Classes can be confusing in orienteering because the sport combines 2 distinctly different components: navigation and physical fitness. Some new orienteers may have a strong background in running, so are after a long course with easy navigation. While some older orienteers have decades of navigation experience, so require short courses with difficult navigation.

Navigation difficulty

Different labels are used to indicate the different navigation difficulty. This gives orienteers an idea of what they are signing up for before they enter or hit the start line.

Forest/farm orienteering difficulty

Examples

Open these maps to see examples of typical courses at each level of difficulty.

White

Yellow

Red

Sprint orienteering difficulty

Examples

Open these maps to see examples of typical courses at each level of difficulty.

Easy sprint

Moderate sprint

Physical difficulty

To gauge the length of the course you should enter, you have to be realistic about your current physical fitness and confidence in outdoor and wild environments.

You should also read information provided by the organisers, which will include the hilliness of the courses. The hilliness is measured as climb, and this is measured in the same way as many other sports – it is total of all height gained on the course and ignores height lost.

When considering the length of a course an approximate conversion to road running might be helpful:

• For orienteering in urban environments or parks, you can consider the distance given by the organiser as similar to what that distance would feel like running on the road.
• For orienteering in relatively friendly forest and farm environments like flat pine forests or farmland with short grass, you can consider the distance given by the organisers as similar to what running twice that distance on the road would feel like.
• For orienteering in relatively tough forest and farm environments like hilly and/or dense forests or hilly farmland with long grass, you can consider the distance given by the organisers as similar to what running three times that distance on the road would feel like.

Club classes

When entering a club event, you will want to know what difficulty level is appropriate for you.

Some events make this very easy by taking entries per course and naming courses with the difficulty, eg Yellow, Orange Short, or Red 3. In this case, you can use the tables above and any additional information from the organiser to help you choose the right class.

Some events, such as championship events, take entries by class. In order to decide which class you should enter, you may want to know which difficulty course the class will use. If you are competitive in your age class, then you can simply enter the A-class, eg W14A or M50A. If you feel that you are less competitive, you may wish to enter the B-class.

Additionally there may be a 21C class to catch new orienteers of any age. It is increasingly common for organisers to name open, non-competitive classes more intuitively, like open novice, or open yellow.

The 21 classes (21E, 21A, 21B and 21C) are open to anyone of any age.

Classes labelled as E (elite) are longer and provide the highest level of competition for well trained elite athletes.

Some competitions feature classes labelled as AS (eg 21AS or 40AS). These classes have the same navigation difficulty as the A-class, but are shorter in distance.

Club classes for forest/farm orienteering

Club classes for sprint orienteering

*Age on 31 December in the year the event is being held.

Schools classes

School classes operate on similar principles to the club classes , but use different words. Championship school classes are analogous to club A-classes, and standard schools classes are analogous to club B-classes. Some school competitions may also have a novice class for new orienteers to fall back on, much like a club C-class or open novice class. It is common for relays to be the same difficulty as the standard classes in the individual competitions.

For students at year 6 and under, precise classes are not something to be thinking about as it can be assumed that the navigational difficulty of any orienteering training they will be doing will be as easy as possible, or as the coaches sees fit.

School classes for forest/farm orienteering

School classes for sprint orienteering

**Age on 1 January in the year the event is being held.