JWOC - the aftermath?

[Becks]

Blanka, I'm finding it very hard not to be rude here. How on earth is top 20 not good? We are talking top 20 in the WORLD, with all the big nations allowed 6 contenders in each class. Gaining a medal is exceptional, top 20 is great, top 60 is more than respectable. We are not a great orienteering nation, and we have a tiny pool of talent to pick from in comparison with the Czech Republic. Yet we are getting multiple athletes in and amongst the Swedes, Danes, Finns and Norwegians of this world. Top 20 is definitely worth aspiring to - and if you get top twenty, then there's always more to aim for in the future. But to disregard anything below a medal as not good is naive and pretty ridiculous.

I don't think our athletes should be forced to relocate to compete - the UK has the advantage of a huge variety of terrain and areas amongst the best I have ever run on. The programs in Edinburgh and hopefully beginning in Sheffield are exactly the way to go, and follow a very similar model to France - local concentration of top athletes, working together, training hard and pushing each other to the top. I don't think Bex or Spongey would mind me saying that 18 months ago results like some they achieved this week were pretty unthinkable. But exciting new training concepts and a huge amount of hard work are just starting to pay off. I think we can do loads more, and I think we're going about it in the right way (it's not often you hear me say that!). But that doesn't mean I see the results from last week as anything other than what they are - very impressive, and a great base to improve on for the future. It was generally a young team, and there will be more to come from them.

[DIDSCO]

I looked on nopesport expecting to see a thread praising some great junior performances at JWOC and instead found this. [snip]

Mharky's quote from Heather Munro hit the nail on the head. Any juniors reading this thread should see those few lines as golden, probably the best advice you might ever get. I've been lucky to be involved with many junior international athletes in a range of sports and the importance of being patient is a key to their long term success.

Well done to the JWOC juniors and Jason/Gareth + coaches for a great set of results

[andy]

Looking at the results posted above this is easily the most successful of recent years, especially for the guys.

It's obvious the results could be improved on (as could anything but a string of gold medals), but as a progression it's definitely a step in the right direction and there were some truly amazing individual performances which should be praised. Well done to everyone involved.

[Eeyore]

I'd like to congratulate the team who did great last week and should be praised for what they achieved. I'm sure that some of their runs will have disappointed them but that's always the case in orienteering. The items on the BOF website have celebrated their success but I don't think went over the top. Encouragement is a great motivator to get better and achieve more the next time.

I was, however, disappointed that there was no mention of the 3 top 15 runs in the sprint on the last day of EYOC on the BOF website; those 3 deserved their 15 minutes of fame too.

The perfomances at EYOC were also encouraging (especially the W16s) and hopefully that whole team will develop into the next generation of successful JWOC competitors.

[Rockaldo]

I simply expressed an opinion and wanted to start a debate going that followed on from something we discussed at circuits last week, and judging by the number of people debating here this aim was entirely successful.

A debate usually ends in a vote. As far as i can see from the number of people "debating" on here there is nobody that agrees with you.

Democracy.

I suggest the circuits group starts discussing something they have a clue about.

[Scott]

We need to be realistic ~ as money becomes tight can this level of resourcing be sustained ?

Probably the most important issue to have been raised on this thread. Personally, I think this year's JWOC achievements were pretty impressive, but the UK Sport funding - which currently pays for the largest part of the performance/international programme - is going away for good from 2013, and we'll have either to find quite a bit of money from elsewhere or to cut back on performance staffing/resourcing (or, probably, a bit of both).

The Board are supposed to be discussing "all possible ideas for raising income" at their meeting next month. One obvious option is to use membership/levy income to fund some of the performance programme - currently no "members' money" goes towards international funding.

But in order to do that BOF has to get much better at selling the benefits of having a performance programme and the achievements of our international athletes to the wider BOF membership, which includes a lot of people who are going to ask questions like Blanka's (or, much worse, like our dear youngladdie's).

Communicating with all orienteers and demonstrating the benefits brought to all in the sport by the existence of a healthy performance programme is always important but going forward it will assume even greater significance.

[Blanka]

Something in your original post suggests to me you haven't thought this through...

The JWOC pool of athletes is much smaller than for WOC...

No, exactly as I wrote it. WOC is open to all athletes, generally the 21s age group but also open to younger and older competitors if they are good enough. JWOC is only open to a subset of these, the juniors, and generally limited in practice to the 18s/20s. So there is an awful lot bigger pool of athletes that can compete in WOC.

How on earth is top 20 not good?

I said anything below 20 (i.e. worse than 20th, 20th place and onwards), so you misunderstand me. Sorry for misphrasing this, could have been a little more accurate.

I suggest the circuits group starts discussing something they have a clue about.

[snip]

I will just repeat what I said about mharky's initial comment containing the most appalling language. There is ABSOLUTELY NO NEED for personal attacks on people, we are all entitled to our opinion, and as distracted, Clive Coles and Scott's comments suggest, my comments raise some fairly valid and important issues.

[redkite]

a side note re concentration of athletes.

We gave a lift to 2 Danish girls to one of the JWOC spectator races who explained that most of the Danish athletes, who had a great set of results, all went to the same boarding school.

[Arnold]

Blanka, you did ask for it.

