OCR world championships are an OCR race, that athletes from all over the world can access. To guarantee a certain technical level, the athletes must qualify in specific competitions, which must meet specific criteria. In theory, that’s all.
But who defines the criteria ? Who defines the difficulty level? And – above all – who can organize races and call them “OCR World Championships”, “World Cup OCR” or “World Cup”, assuming that OCR is still technically not a sport?
At the moment, the OCR world championships have been organized by the “Adventurey LLC” .
Adventurey is a private organization (yes, just like the Spartan Race, owned by Joe de Sena) that registered the brand “OCR World Championsip” and organizes competitions mainly in the USA.
This association was the first to have the capacity and the ability to intercept the desire for OCR. It organized competitions in the USA, it made partnerships around the world, and organized a race, in 2014, to which everyone was invited! Which is equivalent to the OCR World Cup.
From there, the success of the OCR world championships was growing. and we all aspire to participate every year, becasue we know that it’s fun and challenging.
However, from 2014 onwards (from the time of the first OCR world championship), the obstacle racing associations have grown, multiplied, merged, and created different movements.
For example , the Strong Viking association has created the OCR series . He exported them around the world (South Africa, for example), and organizes his own world championships. They are called OCR Series World Champonship . They are held every year in the Netherlands.
At the same time, what’s happening in Europe (and in Italy, of course – the country I live in)?
In 2015 the FIOCR (Italian OCR Federation) was born.It is a sport association that wants to aggregate the OCR associations in Italy. FIOCR has joined other similar national associations (which not only have an entrepreneurial purpose, but also have the goal of regulating the obstacle race discipline and making it become a sport!), And together they have formed the FISO (International Sports Federation for Obstacles). Its purpose is to regulate the discipline, in order to be able to propose it to the CIO (International Olympic Committee).
These associations founded in 2016 to the European OCR championships, to which we are used to, and the followings in 2017, 2019 and 2019. We can qualify only through FIOCR, because it is the only Italian association that is part of it!. So, it was therefore natural for this movement to expand. In facts they have been close collaborations with associations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and even America (yes, the very America of the OCR World Championship). There is a detailed Wiki page about it.
It is easy to understand how, with associations from all continents, it was decided to do a world championship at federation level, a Federal OCR World Championship.
Last year, 2018, it should have been in Switzerland. The FISO has not had time to organize that – suddenly – the date of the World Spartan Race appeared in the same week, and therefore the athletes have routed their resources to the certain (and most famous) race compared to the not yet completely defined race. By FISO, it was decided to save resources for better times.
This year ( 2019 at the time of writing), we know that the federal world 2020 in Russia has been scheduled. The Ninja race is already organized. August 2020. And the standard and sprint races? There are all intentions, but unfortunately there is still no official confirmation.
And the “OCR World Championship” in Stratton, Vermont, USA? (we have opened Google Maps for you: it’s the area above Washington, on the border with Canada). As we saw, they are already confirmed in a year time! 2-4 October 2020. They will be in the same way that we saw in Europe, in London, in 2018 and 2019. And in the way that we lived last days (at the time of writing the article).
