Where have all the young uns gone

[rosco]

PS I believe the waterproof paper is cheaper than the good quality paper that is used for maps!

[HOCOLITE]

I think I like your idea Rosco.
I presume there would be no colour standards involved with these. How would these work at the lower end with the juniors and novices, you can get the odd M21 starting on yellow. They may want to move straight up a level. Also how would you distinguish between the sexes. Before the smart arses come in not biologically

[SeanC]

I like this idea but can you think of ways around these problem.

a) I started orienteering again after 15 years, the first colour coded event after starting again I did a blue course. Would I have to start again at the bottom of the league running yellows and oranges like an orienteering Wimbledon AFC?

b) Being forced to run longer courses than I want could put me off attending. I have a dodgy back and am limited to green or blue, if the competition is weak in my area I might get promoted to brown - when I run brown courses I cant sit down for two weeks. Though I'd be happy if I was allowed to run competitively in green or blue but thrown out of the league.

Agreed, promotion and relegation though would spice things up for the middle of the road competitors like me, and especially good for juniors as they will be getting promoted.

[rosco]

I presume there would be no colour standards involved with these.

Hmmm, why do you presume that? Not sure I get your point.

I guess if you were a novice/junior you could pick anything from white to light green depending on how confident you were. Hopefully you would be able to get some good advice from the registration officials. Once you achieved the required standard (whatever that may be, say winner + 10%) (say) 3 times then you could move to the next level. This is probably good advice anyway for begineers.

If you were obviously at too low a level then I suppose there could be a fasttrack system where you could jump 2 levels or something.

If an adult started at light green then it would take them a minimum of 4 years to get to black which might be a bit long so the Fasttrack system might be a way around this. But then again orienteering does take a long time to learn....

[rosco]

a) No there would have to be some sort of special dispensation for that type of case. Probably you could start at green or blue level but not brown or black. Equally for people who only dip in and out of the sport but are eg great hill runners or do lots of mountain marathons.

b) I think this is the most problematic area. I'm not quite sure what the answer is. I don't think there's a precident in other sports - I've never heard a team say "We don't want to play in the Premiership"! Obviously it would be stupid to force you to run brown if you physically can't do it! Perhaps you could run blue for that season but your results won't count to the league or something.

[rosco]

ah yes promotion and relegation would only be for Supercolour Races so if you wanted to run brown, say, you could run brown at district events and once you had got 3 results of a suitable standard you could compete at brown at a regional level.

[Adventure Racer]

a) No there would have to be some sort of special dispensation for that type of case. Probably you could start at green or blue level but not brown or black. Equally for people who only dip in and out of the sport but are eg great hill runners or do lots of mountain marathons.

Not ideal for me then, as my first ever colour coded course was a brown Certainly the case that people coming into the sport from my background wouldn't want to do yellow - even red (if it had ever been offered) would actually seem rather short.

You're right about orienteering taking a long time to learn - I'm just about getting the hang of it after 7 years - but that doesn't mean it's not possible to be competitive (in the sense of moving up the middle of the pack) a lot sooner provided you can run fast enough.

[SeanC]

I think this is more likely to work if:

- you make it a virtual league, ie allow anyone to run whatever course they want, but if you want to enter the league you have to enter your league course, whatever that is.

- allow people to be promoted to any course by running in that course and achieving a certain standard (say within 50% of the winners time)?

- the concept is tried at a local level first. I believe there is a fundamental law of nature that states that the chances of agreement decreases exponentially with the number of orienteers involved

Also have you considered making it a team competition somehow?

[FatBoy]

If done "correctly" then a promotion/demotion system would work. By correctly I mean so that promotion and demotion levels are set in a way that doesn't promote people beyond their ability and doesn't hold back their development. But surely if done "correctly" then it would only put you on the course you would chose to run anyway? It would however give juniors something to aim at - we certainly see the divisional system in canoe slalom working as great motivation for juniors, perhaps just an annoyance for some of us old timers though.

To use the example from canoe slalom - anyone who has previously been ranked or has significant relevant experience (in canoeing terms - e.g. plays canoe polo; in orienteering terms - e.g. has done mountain marathons) must apply for ranking status - which basically means somebody "in power" decides which division you should start in. Sometimes you might be invited to compete in any Division 2 race (probably = green) as a guest to demonstrate your level and it's decided from there where to put you. If you are a ex-World Champion no doubt you will be put into the premier division with no questions asked! If you were allowed to start at white again it would spoil it for those children seeking that last elusive result to gain promotion to yellow. You would also need rules about re-instatement of ranking as a result of injury/illness etc.

