At the 2016 World Masters Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships, held Sept. 28-Oct. 2 in Kaunas, Lithuania, Bilkent orienteering instructor and Academic Coordinator Nermin Fenmen took third place in her division, winning a bronze medal for Turkey.
Orienteering is an outdoor sport where competitors are expected to find the “control points” marked on a map. In mountain bike orienteering, competitors go from one control point to another by bike. Racing against time, they must plan their route, read the map and pay utmost attention to choosing the correct path at junctions.
The World Masters Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships, for competitors aged 40 and above, were first held by the International Orienteering Federation in 2010. This year’s event in Kaunas hosted 231 participants from 24 countries. Ms. Fenmen’s bronze in class W60 was Turkey’s first medal in an orienteering world championship.
Ms. Fenmen started orienteering in 2006 and entered her first mountain bike orienteering competition at the World Masters Championships in 2010. “My first competition was a total disaster,” she remembered. “It requires experience and skill to be able to read a map while pedaling fast through the forest. However, since I enjoy cycling as well as running, I started to train for mountain biking as well as trail running. If you can improve your bike skills, then you don’t need to be looking where you’re going all the time; you can break off to read the map as you move. Practice led to success. I’m very happy to have had the chance to represent my country on the podium of a world championship.”