Event / Course Incentive Schemes

[Miner]

I have claimed badges in the past, partly in competition with my son as we tried to work up from bronze to gold in our respective classes. It is also nice to compare times against others in your age group as for the amateur, not terribly athletic, orienteer there is an inevitable slide down the placings on the colour courses with increasing age and decreasing mobility.

In my experience local leagues etc are still dominated by the select few who make it into the regional squads anyway or who have enough time and money to regularly compete all over the UK and abroad and gain additional expertise. I have won prizes in local galloppens but it was more of an attendance certificate than recognition of any great orienteering.

Also for those competing on short courses (often parents who have to get back in a reasonable time to swap over to look after children) there are very few incentives as the short class winners are never included in any prizegivings.

[David Young]

Sketchweppers and Miner seem to be expressing a minority view, so I'd like to say I feel very much the same way about the old badge scheme.

When my daughter and I got bronze at the same time we were both pleased with ourselves - it was a real incentive, and actually claiming the badges made it a little more celebratory. Later I got silver and felt it was a definite achievement - and I liked getting my name in Focus and my club magazine, since like most participants I'm not likely to actually win a significant race. I was looking forward to seeing if I could get a gold badge: for me, a serious challenge but perhaps not impossible.

Now this has gone, and it's a shame. A genuine and well thought out incentive for intermediate people like me has been lost. Mins/km isn't useful, except perhaps for those just starting; the comparison with the best runners felt meaningful.

(It's also disappointing that the BO web site makes it look as if the scheme is still current (e.g. http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/e ... dge_scheme) - I only found out that it wasn't operating from this forum.)

I know I can work out the badge times myself from the results. It's not the same - and not just because it's so tedious to separate out the M55s from the other Blue runners manually.

It seems to me that the badge scheme could still operate, using results for those who run the colour recommended for their age class. Ideally, the calculation should be done centrally from the results submitted for the rank scheme. My view is that reinstating it would add something to the sport.

[Red Adder]

In EA I expect, on the flatter, bracken/brashing free areas to be able to [u][b]walk [/b][/u]at 12.5 min/km or quicker. Golds again .

Also in EA, when CC was introduced in the mid 80's a few of us experimented and quickly abandoned the idea of using standard min/km as determinant of the time limit. I still think that fast people running down a level or two, especially if reducing TD, should declare themselves n/c.

A lot of this discussion stems from the inadequately thought out change from 5 levels to 3. The problem remains though that a regional and district events had come to offer very similar experiences in the forest for the runner but at a differential cost. We have yet to come up with a very good differentiator - and I think for most people just running against your age group rather than you skill/distance group is not that differential.