If somebody is serious about setting this up I suggest you get hold of a copy of the BCU slalom yearbook which has all the ranking system rules in. While recent drops in numbers (like most sports) have changed things a bit there are years of experience at running divisions in there.

Having team competitions at every event above a certain level could work for getting participation up. It's certainly the norm at many XC and fell running races.

[PKJ]

As this thread now seems to be largely about age-classes and types of event -
I ran at the Regional Event Seabird referred to earlier. Describing it to a non-orienteer would go something like this,
"I ran the course for my age-class (M50), the long one not the short one - yes, orienteers often know more about how old people are than what they look like. I finished 3rd, and the 2 people ahead of me were M55s running up, presumably because their 'age' course was too short. If the best M50s had been there they wouldn't have run my course, they'd have run a longer one, say M40 or even M21. I ran the same course as W21. There were only 2 of them on the course, and one was a junior running up. The best W21 at the event ran the M21 course, and infact she won it. If you're M/W21, at major events you can run courses called E,L,S,V & N. But there aren't many M/W21s these days - although it's very demanding and enjoyable somehow orienteering isn't seen as fashionable, but a bit geeky, maybe a bit weird."
"I wonder why. And did you run for your club?"
"Er, no. I hardly ever do that. In 2006, I had 2 opportunities within a reasonable day's travel (CS Cup match & JK relay), and in 2007, I'll have about 2 (CS Cup match & CS Cup final, if we make it)"

So, I'm in the 'super-District event' camp, though I suspect many non-Nopesport reading orienteers wouldn't be. Events at fairly ordinary areas can be very demanding when there's something at stake (eg: CS Cup finals at Clowbridge, Greenham Common, Blidworth).

[David_Young]

Going surprisingly far back in the discussion to my previous question (I must log in more often!): (a) Thanks, awk, for the information about ageless classes. (b) It's true that I have a SE-centred view, and the standard of Regional events I perceive may not be typical.

[SeanC]

PKJ, that post made me laugh, but also sadly accurate. However here in the SE we have more team competitions. Most of (or all of?) the regional events form part of the south east league an interclub competition. Plus there is the Frolics series, a summer london league based on local events. The funny thing is that there isnt much interest (in my club at least) with the more prestigeous south east league - even though its based on regional events, whereas we take much more notice of the frolics series. I think this is to do with the scoring system, the frolics series gives most clubs a chance of winning and is more dependant on individual performances on the day, the SE league is very dependant on participation levels and therefore quite predictable.

So I agree, more team competitions, but they should be well designed team competitions that get club members talking to each other, encourage participation and interest. Since this thread is open to new ideas how about this one:

Orienteering test matches.

Thats competition between two clubs, the prize being the glory of beating the other.

I imagine test matches to be primarily between neighbouring clubs of similar size. The results could be collated over time to give a national club ranking based on who beat who, but the competition should mainly focus on:

- giving each team a genuine chance of winning depending on the performance of their runners
- encouraging club spirit (like the compass sport cup does)
- encouraging inter club spirit. Ie at the end of the event the clubs should meet for the prizegiving or a social and competitors can find out what all these names look like in real life.

Colour coded events would be a good place to host test matches, potentially making them more popular than regional events, they would therefore be super colour coded events.

[Vidalos]

Doesnt this happen for every road running event at a local level whereby a number of events are nominated within a region to be part of a series. Club totals are automatically calculated for men and women in various categories

Couldn't orienteering do the same to produce a club total for events within the regions?

It's easy to say that orienteering is different but it could be made to work if some technically gifted person could write the software

[SeanC]

yes, but what your suggesting is to improve on the leagues like the current SE league. This might be a good thing, but I am suggesting matches between two clubs, not a league based on the individual performance of many different clubs. A match is potentially more personal, more sociable and more interesting. You could do a league of match results but this would be of secondary importance.

[Vidalos]

I'm not familiar with the SE League, but the suggestion I suppose is to have an ongoing (over a year) club competion within the region.

As a member of both running and orienteering clubs I get to see both. Running clubs seem to provide both individual and club competitions at most events