Sprint Qual/Final

[jjjl]

Theres reason to think Sarah Rollins is through as well - according to live chat rumours...

[eddie]

British O Team Twitter (Gareth) says that all the brits are through

[Scott]

Have edited post above with slightly more up-to-date women's results (showing Sarah through).

Provisional Men's results here

Heat 1
1. Anders Holmberg SWE 15.09
2. Adam Kovacs HUN 15.19
3. Matthias Merz SUI 15.27
4. Scott Fraser GBR 15.45

Heat 2
1. Matthias Mueller SUI 15.02
2. Jonas Vytautas Gvildys LTU 15.10
3. Zsolt Lenkei HUN 15.21
4. Daniel Hubmann SUI 15.25
5. Murray Strain GBR 15.42

Heat 3
1. Matthias Kyburz SUI 15.15
2. Rasmus Thrane Hansen DEN 15.36
3. Thibaut Poupard FRA 15.53
9. Graham Gristwood GBR 16.08

[Scott]

Maps (stolen from World of O)
Men's A
Men's B
Men's C

[Scott]

...and the ladies:
Women's A
Women's B

Looks fun - the first part of the courses is a bit different to the standard UK sprint!

[Scott]

Still no official results - rumour has it that they are in the process of DSQing some runners for going out-of-bounds.

[ba-ba]

aye, the Olive Green towards the last control may well have caught out people in 'race mode' WoO bog is talking about 45 WOMEN - i.e. all those who qualified for the final?!

Maybe Barbados will win a medal yet?!

[buzz]

Where's the Olive Green near the last control? It all looks yellow to us colour blind types!

If any colour blind person gets disqualified I hope they appeal on the grounds of discrimination and we might get the stupid ISSOM specs changed.

[Scott]

SOFT is reporting 29 men, 11 women DSQed, including Scott.

[ba-ba]

oh dear.
Dave Rosen and his cohorts will have their work cut out!

maybe they should just have gandalf patrolling any impassable objects?

[greywolf]

So i think this would officially qualify as a shambles. Good job nobody at the IOF has aspirations to get Orienteering into the Olympics

you have to wonder wtf they were thinking, and why they didn't tape off the forbidden grass (e.g. as happened at WMOC 2008)

I'm sure it will re-ignite debates over ISSOM: IMHO there is a gap in the spec which isn't explicitly covered:

"528.1 (olive green) An area with forbidden access such as a private area, a flower bed, a railway area etc. " which can be read as = areas that normally have no public access.

"709 (vertical red hatching) This symbol shall only be used for last minute updates to the competition map (e.g. for areas that may be dangerous for the competitors during the competition, or very late changes to the competition terrain)" - which covers danger and last minute changes but not explicitly competition conditions which might have been known way in advance

Neither of which explicitly cater for areas which normally have public access but are forbidden for orienteers in this particular competition. At this event it appears that these have been inconsistently represented.

The maps which have been posted online show several red-hatched areas - a couple are obviously roads (and therefore dangerous), but that doesn't explain the other areas, e.g. south of 34, south of 38 / 51, north of 50... are the organisers going to claim that these were "last minute changes to the competition terrain"? If not, then either they should have been olive green....or the (presumably normally public) grass should've been red hatched.

[Scott]

The maps which have been posted online show several red-hatched areas - a couple are obviously roads (and therefore dangerous), but that doesn't explain the other areas, e.g. south of 34, south of 38 / 51, north of 50... are the organisers going to claim that these were "last minute changes to the competition terrain"?

Those areas are out-of-bounds on the printed maps, but are in-bounds on the GIFs that the organisers gave to World of O, so they could conceivably be last minute changes.

[NeilC]

The comment that so many were observed crossing a "thou shalt not cross" wall mid course rather suggests that the planners were expecting competitors to cross this and thus stuck an official there with a clipboard. Personally I think it is very poor planning to encourage competitors to take illegal (but clearly feasible) routes, although no doubt others (including WOC planners) may think that this is all part of the sprint ethos. If you can't plan around such possibilities then tape.

[Scott]

The (entirely unconfirmed) rumour is that nobody has been DSQed for crossing the uncrossable wall as "too many people crossed it" Apparently the DSQs are those who crossed the grass in the finish area.

[Becks]

Well, sounds like it's a good job I didn't get up at 3am to watch the action! Very frustrating. Scott is nowhere on the finish split times - any ideas from listening to the commentary?