Orienteering clubs Mona and Ozons have agreed upon change in Easter Prize organization - in 2020 the competition was organized jointly, but starting from 2021, oldest sprint orienteering event in Latvia has been organized by Ozons.
Easter Prize, which has happened since the inception of sprint orienteering in 2002, has introduced sprint orienteering discipline in Latvia and has grown together with it. Arranging the event in he capital city, and often organizing it in the old town, Easter Prize has had an important influence on the popularity of our sport.
Browsing the historical results and maps of past Easter Prizes, unfolds a beautiful part of sport history, which confirms that this race has not only been a nice season starting event for all Latvian orienteers, but also useful rehearsal for national team athletes, preparing for international championships.
However, after 18 years of carrying the sprint orienteering flag, a time for a change had come in 2020. Previous main organizer of Easter Prize, Juris Cebulis spoke of this: “When we organized the first Easter Prize in 2002, orienteering sprint was not yet a separate discipline and, for example, map drawing had no specific standard. All these years we have grown together with sprint orienteering. 18 years have passed and we have gained a lot of experience, but also found out that it’s harder to keep up traditions than to invent them. Last couple of years we have worked together with Ozons on several projects and it was a successful process, so we approached Ozons with an offer to become the new Easter Prize organisers. We wish luck, endurance and creativity to the new organising team. Also I’d like to thank OK Mona orienteers for all the invested work to make Easter Prize happen.”
As mentioned, Easter Prize since then has been organized by another Riga orienteering club - Ozons. New main organizer of the competition, Jānis Tamužs, at that time revealed that “it will not be easy to follow quality standard set by Mona and that will be our main goal in the first season - to try and do it as good as before, especially considering quality of map and courses, which is crucial for fair competitions.
As urban orienteering becomes more important part of our sport, we will try to improve in the upcoming years, targeting World Ranking Event status and trying out new competition formats. Also we want to use the Easter Prize potential to work on orienteering publicity."