FOCUS magazine (for the elite?)

[Gnitworp]

Why don't we simply define our terms and call all courses that we want to be the 'Championship', just that, instead of 'Long'; courses on which you can earn your 'Championship Badge'. This might dispel the confusion.

[LostAgain]

This might dispel the confusion.

I'm not sure there is any confusion. The winners on the Short Course at major events know what they are doing, they prefer to compete for the leadership on the short rather than be 1/3rd to half way down on the long, essentially pot hunting. This is almost an inverse of the mentality that gets Graeme to run the M21E when he could be in the top 5 for M45L.

I'm glad Graeme was refused an entry on the M45L after having ran the M21E, could not face the prospect of him having ran so far and then beat me!

[graeme]

Why don't we simply define our terms and call all courses that we want to be the 'Championship', just that.

I thought we did, except that the word we choose is "elite" not "championship".

[frog]

I agree that it is too elitist and would rather have a cheaper subscription and no/a less glossy ordinary orienteer orientated magazine.
As a cyclist I don't pay for our track cyclists so I don't see why as an ordinary orienteer I should pay for elite orienteers.
If people want to become professional sportspeople they should get government subsidies or be self supporting.
I don't support BOF's 3rd vision though of "winning more places on the podiums". If we got more people joining clubs and competing locally I really wouldn't care if we won no international prizes.

[frog]

Completely agree with the beer and wine as prizes thing. I love the informality of hill races and cans of beer as prizes. The juniors could have Irn Bru or Irn Bru 32 if they want extra zip.

[awk]

As a cyclist I don't pay for our track cyclists so I don't see why as an ordinary orienteer I should pay for elite orienteers.

You don't.

If people want to become professional sportspeople they should get government subsidies or be self supporting.

They do and are.

I don't support BOF's 3rd vision though of "winning more places on the podiums". If we got more people joining clubs and competing locally I really wouldn't care if we won no international prizes.

I do agree about getting more people to join clubs, and one very effective vehicle for promoting the sport is success in top end competition. Personally, I don't care about your personal experience, but I recognise that if I'm going to be able to continue to enjoy one of the best sports on the planet, then a rather broader approach is needed, which includes having and supporting routes by which people who are particularly talented can succeed, and using that success and development around it to feed back into the rest of the sport. Club orienteering has benefited enormously from international competition over the years.

[Mrs H]

The winners on the Short Course at major events know what they are doing, they prefer to compete for the leadership on the short rather than be 1/3rd to half way down on the long, essentially pot hunting.

Yes we know what we are doing and it's not pot hunting because there arn't any pots - we are doing the course length we prefer - Middle Distance races like the one at Hopwas (British Elite Champs - don't know wha that makes it for everyone else!) don't attract many long course runners because they don't want the shorter distances even when they are on offer - how else did i come 4th? and ironically I could on at least two occasions call myself Midlands Night Champion - basically because no one else elligible turned up - and I won a bottle of wine last time - but I have also won the short course at (run in conjunction with) the British Championship on a couple of occasions which was far more satisfying for me - title or no title. I can't see what all the fuss is about - why can't you all bugger off and leave us to enjoy our selves.

Just as Graeme says even winning W50L or 55L would be meaningless when the likes of Stella are running W35L?

You are all deluding yourselves - except for the M/W 21 E winners - it's all tokenism

[EddieH]

When I was a younger veteran people used to ask me why I didn't run my age class in BOC and the JK because they wisheto compete against me. It was always a bit of a dilemma but I wished to run elite (like Graeme with no chance of winning it).

I always saw it as my choice and I never ffelt that my age class winner was devalued. After all if the best guy in your class decides to go skiing instead of competing, or is genuinely injured do you take the attitude that you are not a genuine champion?

If so I suppose that the ladies WOC will be devalued because Simone has decided to look after baby instead of run. Come to think of it what if a potential champion chooses to be 8 months pregnant during a championship?

After all the top Elite in the UK have often had higher objectives than BOC and have therefore not competed - I suppose that the trophy winners in all those years should be ignored. Who remembers a certain JK prizegiving where the poor eleite champion stood on the stage like a lemon whilst the announcer proceded to tell us about the UK elite results taking place in Scandinavia?

I agree with Gnitworp here. The champion is the fastest person that enters the race. Every individual has to make up their own mind whether and what to enter. Apart from anything else it seems a good thing to me to give people the chance of being champions, a feat that can make a real breaktrough in future performance of that individual apart from increase local publicity opportunities.

[awk]

The winners on the Short Course at major events know what they are doing, they prefer to compete for the leadership on the short rather than be 1/3rd to half way down on the long, essentially pot hunting.

Not really, no. Pot hunting doesn't come remotely into it. Some people simply prefer to run shorter courses. Whilst I ran Long at the British, I chose to run Short at the JK because I wanted to enjoy the weekend, and recognise that running 2 long races in amongst 4 days back to back, isn't conducive to that. Talking to most of the others who finished in the top 10 in my class, that was very much the attitude of all of us.

The one exception to this (S for multidays, L for one days) is the O-ringen, where running times are much more within my range of enjoyment.

I do agree that most of the competitors themselves recognise that S classes are not 'championship'. It does seem though that some people don't, as Neil's highlighting of my own club's website exemplifies.

In terms of the championships, my understanding is that we are moving under the proposed new structure towards separate open and age class championships in sprint, middle and long/classic. If not, we should be!

[frog]

I think of the decision of whether to run a long or short race as similar to the decion of whether to do a 10k road race or a marathon. One competition isn't inferior to the other. It's a matter of which distance you prefer to run, how much training you want to do and how long you want to be out there for.
For most of us the pots are irrelevent, you do it for fun. If you love distance running then you'd come back from a 3k o event feeling it wasn't worth the petrol to get there. If you prefer shorter races then being out for 8k can feel like a never ending endurance test.

[Mrs H]

It's no use Frog, they're not listening - in fact I'm quite surprised that some on here are not calling for the abolition of short courses at championships all together (except of course that it might make the events less viable as we pay the same and do a good share of the donkey work - and all without any possibility of being a champion or winning a prize ) in fact I think that long course runners at the next championship ought to go out of their way to thank the short course runners for their selfless support of the sport as - far from being inferior beings we do the sport for the sheer pleasure of it rather then any form of reward

[greywolf]

maybe we deserve a prize... oh....hang on.....

[mike g]

I can't speak for Greywolf who I haven't placed as a person

If my guess is correct Becks, he´s a clubmate of both of us ... in my case has been for the last 16 years but we have never met.

[awk]

It's no use Frog, they're not listening - in fact I'm quite surprised that some on here are not calling for the abolition of short courses at championships all together

What on earth have you been on tonight Mrs H? As far as I can see, the only issue raised about the existence of S classes is that the winners aren't labelled as 'champions' at the JK and British, which we both know, as S class runners, is totally in accord with S class runner attitudes. Abolition doesn't come into it!

I'm looking forward to there being proper S (i.e. middle distance) championships for the age classes.

[Mrs H]

It's the way people like Lost Again and Gnitworp are claiming we run short courses because we are pot hunters and title seekers when they plainly haven't got a clue why we do it - there is something vaguely unpleasant about their attitude - a sort of sports apartheit.

They just don't get it do they? We run short courses because (for whatever reason) we like the distance not because we think we might win a trophy or a title. That is pure conjecture on their (and Mike Forrest's) part and i have seen or heard no real evidence to support it.

If you continue to make people feel uncomfortable about their choice of course at major or any other events you risk alienating them and at your peril.