOC/BRC2025

As with every single orienteering event that takes place across the country every week, this weekend could not have happened without the incredible volunteers, many of whom put in a lot of hard work in the months leading up to the event, and all of those who helped on the day itself. A huge thank you to our three Planners, three Day Organisers, Weekend Co-ordinator, three Controllers, WRE Advisor, Entries Secretary, Safety Officer and the 75 volunteers on the individual day and 58 volunteers on the relay day, plus those who helped set up everything in both assembly areas ahead of and clear everything up after!

So, how did it all happen? Back in March 2024, following an appeal by British Orienteering to find a venue for BOC25, LOC Chair Iain Smith-Ward volunteered the club to host the event, which meant it had to be adopted by the NWOA without the usual lead in and planning timescales. Permission to use Grizedale Forest was obtained from Forestry England quickly, the search for the relay area took a little longer. By June 2024 LOC had secured the use of Bigland, and then sought help from other NW clubs to take the lead for this event, many thanks to our friends at WCOC for taking this on!

Images below: Relay Handover and Start Pens, Relay Assembly (Janette McHendry), Individual Day Finish from Download (Credit: Ali Hooper).

In the New Year 2025, we also decided to try and make the Individual day a World Ranking Event. Again, the issue was finding someone to be our WRE advisor. We approached Ted Finch, who was super helpful and generous with his time and advice and WRE approval was granted at the end of February. It did mean a whole new level of requirements – back-up timing, GPS tracking, separate final control, run-in and finish, warm up area with model map, separate start, probably the biggest being providing water points. There was concern that with an entry of 1000 there would be issues with everyone helping themselves on a warm day, if they were placed on the fire trails. The solution was to have water at Elite only controls in the forest. But this meant finding 8 helpers across 2 shifts willing to do so, placed over a wide area, in addition to having a long walk into the starts before their run – thanks here must go to Andrew who ran a taxi service up to the starts and into the forest for several helpers.

An event of this scale will always have some challenges, we found the last three weeks leading up to the event, after entries closed, were the most frantic! It was at this point we lost our original first aid provider, but Safety Officer Kev found a replacement in 36 hours. Some of the biggest issues at this time were around start times and late entry requests, all of which required a lot of effort for the Entries Secretary, whilst trying to ensure Elite start times were issued and published first, to allow those travelling with an Elite to request a different start block, if necessary, to then get the remaining start times allocated by Fabian, then getting them signed off by the Controller and sent to the bib printers as per their deadlines, which proved particularly interesting.

For the Relay team, planning and managing three walking routes to the arena which ran along the same road as the traffic arriving and leaving the event, and pedestrians and cars using the same (tight) entrance/exit was one of their biggest challenges. All of the Organisers also had the usual challenge of ensuring all volunteers who wanted a run, either in the individual or relay event, could do so around their helping duties – several volunteers on both days were at the event simply to help and not run at all, many did a double shift helping.

Images below: Credit Wendy Carlyle.

Finally, in the week prior, as the planners started to place the kites and stakes for controls, they discovered some late felling work in an area used by the W/M12/Orange course. Some hasty late warning emails to all competitors and map changes in the start lanes were rapidly deployed.

All that being said, would we do this again? Absolutely, yes we would! From the calm in the field early on Sat and Sun morning as volunteers started arriving and just getting on with their jobs, to seeing everyone emerging from the forest into assembly and the mass starts at the relays – where else would you see competitors of all ages, sharing the same event, courses and run-in at the sametime? From the youngest M/W10 through the Elite M/W21 up to the M/W90 – the British Champs is an event for everyone - a truly personal highlight for me was seeing my niece on the podium on both days!

I’ll leave the final words to LOC Chair Iain, from an email he sent to all LOC members after the individual day:

"Just home now from what should go down as one of the best events ever staged by LOC. The weather was superb, the forest tough and technical, and the organisation was second to none."

Results from BOC 2025

Results from BRC 2025