From our humble roots
Orienteering has its presence in Singapore back in 1977 when the Swedish Orienteering Federation was on a promotional tour and made a stopover in Singapore. They invited Mr Victor Lam, who was then a Young Military Officer to run alongside them. After the event, the Swedish Orienteers felt that Singapore has good potential to do Orienteering and encouraged Mr Lam to start the sport here in Singapore.
In 1978, the Orienteering Federation of Singapore was established.
At that time, public recreational activities were scarce and the community quickly latched onto this idea of “a running event with an added element”. Victor & his team spread the fun of orienteering by choosing prominent locations like the Singapore Botanic Gardens, and the National University campus. The good rapport finally paid off as the sport made headlines in the local press with the term “the “thinking sport”.
However, the high life of OFS was short-lived as the rapid development of Singapore’s economy saw the privatisation of land. Many green spaces were lost and coupled with the government’s focus on an information economy, the sport slowly lost its interest and was shelved aside into the archives. Victor & his team was also reassigned to other services within the armed forces, thus ending this short golden era…
To not that long ago…
Fast track to the year 2013, a group of sport enthuse who were former members of Singapore Polytechnic’s Outdoor Adventure Club came together to discuss the possible ways in rekindling the spirit of outdoor adventure in youths.
Orienteering came up onto the discussion board as both our founders Alex Tan and Sebastian Wong thought that this sport would be an interesting “spice” to the already established running community in Singapore. Together, the duo rekindled Sport Orienteering with the rebuilding of the Orienteering Federation of Singapore (OFS).
At that time, the term Orienteering is loosely defined in Singapore with most people associating it with the idea of cartography and “just another syllabus” taught in school. Hence, the first few order of business were to:
- Promote and Educate the public in Singapore about Orienteering as a sport.
- Develop a set of standardise coaching and competition guidelines in order to put Orienteering on par with the levels of the other national sports.
- Train and Build a competitive team for National representation in world wide Orienteering event
To achieve that, Orienteering Singapore worked hard alongside our industry partners to craft maps, create races and build up a team of budding athletes.
As of present times, those same concepts still stand the same but with new challenges that comes with an ever-changing sport environment. Visit our home page: https://www.orienteeringsingapore.org.sg for the most current mission objectives.
Our Milestones
2013 – Registration of Orienteering Singapore as a society / association
2015
- Map Making workshop by renowned Chinese mapper – Shen Jiatu.
- Establishment of an Inter-school Orienteering Championship – Later rebranded as the National Orienteering Race (schools)
- First Mega Orienteering event on Pulau Ubin with more than 500 attendees
2016
- OrienteeringSG has its first team of athletes and took part in the Asian Orienteering Championships, Taiwan.
- The National Orienteering Race (Schools) – NORs goes bigger with the introduction of a tertiary campus to host the event.
- OrienteeringSG attends the Oringen academy to get valuable insight about the sport
2017
- Göran Andersson, IOF representative visits Singapore to conduct a training workshop for educators and facilitators to the sport
- Launch of monthly “O-trainings” to gather interest from the community
- Japan Orienteering Association (JOA) invites OrienteeringSG to Japan for an exclusive training camp in the highlands and also attends the All Japan Orienteering Championships.
- First Youth team takes part in the HK annual Orienteering Championships
2018
- Singapore is accepted as a full member of the IOF
- Sport Singapore recognises the position of the OFS as the governing body for orienteering
- OrienteeringSG takes part in the Asian Orienteering Championships and also attends the Event Advisors Clinic and Asian Working Group meeting.
2019
- Launch of Singapore Orienteering League, a series of 3 days orienteering races held every quarterly
- Record number of participants for NORs with close to 600 national school runners, coaches and officials.
- OrienteeringSG takes part in the Asian Junior and Youth Orienteering Championships
- Salomon Singapore comes on board as team sponsor
- OrienteeringSG takes part in the World Cup Finals held in Guangzhou, China
2020
- Launch of Singapore Orienteering Standards Level 1 training program
First World Ranking Event / Asian Cup leg in Singapore(cancelled due to Covid19)