New Race Formats

[mharky]

Some interesting examples from other sports Greywolf...

Orienteering is no where near the elite standards of those other sports though. Nowadays 2 gold medals in athletics makes you a international legend. In orienteering, 2 golds is amazing, but just not to the same level. Simone Niggli has done the lot, twice. The lot is not unreasonable. 5/10/marathon is.

So if it is reasonable for people to do the lot then the schedule should allow them. There is plenty of time in the year to do it. The Olympics has a tight schedule, there is only so much track time etc. And you can't have so many heats. WOC is 7 races, the sprint can be done on day, so it's 6 days of racing

[EddieH]

In their determination to make the disciplines distinct IOF have prescribed the style of each discipline. I get the distinct feeling that whilst the intense technical challenge of middle has been a real hit, changing classic to long has not. Route choice is a part of orienteering and in appropriate venues makes for a good challenge over long races - but why oh why do the shorter legs have to deliberately miss out the most technical bits, (particularly obvious in Ukraine)?

Somewhere between these, the introduction of small areas suitable for high speed TD3 orienteering has been a great innovation on which we are building a whole variety of urban distances. However I think it sad that when the area allows all the most complex available terrain isn't used. For example I thought that the WMOC was the PERFECT sprint event. (It happened not to be TD5 IMO - definitely only TD4 - but the point is that the planners made the most they could out of what they had).

I suspect that I am with Gnitworp in my feeling that all events (not deliberately planned for juniors/beginners) should use whatever terrain they have to its best capacity.

Regarding WOC, it is not for me to say, but reading elite comments I feel they are broadly happy with both middle and sprint, but not with the dumming down of the old classic races.

[graeme]

And you can't have so many heats.

Why have heats anyway when they could just extend the start list. Most peculiar is the "long" heat which isn't even a "long"!

Maybe the elites don't think its worth travelling that far just for one race?

Graeme

[mharky]

I mean't at the olympics

[DJM]

EddieH wrote:
For example I thought that the WMOC was the PERFECT sprint event. (It happened not to be TD5 IMO - definitely only TD4 - but the point is that the planners made the most they could out of what they had).

Thank you! - I'll pass on your comments to the Sprint Final planner, Tiago Aires. But the maximum TD of any leg was arguably only 3.

The higher pace and the greater rate of decision making mean that technical difficulty has to be viewed completely differently in a good Sprint course. What looks like TD3 on the map appears to be much more challenging when competing!

In addition, we are testing "the ability to choose and complete the best route" between controls, and "finding the controls should not be the challenge", so TD4/5 legs would not be appropriate for Sprint courses anyway.