Silva Trophy Award Winner 2023: Graham Gristwood, Forth Valley Orienteers

British Orienteering are pleased to share the winner of the Silva Trophy 2023 is Graham Gristwood of Forth Valley Orienteers.

The Map Group annually awards the 'Silva Trophy' to the best professionally produced map. Read what Graham's nominators had to say about his work over the years below. 

Graham Gristwood, Forth Valley Orienteers

Map area: Queen Victoria School, Dunblane

The area was used historically for Forth Valley Orienteers local events (around the time of 2000-2012) but fell out of use for many years.

Graham identified it as a suitable venue for a Euromeeting sprint race, and it was decided to use it for the Mixed Sprint Relay in October 2023. 

As the area is small and compact, the race map was in two parts, with a map-flip partway. Many national teams from around the world came to take part in the race as part of preparations for WOC 2024. The race went very well, with positive comments for the map and the terrain. 

Graham also won the Silva Trophy in 2011 and 2021, and is one of the map makers for the World Orienteering Championships this summer in Edinburgh.

Congratulations to Graham on winning this year’s award!

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It’s important to us, to recognise the other individuals who were nominated for the Silva Trophy 2023. Here they are, alongside some of the comments regarding their contributions over the past year.

Nominees for the Silva Trophy 2023

Jon Hollingdale, DrongO – Map area: Culbin

“Culbin was originally mapped from the WOC Relay in 1976 and had been updated periodically by a variety of mappers for years on pockets and it was becoming apparent that it was requiring remapped. Jon opted to start again taking lidar data and throughout COVID and beyond remapped the whole area into a consistent map which was universally acclaimed when it was first used at Moray 2023 as accurate, easy to interpret and great to run with.”

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Our final spotlight on the Mapping Award winners concludes in our next news story sharing details of our Walsh Trophy Winner 2023. Check our website or social media daily for the latest updates.