technical sprint races

[andy]

In its efforts to persuade planners to adopt a common view of what Sprint criteria are, the IOF is holding a seminar during WOC week aimed at thrashing this issue out (see invitation at http://orienteering.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Invitation-to-International-Conference-on-Course-Planning-2012.pdf).

A few of the WOC2015 committee are going to this, so if anyone has any questions / points they want me/us to keep in mind please let me know.

[mappingmum]

Maybe we should just keep quiet and plan a mega technical course in WOC 2015 to our competitive advantage Aka Wimbledon keeping the grass short for the benefit of Henman, although as I recall they did exactly the opposite .

[Kitch]

could it be that the more technical nature of sprint in Britain contributes to our relative success internationally ?

[graeme]

Possibly.
I got some HRM traces from a few of the SEDs after the Livingston race. The pattern seems to be to go quickly to ~95% HRMax and staying there, with no change on the longer legs. Dips correspond to mistakes or downhill sections. Fastest splits are often done by whoever made a mistake (10 fastest non-run-in splits from people outside top 20).
What this tells me is that even in this "technical" UK sprint, the top athletes are running flat out, not having to slow down to find the controls, nor bothering to slow down to evaluate route choices.

[harry]

I think both international sprints and British style sprints are technical but just in very different ways.

British sprints are technical in a fiddly way. It's fiddly map reading necessary to find the controls and lots of reading the control descriptions and understanding all the dead ends and complicated circle pictures.

International sprints tend to be technical but the challenge is mainly in picking ALL the best or very close to the best route choices and sometimes the route choice problems are difficult to solve and of course you have to solve them rapidly/ instinctively and ahead of yourself. Well-planned Norwegian sprints are generally a lot more like international ones but even more route choicey with even less technical control finding. The international ones do often have a mixture of both, some fiddly bits and some route choice problems.

Having said all that there were a couple of international sprint races in 2011 that were universally branded as very technically easy.

The WOC sprint final however, looked easy at first glance but actually had route choice problems to solve the whole way and with such small margins just getting one or two of those wrong lost you 8-10 places. I don't expect the WOC sprint in Switzerland will be technically really easy either, I expect it will have a mixture of different technical problems, tricky route choices and maybe some more fiddly bits.

[andypat]

I like good route choice legs for sprint, even small differences in leg can be crucial as Harry says. I can also appreciate the benefit of a long run leg to get competitors into O2 debt before a tricky bit (although the long legs with no decision points at Banchory were a bit boring and the danger is that competitors have too much time to plan the rest of the course). I hope the IOF doesnt get too prescriptive - variety is the spice of life.

Ironically I think the main definition of sprint should be EWT!

[AAH]

Could it be that we have more technical sprint simply because we actually have particularly good sprint terrain in the UK? Britain has quite a high population density and so british buildings and campuses are often fairly densely built. And of course it's the best areas in britain that have been mapped so far. Not that I've seen many foreign sprint maps to compare.

[greywolf]

National population density (Scotland and England have very diffent population densities) has very little to do with urban population density, and even less to do with the availability of "good" urban sprint terrain, which mostly reflects (historical) planning trends. A single town map will often include very different street types: irregular networks of old (pre-car) lanes and modern low rise social housing estates (with lots of small open spaces and cut-throughs) can both provide "complex" terrain, whilst prewar terracing and modern upmarket housing (where almost all space is privatised) can often be comparatively dull.
I look forward to Chungking Mansions hosting the WOC 2017 sprint race

[pete.owens]

I remember someone showing me the leg featured in the Compasssport article on the JK sprint on the day and thinking how good the leg was, but then I would be running very much slower than the top elites so the penalty for making the wrong route choice would be greater thus it would have been worth spending more time evaluating which way to go. Perhaps that leg should have been used for the veteran, rather than the elite courses.

It was interesting reading the Focus article, in which both M21 & M18 winners commented on the leg. The former took the obvious (but longer) option, while the latter spotted the optimum route.

The faster you are going the less it matters which route you take so the less time it is worth spending evaluating different route options. If it is only a few seconds difference the optimum strategy is to find a plausible route and simply get on with it - especially in an intricate area when you have to maintain full map contact. Micro-route choices thus become a matter of luck; the sprint equivalent of bingo controls. If there are several such legs on a course it could be decisive.

[Street]

So lets remove all the controls from the World Champs so there is no luck in finding them and ban all the under 60's from running because they wouldn't really appreciate the effort the planner has put in to designing the course.

[tomtom]

we actually have particularly good sprint terrain in the UK?

I think its more that as we don't have many good forest/non-urban areas, we have mapped more sprint areas than other countries.

[Big Jon]

I think its more that as we don't have many good forest/non-urban areas, we have mapped more sprint areas than other countries.

Speak for your own area. Here in Deeside we are still getting access to top quality NEW areas for orienteering and will hopefully be mapping some in the near future.
Aberdeenshire - the future of real orienteering.

Edit for spelling errors!