Rankings Consultation

[SeanC]

Surprised no-one has yet commented on the Rankings proposal which is on the BOF website. The report has some interesting questions that are worthy of discussion.

Speaking as someone who goes to only 2 or 3 ranking events a year, the proposal might motivate me to break into the top 5000 or whatever, as with many more ranking events I might make the required number of events. Also at a local level we could create club, county or region leagues which might be motivating too.

But does it mark the return of the district event? But called "local ranking" events. The danger might be that clubs decide to put on more of these events because that's what their experienced members want, and this might be at the expense of local events aimed at newcomers, and formats not compatable with the rankings (relays, score events, mass start trail challenges etc.). On the other hand these events exist now and are often not part of a competition, which seems odd when many smaller saturday events have good leagues.

[mharky]

It all looks very good, except for one thing; having everyone on the same ranking list. The comparison between different M21L races is dodgy enough, I have the 2nd highest individual score, 1330, GG has the highest at 1331. What for? a SOL and the SN Trophy. Apparently these performances were over 30points better than Scott Frasers 4th in the European Champs. This is clearly not the case. I guess because it was an IOF event it's hard to get good score. Well, normally our internatinoal athletes end up getting rediculous scores for pretty poor performances in IOF events.

Then start adding in different age groups... it's just not going to work. If you can't get a system that works for people running the same course, how can you compare people running different courses at different events.

Orienteering is too varied to have an accurate ranking system. Other than maths geeks and BOF, who actually cares about the ranking system? I can see why, as a NGB, they want and need one, but it is never going to be good, so why waste time and money trying to make it "better". At the end of all that effort it still won't be good and still no one will care.

At no point in that document do they ask wheter people think a single ranking system is a good idea.

[NeilC]

Other than maths geeks and BOF, who actually cares about the ranking system?

Organise a regional event but then don't submit the results to the ranking software for a few days - the answer will lie in your inbox.

[AndyC]

As I am currently ranked last in class with zero points......do I care much?
For me the challenge is getting my battered body round the course at all with relative position on the day just a judgement on how well I did. Comparing my run in Kielder with my run in the Midlands just doesn't work - how do you really compare runs on vastly different terrain and weather?
I managed ,on the same map over two days, to reduce my time by 25% but drop from above to below the colour line so which was the better performance?

For the elite it may work but "all orienteers"?

[mharky]

as i just said, it doesn't work for elite, i have the 2nd best individual score from a SOL. this is a bit of a suprise, because for the last few years I have managed to get the best individual score from a SOL. i am dissapointed in my performance.

[swat]

Take a look at this thread on our club forum - some people certainly seem to care (maybe a little too much...)

[seabird]

Can't see how it could ever work reasonably at the very top end. Would be amazed if a system was devised well enough for it to be a tool that selectors could use.

But the benefits of being able to easily provide a a good local league or galloppen seem tremendous - and would be a real boon to loads of "number crunchers" around the country currently doing this task. All our leagues etc throw up anomalies in deterniming the winners - but that is part of the fun - doesn't really matter. The new ranking systems may or may not do the same (the maths are beyond my will to understand) - but it will save a lot of people a lot of hard work

Re the inbox enquiries you get if you don't publish results for rankings quickly in my experience this has been predominately from a very small and older, but vocal, section of the orienteering population. (swat was posting his perfect illustration as I was writing this)

I think the Working Groups proposals are excellent and could just lead to this vocal group having its numbers expanded by the rankings list becoming more useful to more people.

[graeme]

But does it mark the return of the district event? But called "local ranking" events.

i.e. exactly the events that the Event Structure review said should have been level 2.

who actually cares about the ranking system?

Once upon a time I wasn't allowed to run the British Champs because I hadn't been to enough ranking events ... If they were still using that system, you wouldn't be allowed to run this year. Would you care?

Incidently, before godders jumps in, there's a stupid part of the algorithm (appendix 2, rule 5 for those who care...) which gives too many points to winners of small events in technical terrain. Easily fixed by taking s.d. from other courses.

[graeme]

Maybe mharky's scared of the tough competition from the older classes

Graeme

57th (M21)
51st (M35)
171st (M40)
150th (M45)

[EddieH]

The FRA Championships (not merely ranking) used to be based on all the A category races (10 to count). Points were awarded on position, nothing to do with relative performance in the race, let alone any account taken of past performance.

Thus it was far easier to get high points on the periphery of the sport. I could win maximum points in South Wales, but couldn't even achieve a point at Pendle for example.

Maybe it wasn't the best system (indeed it was eventually changed) but it was the system that was used. The overall winners in the end were always class runners in their time.

Of course any ranking system will throw up anomolies, but I am sure the proposed system will be more truthful than the IOF international ranking preceisely because there will be a far larger database of performances in most races than there are at say an IOF ranking event in Brazil.

[andy]

Any info on intended timescales for the development of this system? and who's going to write it?
(i thought it was already under development, seems like every committee under the sun is going to debate it first)

[EddieH]

Having glanced through the document my real concern regarding the list's value is that if only 6 events per year count, and if most events become ranking events then incompetent orienteers that know their local patch might get very high points indeed.
My feeling is that people should generally be discounted from their most local events - but it's probably not practical.

[geomorph]

Having glanced through the document my real concern regarding the list's value is that if only 6 events per year count, and if most events become ranking events then incompetent orienteers that know their local patch might get very high points indeed.
My feeling is that people should generally be discounted from their most local events - but it's probably not practical.

We incompetent orienteers (probably not a royal 'we') cock it up even on our local patch.

I do know what type of terrain I compete best on, which means when I get it right my results get top notch ranking points. So I would select races based on the terrain type and then hope I don't foul up (low probability). Getting 6 such results per year - hah

[Mrs H]

Rankings shmankings! I've never understood why anyone cares about them because they don't stand up - even as a league of people running the same class - unless they were at a good proportion of the same events. I'm astonished at that link Swat posted - do people really decide which events they go to because they think they will get good ranking points? the only sensible thing to do would be to confine ranking events to championship, national and a few well attended multidays to ensure everyone is competing against their peers on a regular basis and truly better and consistent runners are at the top. The single ranking list will be similarly meaningless - but possibly a lot more entertaining.

Mind you i am absolutely astonished to see BOF referred to as BO in appendix 2 - surely a flogging offence coming from "official sources"!

[roadrunner]

The athletics rankings on http://www.thepowerof10.info are based on best times that season, so you could say they're open to the same criticism as the orienteering ones: it's easier to run an SB on a flat course than on a hilly one. But they have an extra feature which we could perhaps adopt as well: you can select a head-to-head comparison of the top ten runners, so you can see how they fared when they raced against each other.