British champs

[distracted]

Yes it was a fantastic weekend, great forest, nice weather, good atmosphere in the assembly arenas, and superb courses which really would punish you if you switched off. The number of people I saw just standing on the dunes looking around very confused (I'd include myself in that list on more than one occasion...) was quite significant! Makes you even more jealous if you don't live in Scotland

Yes, I found it strange that there wasn't map collection at the relays. Fortunately most orienteers are honest people... The gaffling issue is also interesting - there were 6 combinations used for the Men's Premier off 6 leg variations, as was also the case last year. However with 6 different legs you can get 12 combinations, not much thought needed to go A, C, B instead of A, B, C for instance. The 2006 event had 9 leg variations (which was also possible to do this year) and all 30 teams had a different combination, so it is possible and wouldn't have needed any more courses to be planned. Something to bear in mind for future years I think.

*failure of the radio controls which prevented the PA team from following the relay race progress

I don't think it was a failure, just the way Emit works, and so it could/should be expected that you won't get full information through. Normally the unit doesn't collect any card information, it just says "I'm control X, I'm control X" ad infinitum. The radio controls need to say "I'm control X, who are you?" However, given that the punch is confirmed as soon as the card has received "I'm control X" the card number isn't always going to get into the radio system if someone punches quickly... So not much you can do about it with the current system.

[graeme]

It certainly lived to the hype. The elite course was the most enjoyable I've ever done, and the planning was excellent, with variety of leg lengths, a trick a the end, and I even made a route choice. Of course, another 2k for a full length would have been more testing

Things I don't like...

1/ In order to run the "most enjoyable BEOC ever" I had to pass up the chance to race in BOC.
2/ According to the new IOF guidelines, elite "long" course terrain should be primarily about route choice. My map was pre-marked with the fastest route. By IOF standards, Culbin is not suitable for elite "long" course terrain - I'm worried that someone might decide to take this seriously and turn BOC "classic" orienteering into something else.

Spookster:
1/ I think the seeding was done properly, following the rules (the rules themselves may be daft).
2/ There seemed to be a normal number of gaffles in the relay. But I thought there was a bit too much hide-and-seek in places which makes it impossible to get away from a group. You HAD to read your control descriptions, which meant some fairly major origami at 1:7500. Of course, I'm may be biassed after my worst relay run ever.
3/ How can you seed relay teams? There's no indication of who is running, or even which of a club's teams is the "best".

[RS]

Some interesting stats from the results. On male A, L and 20/21E courses there were 53 mispunches. Only 25 on female. On male B and S there were 10 mispunches and 18 on female. What might this tell us? Discuss

[Axel]

RS

Competitors didn't challlenge their miss punch or DISQ at Download because they didn't have a back up card? In my case I did have my back up card in and I did challenge the DISQ for missing a control. After a check of my back up card against 2 back up cards from other competitors that were on the same course as me and a check of the computer based card I was reinstated. However I notice that they haven't changed the results to reflect this. Perhaps this has been the case with a number of competitors that have had their result reinstated because they have successfully challenged the miss punch. Only way to confirm this is to wait for the official results to be published.

[Spookster]

1/ I think the seeding was done properly, following the rules (the rules themselves may be daft).

2. Seeding
2.1 General Principles
2.1.1 Seeding is the process whereby the likely leading competitors in a class are
spread through a start list, so as to avoid their starting too close together.
2.1.2 The purpose of seeding is to ensure as fair a competition as possible for the
better competitors in a class. This is achieved by avoiding the starting of good
competitors on the same course too close together. Note that these competitors
may be in different classes when more than one class uses the same course.
2.1.3 A minimum separation of four minutes is appropriate for seeded competitors.
Consequently, where the minimum start interval on a course is four minutes or
greater, no seeding is necessary.
2.1.4 It may be possible to avoid seeding for a particular course by:
· extending the start list, so that the start interval is at least four minutes;
· planning separate courses for separate classes.
2.1.5 The following competitors should be seeded:
(i) Any entrant who is in the top 20 on the most recent ranking list for that class
(ii) In the case of an entrant who changed class at the beginning of the year, any
entrant ranked in the top 20 in any class in the final list for the previous year
(iii) Anyone clearly recognised as ‘top ten’ material but not qualifying under (i) or
(ii) above. This would include someone who has scored sufficient ranking points
at a small number of events to show they are capable of reaching the top 20, but
does not have sufficient counting events to be ranked there yet.
2.1.6 It is possible that only inspection of the start list by a tutored eye will detect
runners within this last category. It is recommended that an experienced
orienteer who has not been involved with the production of the start list is asked
to review it for obvious anomalies.

I think 2.1.3 was followed, because seeds were 6 minutes apart, but I'm not sure 2.1.5 was followed, and 2.1.6 wasn't applied. But the rules say "should" and "recommended", so these things are not mandatory at the British Champs, even though they are clearly good practice.

2/ There seemed to be a normal number of gaffles in the relay. But I thought there was a bit too much hide-and-seek in places which makes it impossible to get away from a group. You HAD to read your control descriptions, which meant some fairly major origami at 1:7500. Of course, I'm may be biassed after my worst relay run ever.
3/ How can you seed relay teams? There's no indication of who is running, or even which of a club's teams is the "best".

