Bronze for GB at the European Trail-O Championships

[kedge]

ETOC 2007 was held in conjunction with the French 5 days, at Carcans, Aquitaine this week.

The GB team, in common with many highly experienced trail orienteers from Europe including several former champions, found it hard to come to terms with the problems set by the planners, particularly on Day 1. Scoring was unusually low throughout the competition, with no-one scoring higher than a combined total of 28 points from a total of 36 for the two days. Usually one would have expected several scores closer to the maximum.

Reigning World Champion Dave Gittus (WRE) was the best placed Brit, his score of 24 gaining him 12th place overall and 4th Paralympic competitor whilst Dick Keighley (WIM) was 16th overall and just missed the podium as 7th placed Paralympic comptitor. Vivien Mullett (Solway) made an encouraging debut being placed 10th in the Paralympic class on Day 1

There was some consolation for the GB squad in the team competition where the GB1 team of Dave Gittus, Dick Keighley and John Crosby (NATO) finished 3rd behind Norway and Russia to claim the Bronze medal in the Paralympic class and finished 5th in the Open classification.

The event was excellently run by the French organisers who had the pleasure of a Gold medal for the home team in both the individual Open class and the team championships.

The new European Champion In Trail-O is none other than Thierry Gueorgiou - is there no end to the man's talents?

Full results on http://www.ffco.asso.fr/site%20guigui/Autoextract/pages/orientation-precision/ETOC-resultats-photos.htm

[jac]

The new European Champion In Trail-O is none other than Thierry Gueorgiou - is there no end to the man's talents?

Full results on http://www.ffco.asso.fr/site%20guigui/A ... tation-pre cision/ETOC-resultats-photos.htm

Third: Alan Gartside of LVO.

Scoring was unusually low throughout the competition, with no-one scoring higher than a combined total of 28 points from a total of 36 for the two days. Usually one would have expected several scores closer to the maximum.

By my reckoning, for six of the 18 controls on Stage 1, and four of the eighteen controls on Stage 2, the planner's answer was less popular than the one most chosen by the competitors. For one timed control, no paralympic competitor agreed with the planner. For another control, the planner's answer was the fourth most popular with the competitors.

I note also that Thierry's eight 'errors' included six where he went with the consensus of the other competitors but the planner disagreed. His margin of victory would have been much more if the planner agreed with the consensus viewpoint.

A mischievous commentator might suggest that (a) the courses needed better controlling and / or (b) it was a bit of a lottery.

Ninth place was only three points below first place.

[troll]
I have long contended that Trail-O has a strong tendency to being trivial (if there is enough good information to make a good decision) or being random (if information is poor or insufficient).
[/troll]

One way to mitigate this would be to have timing at all controls. This has the 'advantage' of making it more like non-Trail versions of orienteering, i.e. map-and-terrain decisions need to be made correctly *and quickly* to win.

And of course we need to have the control sites and the map rigorously controlled.

[Spookster]

A mischievous commentator might suggest that (a) the courses needed better controlling and / or (b) it was a bit of a lottery.

I presume the Foot-O event had different planners and controllers, but it too suffered on several days from planning and controlling errors and strange decisions.

It was a great event regardless, but with two of the days being WRE's for the Elite classes, you would expect the highest standards to be achieved.

[Barny of Blandford]

The timed Trail-O that you mention already exists and is called 'Tempo' - it uses sets of SI units at each control in the same way as foot orienteering.
A demonstration was first done at the JK on Day 2 of the TrailO at and repeated on one of the days at the French Five Days.
Beyond that my knowledge runs out and you will have to ask people with a better understanding than me to explain further

[kedge]

My apologies for missing out Alan Gartside's name in my first posting. Alan chooses to represent Ireland in Trail-O and my initial posting was more or less the same as the report I submitted to British Orienteering on the performance of the GB team.

Alan is a skilled and highly consistent performer on the international Trail-O scene and he was only one point behind the winner.

jac wrote:

A mischievous commentator might suggest that (a) the courses needed better controlling and / or (b) it was a bit of a lottery.

I think that the problem lay in the desire of the planner to set difficult courses on a map which was adapted from a Foot-O map and was perhaps not as accurate as was first imagined. I'm not going to publicly criticize the controller here, not knowing the problems the event may have had had. Significantly, although there were one or two rumblings amongst the competitors, no official complaints or protests were lodged.

jac also wrote

One way to mitigate this would be to have timing at all controls. This has the 'advantage' of making it more like non-Trail versions of orienteering, i.e. map-and-terrain decisions need to be made correctly *and quickly* to win.

IOF is currently trialling such a version of Trail-O. Known as Temp-O. In this, all controls are timed controls - the time limit may be as short as 30 seconds, and unlike conventional timed controls, there is also the Zero option, where the control may have no correct solution. Electronic punching is also being tested.

We initially trialled Temp-O at this year's JK and there was a further demonstration at the end of this year's ETOC in France. As at the JK, by careful planning we were able to set two different problems using the same four flags at each cluster. The concept was very favourably received.