Updated Event Structure article

[NeilC]

I believe that a lot of this current thinking is coming from Senior Management who believe the colour system for naming courses to be both confusing for newcomers and too restrictive.

A consequence of the event review is to encourage clubs to put on whatever courses best fit the area and to allow competitors to run the course that best suits them. The urban/middle/sprint races provide good examples of where the colour coded system for naming courses has not been used but instead clubs have just put on what they believe to be a suitable set of courses.

Technically also colours are really classes - ie they indicate which course you need to run to qualify for a colour standard. This meaning has been lost and colour courses are often offered, but on which you can not gain a colour standard. Again very confusing. If the colour incentive scheme remains then a guideline exists outlining what would be a suitable course on which to award a particular colour standard.

Most of us know what to expect from a Brown course (say) but then when explaining it to a newcomer will use phrases like long, hard, about 9k straight line route, won in about an hour. Thus there is logic then in using these terms directly when defining a course.

[graeme]

I believe that a lot of this current thinking is coming from Senior Management

So do "Senior Management" actually run to names?

Technically also colours are really classes - ie they indicate which course you need to run to qualify for a colour standard.

Does anyone claim "colour standards" nowadays? The phrase generates no hits of the BOF website - it seems like a strange thing to be using to guide policy.

A consequence of the event review is to encourage clubs to put on whatever courses best fit the area and to allow competitors to run the course that best suits them.

It's nice to see something has survived! Of course we shouldn't force formats on events, but in reality most/all courses at most events will still map onto the colour-coded system, and its the best shorthand we have.

[seabird]

The framework illustrated will need an awful lot of tweaking not only to accomodate the full range of courses suggested for regional events, but also for the more limited range of courses currently offered at C4 events.

Very few C4s have TD5 terrain. (Indeed it could be argued that some scarcely exceed TD3). Therefore the Very Hard row will often not or should not be used. Even on a traditional 7 course event this will immediately mean that the Light Green and Green Courses will share the same tick box.

Events with more courses will have greater confusions.

XS and XL are easily understood, but how do we distinguish between the wide variety of M courses we will need? I believe these should start from somewhere around the 3.5-4.0k mark.

Having the Yellow in the S rather than XS section given the distances suggested is plainly nonsense.

[geomorph]

Paul

thanks for showing this matrix.
We do need something to clearly show progression in technical and physical demand.

Col 1 (white) - if we use distance need to be more realistic: Anybody done a 0km course?
Col 2 (yellow through Green) Mixes too many changes in one column. Personally I see yellow as an extension of white, so would prefer it in the same column. I would never put TD5 courses in the same column as lower TD.


Graeme

The concept of winning time works well at TD5 (maybe 4 as well) level, but is not so valid for orange. For white/yellow I feel that it can be just as confusing (especially for newcomers)as length is at the higher TD.

Is there any one measure that covers both though?

[NeilC]

Does anyone claim "colour standards" nowadays?

Yes, though it is normally administered at a regional level. Some regions use them as selection criteria for junior squads and they are still seen as important development tools.

One problem though is that not all courses named by colour offer colour standards. Should colours be awarded for example at all regional event courses? Or at the EOD colour-coded courses that are often put on alongside age class based courses or at local evening events? Because many of these events offer colour courses.

The original event review plans seemed to suggest increasing the colour scheme
http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/live/news/images/File/GuideA.pdf
so that you could gain badges at any or all of the 13 colours on offer.

As I understand it the matrix shown illustrates a convenient (for newcomers as well as experienced orienteers) way to demonstrate that courses consist of both a length and a difficulty componant. If a club is not happy with the matrix then add/delete columns/rows as required to suit your event - the principle will remain.

[distracted]

It would be good to know the composition of the current group so that they could be lobbied, and also what timescales they are working towards.

Indeed! What happened to all this "increased transparency" promised with the new board etc?

[Adrian]

As has been pointed out often enough, in large parts of England there are few TD5 areas, so shouldn't races in those areas be labelled light green, light blue, light brown and light black (grey!) in order that TD5 times and qualifications are not given out for TD4 races?

And red and purple need adding back onto the matrix, plus some other combinations.

[madmike]

And red and purple need adding back onto the matrix, plus some other combinations.

I thought red had been abolished but there was now a long orange

[RichT]

Sorry I've got my naughty head on this morning

NeilC wrote:
I believe that a lot of this current thinking is coming from Senior Management
Graeme wrote:
So do "Senior Management" actually run to names?

I'm sure NeilC can put me right but I was musing over who "Senior Management" actually were.

Looking at the people listed on the BOF site, I assumed I should be ignoring the lists of Directors, and the World Class Team and the Development Team, which left the Operations Team. And no disrespect to our Accounts Manager but I can't see Jannette driving the Event Structure Review.