Both intuitively and looking at the stats (thanks distracted, clearly living up to your name there ) it's obvious that this has been a phenomenally successful JWOC especially for the Men. So to come in with a critical post the day after is asking for trouble, no matter how much you say you're not criticising the athletes.

Let's congratulate the athletes one more time (it really was very impressive) and leave critical analysis for after the summer.

[madmike]

Blanka did not asked to be abused - regardless of whether you agree with her or not.

IMHO Didsco's comment, in particular, is not clever but offensive.

I don't agree with Blanka and Distracted has shown that the laudatory comments are fair and has provided evidence not abuse. Well done the JWOCers but shame on the abusers!

[Sunlit Forres]

That the JWOC results were a fantastic improvement there is no doubt. They were very good results in their own right too. Definitely worth shouting about and clear evidence that the new programmes are working. However, can I say something just a tiny bit in Blanka's defence.

I heard Steve Vernon speak recently about his and Tony Louhisola's observations that the fitness and speed of some of our top orienteers isn't as good as it can be. When the JWOC team were up at Culbin on 13 June for their pre-WOC training and we had a couple of local girls (aged 18 and 16) running the same course as some of the GB girls (shadowed admittedly). They are both national-class runners (cross country and hill running) but aren't quite at the top of the pile internationally. Our 16 year old, for example, came 22nd in the world Mountain Running Youth Challenge the weekend after Culbin. Our 18 year old was 6 seconds behind the leading JWOC runner (Rebecca Harding) having come second in the Scottish Schools U20 XC this year.

This must be the most un-scientific comparison ever and of course, this was only a training run (as it was for our ladies) so it would be silly to read too much in to it. But it did surprise me that our local girls weren't beaten by a bigger margin.

What Blanka's post should have said was that our top juniors should start getting very excited about their future potential. What a great incentive to train even harder! With the quality of the coaching set up we now have in the UK, they can get even better, and more podium places has got to be a real prospect.

[mharky]

I was merely expressing my opinion that you were talking utter rubbish. Which you were. You obviously have no idea about JWOC. Looking at results with your circuits friends does not make you an expert on the matter.

To simply expect GBR to have had a gold by now purely based on numbers sent to the competition is absolutely ridiculous. If you consider the size of our orienteering population and massive lack of terrain then we regularly over-perform considering the circumstances.

If you think our comments were offensive then put yourselves in the shoes of Ralph Street, for example. Who has come back from one of the most successful performances by a British athlete at any JWOC to hear his awesome performances described as "far below par"

I used some naughty words. You, however, were massively offensive.

[distracted]

Some more general 'evidence' (thanks to the maprunner site for the first 2) - draw your own conclusions:

WOC all time medal table (including relays) (26 events)

1. SWE 109
2. NOR 103
3. FIN 78
4. SUI 59
5. CZE 24
6. RUS 17 (inc. 2 URS)
7. FRA 11 (all Thierry?)
8. GBR 10
9. DEN 7
10. HUN 6

JWOC all time medal table (including relays) (21 events)

1. SWE 82
2. FIN 75
3. NOR 55
4. CZE 39
5. SUI 38
6. DEN 28
7. RUS 26 (inc. 2 URS)
8. POL 12
9. FRA 7
10. HUN 6
----
19. GBR 2


IOF Federation Ranking- http://iof.6prog.org/WR_FedRank.aspx
(top 10 runners of each nation as at 1/1/10)

Men

1 SUI 52842
2 NOR 52519
3 SWE 52513
4 FIN 51735
5 RUS 50110
6 DEN 48264
7 GBR 47046
8 CZE 46104
9 ITA 44599
10 FRA 43536

Women

1 FIN 51514
2 SWE 51411
3 NOR 51203
4 SUI 51131
5 CZE 46051
6 RUS 44536
7 GBR 41920
8 AUS 38410
9 FRA 34296
10 DEN 34113

[Scott]

7. FRA 11 (all Thierry?)

I think Gonon got a medal in the long a couple of years ago.

[PG]

JWOC 2010 Team Competition results were published yesterday:

. . Country . . . Men Women Total
1 Sweden. . . . . . 44. . 88 . 132
2 Denmark. . . . . 98. . 71 . 169
3 Switzerland . . 171 . 133 . 304
4 Norway . . . . . 140 . 169 . 309
5 Finland . . . . . 258 . 151 . 409
6 Czech Republic 233 . 240 . 473
7 Great Britain. . 222 . 369 . 591
8 Russia. . . . . . 526 . 207 . 733
9 Poland. . . . . . 495 . 298 . 793
10 France. . . . . 257 . 555 . 812

Great result: very comfortably ahead of Russia and France.

Did we have our best JWOC results ever? Based on the distracted’s analysis the answer is yes.

Did we achieve all our targets? I don’t know; I suspect that if detailed targets were set then we didn’t achieve them all.

I do understand where Blanka is coming from, and agree that results in the 20s and 30s are not what athletes should be aiming for, but virtually every competitor at JWOC will be aiming for top 20 or above. They can't all get there and we don't expect all our athletes to do so. We do need to celebrate those that achieve their targets and congratulate the team on the overall performance, but also need to commiserate with and encourage those that don't. Managing to do both in one statement is not easy.