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First Annual "Curse of the Goat" Long-O
race set for May 18 at Palos North & Country Lane Woods
With a mass start at 10 a.m. Sunday, May 18 the first annual "Curse
of the Goat" Billygoat-style Long Orienteering race will begin
a great new tradition in Chicago.
Normal rules for the "Curse" will make it different than
a regular orienteering race in that
- following others will be allowed, and even encouraged,
- at least two controls of your choosing may be skipped without
penalty,
- the winning time will be over two hours, and many will struggle
to finish in four, and
- a "Curse of the Goat" tee shirt will be awarded to
all who finish the Red race in under 3 hours.
As we commented in the Fall 2002 Chicag-O, Billygoat style orienteering
races have become popular across the country. Most other clubs now
offer either an annual Billygoat race or some form of long score
event . While most of those events are in the Fall, Chicago's woods
are usually nicest in the Springtime. After much deliberation, we
have decided to present the Billygoat concept this Spring, and hopefully
every year hereafter.
Named after the famous curse placed on the pennantless Chicago
Cubs back in the 1940's, the race will be an annual event that will
stand out from the rest of the Club schedule. Legend has it that
Sam Sianis, owner of the Billygoat Tavern made famous by John Belushi
on Saturday Night Live ("Cheeseborger, cheeseborger...."),
once tried to bring a goat to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. When
he was summarily booted out, he loudly cursed the Cubs, and proclaimed
that a goat would sit in the Wrigley Field bleachers before the
Cubs ever won another pennant. And indeed, for the past 55 years,
the Curse of the Goat has continued to haunt the ivy-clad confines,
and the Chicago Cubs have fallen short of the pennant time and time
again.
Unlike normal local orienteering, the "Curse" offers
Club members a chance to group together both to make the navigation
easier, and to allow less-experienced members to learn how the better
orienteers select their routes and attack points. Look upon it as
"on-the-job training." Usually everyone joins some group
or another at some point in the race, even those that are taking
their time strolling through the forest. It just makes the event
more social and fun!
Two long courses will be offered on the combined maps of Palos
North and Country Lane Woods: Red (15-20km) and Green (12-15km),
along with normal length courses of White, Yellow and Orange that
will start, as usual, between 10 and noon. Dugalic Dragovan will
be the Course Setter. Dugalic was the CAOC 2002 Club Champion, beating
Michael Collins, Charlie Shahbazian, Kris Sabataitis and many others
by a large margin.
So mark your schedule now. Get in shape. Set your sights on claiming
a soon-to-be-a-collector's item "Curse of the Goat" tee
shirt: there may be other such races in following years, but there
never again will be The First Annual Curse of the Goat
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