So are we just left with Mike & Caroline being "Senior Management" and deciding what form our sport should take for all of the membership ?

[Paul Frost]

Looking at the people listed on the BOF site, I assumed I should be ignoring the lists of Directors, and the World Class Team and the Development Team...

Am I missing something or shouldn't the Development team be involved in the development of our sport?

[Scott]

I assumed I should be ignoring the lists of Directors

Eh? Shurely they're the very definition of "Senior Management"?

It's been said many times before, but the problem seems to be that (in management-speak) nobody took "ownership" of implementing the review once ESRG reported. Therefore, nobody seems to know (or wants to admit) which alterations (if any) have come from the Board, which from Events Committee, which from Fixtures Group and which from Rules Group (not to mention Major Events Group and the Elite, Junior and Senior Competitions Groups, if they've had any say). And so it is impossible to know whom to contact with queries/suggestions/complaints.

[awk]

It's been said many times before, but the problem seems to be that (in management-speak) nobody took "ownership" of implementing the review once ESRG reported.

This has always been a problem in BOF. Review groups are formed, recommendations made, and then everything collapses because the very people who have 'ownership', the review group, is disbanded, and nobody is designated or sufficiently qualified to drive it forward. In this case, it should have been Events Committee, but they got it wrong bigtime (and probably inevitably), mainly because there was (as far as I can see) nobody on Events who was involved with the development other than the chair, who understandably saw their role, I think, as referee rather than advocate. The tipping point was when the proposals, having gone to consultation, were not returned to the ERSG to review as they should have been and as had been promised, but kept at committee level. The ERSG was then disbanded way too prematurely, and the whole thing started to fall apart (my emails to Mike Hamilton, Lynn West etc. were pretty strongly worded at this point!).

It's why, whilst working within the BOF structure, whenever I tried to develop and move anything forward , I kept 'ownership' after the move was procedurally accepted for at least 1-2 years, before letting go to a committee - and even then I've not always been overimpressed by how things have panned out after that, all going to show that any project needs people who really believe in what they are doing. I'm totally convinced that is the fundamental problem with events development at present, with nobody keeping an overview of how Rules, et al have interpreted things. That's not blaming those committees - they've done the best they can - but pointing the finger at the lack of strategic management (ownership) of these changes. I for one would have sent stuff back to the committees, telling them that what they had done didn't fit into the model required and needed reconsidering. Coupled with the overly rushed fudge (euphemistically termed a 'transition', but more a completely mixed up mess), the result has been all too predictable.

[Clive Coles]

I am not sure if these threads help clarify what is happening ~ they do however illustrate the unholy mess we seem to have got our sport into !

To my mind It all started well ~ the original review group had some vision as to what was needed. Our current confusion is I believed caused by too many groups. committees and working parties being involved in the implementation.

The more you read, the term "quality" seems to be being given different interpretations. For me I am more interested in quality on the course than facilities in the car park. But if I follow that view point can I really stage a Blue or Brown course on areas where technical difficulty is limited. Should the longest course in these circumstances really be called a long Orange ?

We are not now going to get a full final set of rules until sometime next year. BOF have still to sort out discounts for local BOF members and the way event fees are shown on the BOF fixture lists.

On 1st January we are entering a period of transition in the hope that things will get sorted out as we go.

You would not run a Business in this way ~ but we need to remember are an amateur sport run by volunteers.

I suggest we keeep running things as we do now and wait for the fog to clear. We can then still turn up and run a course we can recognise as suiting our abilities.

[seabird]

And red and purple need adding back onto the matrix, plus some other combinations.

As a club we've put on several purple courses in recent years.

Guess if you still want to use a colour to describe them we now could have Orange, Long Orange, Extra Long Orange.

However the matrix works well for this TD Level - so no real need for a colour at all.

[SeanC]

Right, the mists are clearing a little. We shouldn't think in terms of colours as (according to current thinking) they will soon be no more..???

However I have a new problem. Any help apprieciated.

At our local Kent Orienteering League events we are ahead of the game in that we haven't been using colours in the course descriptions. And to save time we use the same description for all events, as follows:

"Course A: Will be as technically difficult as the terrain allows, about 5.5km long and aimed at the experienced orienteer.
Course B: Will be of intermediate difficulty, about 3.3km long and intended for the progressing orienteer but challenging enough not to
disappoint those who require a shorter course.
Course C: Will be relatively easy, about 2.2km long and ideal for beginners, juniors or family groups, to develop skills."

This seems to work for newcomers and experienced alike and is easy for organisers (same course descriptions are used in all event fliers).

Will this have to change? Will we need to describe the course lengths extra short, short and medium? This doesn't give the image of a modern adventure sport. Also would organisers have to calculate the technical difficulty and display in the flier? Currently there is a section on the Kent Orienteering League flier that describes terrain - which indicates what "technically difficult as the terrain allows" really is.