European Champs & World Students teams announced

[mharky]

http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/index.php?pg=1&action=news&id=MjQyNg==&rtn=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5icml0aXNob3JpZW50ZWVyaW5nLm9yZy51ay8=

http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/index.php?pg=1&action=news&id=MjQyNw==&rtn=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5icml0aXNob3JpZW50ZWVyaW5nLm9yZy51ay8=

[andypat]

Nice to see some newish faces in there.

[frog]

Well done.
Rocky?

[mharky]

The teams attending this competition are doing so on a self-help basis and the teams have been selected from those athletes who made themselves available for selection on that basis.

[andy]

Some interesting selections!

Good to see Ewan back on the GB team

Claire only going for relays though, odd

[mharky]

Also Rich Robinson and Ant Squire, both of whom have had great seasons for the last 2 years

[Little Hoddy]

Yeah. Glad to see that the selectors are picking teams based on ability rather than age, another example being Lucy.

I wish that they would do the same for the British Squads. There have been plenty of WOC medallists who are older than Ant and Rich, yet they are excluded from the squad system. Not, I feel, due to lack of ability.

[Big Jon]

For info - athletes at EOC pay a registration fee of approx £70, individual event entry fees £80 per day and relay £40...... and you thought the British Champs was expensive.......

[frog]

Wow, what extras do they get for that money? Is it for the fancy technology that means we can watch moving icons on maps at home?
Does some of the SEDS jigsaw money go to support Scottish elites at that sort of thing?

[Kitch]

The teams attending this competition are doing so on a self-help basis and the teams have been selected from those athletes who made themselves available for selection on that basis.

.

i.e. Selected on the basis that they are able and willing to pay for themselves to attend EOC.

Not on the basis that they are actually good enough.

It used to be that an international shirt was earned, not bought.
F**king abysmal.

[JEP]

Absolutely agree. Down to Olympics sucking out all the funding I guess. Pro sports get huge amounts - cycling £24m over three years. Even tennis which has funding cut because it is not increasing participation still gets a big slice.

Our essentially amateur sport in which top people train as hard as any of the funded sports will get nothing in a year or two. All we need is £250k a year to run a great programme with good support for athletes. That is small change to the Olympic sports.

[andypat]

The teams attending this competition are doing so on a self-help basis and the teams have been selected from those athletes who made themselves available for selection on that basis.

.

i.e. Selected on the basis that they are able and willing to pay for themselves to attend EOC.

Not on the basis that they are actually good enough.

It used to be that an international shirt was earned, not bought.
F**king abysmal.

Kitch - understand the basis of your sentiment but dont you think thats a bit harsh on the guys who have been selected?

[Kitch]

John,
to some extent, but even pre Lottery funding the principle held that you could not pay your own way, even if you were right up there. If there were 2 funded slots only 2 people went, end of story.
Equally, on occasion, even when there were plenty of funded places if people did not perform against selection crteria then places did not get filled.

Andypat.
Its not about the people who have been "selected". Its about the principles of selection.
In this case everyone who said they wanted to go has been given the go ahead, quite simply on the basis that they will pay for themselves. performing to an adequate standard has been gone out the window.

[Jon X]

I think I should make clear some facts here.

As with all selections, EOC selections were made from those athletes who made themselves available (a number have exams etc). Minimum criteria were applied. Not all athletes who made themselves available have been selected.

The wording for the announcement highlights that those athletes travelling are paying all their costs for taking part in this competition.

You can debate whether it is appropriate to send a team on such a self-help basis or whether you agree with the selections (although you may not know who was available). But the above are the facts to inform any debate.

[graeme]

e.g. I was available and didn't get selected

More seriously, many of our runners now have personal grants to support them in training and competition. It would be absurd to deny them the chance to use these monies to go to EOC, just because there's no money in some central pot. Always provided they are good enough in the opinion of the selectors.

Once again, we're about to hand out a British title in a race where most of the top athletes are absent, for entirely predictable reasons. Even I can't be ars*d to run it! Some poxy selection for an IOF fundraiser, reinvented after kitch retired, is pretty small beer in the scale of standards going out the window.