Orienteering
A daily double strategy applies to the runner: laugh at the sick and run themselves healthy!
Sarolta Monspart
Orienteering
The word orienteering is the shortened form of “navigational running”.
Orienteering is one of the navigation sports, an athletic-type running sport in which the competitor must run the course marked by checkpoints shown on the map, using a map and compass, touching the points mostly in the prescribed order, in the shortest possible time. Between the checkpoints, the competitor chooses their own route.
The 1972 World Orienteering Championships were held in Staré Splavy, Czechoslovakia. Orienteering was not part of the Olympic Games programme at the time either, yet it received special attention in Hungarian sporting life. It was a young sport, and the 1972 event was the 4th World Championships in the series. The first was held in 1966 in Fiskars, Finland, where Sweden won the women's individual competition through Ulla Lindquist. Two years later, competing on home soil, Lindquist defended her title in Linköping. In 1970, another Scandinavian success was achieved. Friedrichroda in East Germany hosted the World Championships, and Norway's Ingrid Hadler could stand on the top step of the podium. Three World Championships, only Scandinavian success. Before the 1972 World Championships, they - the Swedes and the Norwegians - were also considered the absolute favourites.
Sarolta Monspart broke the Nordic monopoly
That is precisely why it had such an enormous impact that Sarolta Monspart broke the Nordic monopoly at the 1972 World Championships. Népsport (Sports news) sent a correspondent to the event, as if they had sensed that something big was about to happen in Czechoslovakia.
Quote from Albert Gömöry's writing
When Monspart in the yellow tracksuit appeared among the pine trees not long after the last checkpoint, the 100-150-strong Hungarian cheering crowd raised the red-white-green national flags into the air all at once. Everyone was very excited. Monspart was the last to run among the members of the Hungarian team. The two-time world champion Swede Lindquist could not get under 1 hour 20 minutes. Sarolta Monspart after the victory, on September 14, 1972, won the women's individual world championship title by a significant margin at the World Orienteering Championships. (Picture)
The other Swede, Brigitta Larsson, led for a long time with 1:18.53, but the Finn Pirjo Seppä ran even better than her (1:18.35.) The Hungarians knew nothing about where Monspart stood, because shortly after the start all the split-time measuring equipment broke down. Thus, it was only possible to infer how Monspart was completing the individual sections. When the Hungarian champion ran in, the clock showed 1:17.01. But the race was not over yet. The defending Norwegian champion Hadler was still on the course at that point. An agonizing 18 minutes followed. Finally, the Norwegian stopped the clock at 1:21.00, Sarolta Monspart became world champion!
Albert Gömöry
Néhány hasznos cikk
A skandinávok legyőzése
Monspart Sarolta az 1972-es vb-n megtörte az északiak egyeduralmát.
Kullancscsípéstől tömegsportig
Sacizmus, képek és egy 50 perces film a tájfutás titkairól 1978-ból.
A (táj)futás műhelytitkairól
A Nemzet Sacija, a Nemzet Szurkolója és a Nemzet Sportolója két részben.