On the two classes I've looked at, Mens Premier and Mens 40, there were 6 different courses, and six combinations of those courses for the whole relay. Just by juggling the map order there could have been 12 total combinations, and without any new course planning, just alternative gaffling, there could have been 6 more. With only 6 combos and about 30 teams, 5 teams obviously will run the same race from start to finish.

In theory you can't seed relay teams, for the reasons you quote. However, I think you can guess which clubs will have teams likely to finish high up, and which teams from the club are likely to be the top team. Of course you might guess wrong, which is why you really need more combinations to reduce the chances of two top teams having the same race from start to finish, as was the case with the first two teams in Mens Premier and Mens 40 at the weekend.

Still, it did make for some great head-to-head racing, and in my case some "head-to-head failure to find the control in the green".

[geomorph]

Some interesting stats from the results. On male A, L and 20/21E courses there were 53 mispunches. Only 25 on female. On male B and S there were 10 mispunches and 18 on female. What might this tell us? Discuss

Lies, damned lies, and statistics. One conclusion that may be drawn is that the number of mispunches is directly related to the number of competitors, because the sample sizes in the A,L E were approximately in the ratio of 2:1 males to females.

BUT the B/S the populations were 'about' the same across the genders, so this conclusion does not hang fire here. So maybe you are inferring something about the competency of the various groups? In which case maybe you need to start another thread?

[Spookster]

Some interesting stats from the results. On male A, L and 20/21E courses there were 53 mispunches. Only 25 on female. On male B and S there were 10 mispunches and 18 on female. What might this tell us? Discuss

At the British last year 49 people out of over 1800 were disqualified (all reasons, not just mispunch), compared to 106 mispunches from fewer competitors this year. Without worrying about what sex, age or ability they have, people generally get themselves disqualified at least twice as often with EMIT compared to SI.

The more I use EMIT the more I like it, but that's still not very much.

[Brian Hughes]

I thought it was all great, superb course (M60L), an excellent choice of scale (1:7500) allowing the full complexity of the area to be appreciated and the map read without strain, and on what must be one of the very top orienteering venues in Great Britain. This must be unbiased praise, I mis-punched on Day1! Congratulations to all concerned and thanks for your very hard work,.
Brian Hughes (HOC)

[awk]

Personally, this was comfortably the best British Champs weekend I've been to. I particularly enjoyed the relays (M50) with the added spice of toing and froing from low to high visibility forest. As I've said elsewhere, I thought the map was outstanding.

I say personally, because I am aware that various rough edges affected some other people's weekend, including my club's W40 team who were left very angry and frustrated at the relays. Also, from what I picked up, Emit didn't exactly cover itself in glory.

But from our household's perspective, a very big thank you for all the hard work and good cheer from everybody concerned. Definitely worth the long haul northwards - it really didn't seem so far away after all!!

[EddieH]

It seems a hell of a long way when I come South which I have to do rather more often.

[Scott]

According to Wikipedia, the centre point of the UK is to be found somewhere in the middle of Lancashire, and World of O Maps claims that the closest area to that point is Knotts Wood. Never been there myself, but perhaps someone from SROC could enlighten us as to whether it'd be a suitable venue for every major event in the foreseeable future...

[awk]

It seems a hell of a long way when I come South which I have to do rather more often.

Yes, but you're coming away from the best stuff, so it will seem further! I'm ever grateful that we live as centrally as we do.

[jonm]

As someone quite close to the commentary on Sunday I thought it would be useful to add a few general thoughts to the comments by Spookster and Distracted.

- EMIT "radio" controls can be punched with out the data being passed back. This happens for a % of all punches and is a function of how the technology works. (and happens even if the "radio" controls are cabled). Its bad news if that % happen to be a leader.
- Kramer's Speaker Software (OS Speaker) is designed with the expectation of a small number of Relay classes. To display position it requires a seperate window for each class and leg. This is not very useful for UK major relays which have lots of relay classes (but probably works better in Scandinavia where less classes are more common). Mercs (Michael Napier's software) is better designed for this as thats the kind of race Michael works on here in the UK. Unfortunately the commentary teams choice of software is dictated by what the organisers want to use for their results system.
- Finally data quality is absolutly critical. If the database does not have the right data in (late SI/name/leg changes or changes forms not being typed in) the commentator windows dont give useful information. For small event you can get away with a "fix it when they finish". This does not work when you are doing commentary using that data during the race.

Sorry for getting this thread off topic !

[Ed]

According to Wikipedia, the centre point of the UK is to be found somewhere in the middle of Lancashire, and World of O Maps claims that the closest area to that point is Knotts Wood. Never been there myself, but perhaps someone from SROC could enlighten us as to whether it'd be a suitable venue for every major event in the foreseeable future...

Clougha Pike is closer, but I think there may be access issues. Having said that, I've not seen Knott's Wood being used recently. Clougha you could get a reasonable BOC out of. Knott's Wood may be a little on the small side but might do for the middle distance...

Sorry, thread now completely derailed!

[The Loofa]

[quote="jonm"]
- Kramer's Speaker Software (OS Speaker) is designed with the expectation of a small number of Relay classes. Mercs (Michael Napier's software) is better designed for this as thats the kind of race Michael works on here in the UK. Unfortunately the commentary teams choice of software is dictated by what the organisers want to use for their results system.

The most entertaining line from the relay commentator came after several expressions of frustration about the information he was getting and then saw Mike Napier at the last control. It was something like...
"Here's Mike Napier on the run-in. There's someone who can write decent commentary software"
Ooooh - scratch your eyes out!!