WMOC 2018
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Re: WMOC 2018
Agree with all the positive comments about maps, courses etc. Disappointed with some of the organisation. We arrived for the sprint final to find that our time had been brought forward by around 2 hours compared to the start list published as promised at 19:00 the previous evening. There was no indication in the newsletter email that the list had been withdrawn and republished. Would prefer a middle qualifier and a long qualifier rather than the complex relegation/promotion system. Maybe a single sprint without a qualifier and/or only one rest day instead of two. Personally disappointed at the long final to be caught out by 83 and 93 both in re-entrants around 100m apart. But accept I should have checked more carefully. Agree that it is usual to list NC runners with their actual times rather than alphabetically. Similarly with mp, it is good to see the time taken in results.
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Re: WMOC 2018
Sloop wrote:Just want to say that it was a week of really good fun orienteering. Decent areas, decent model maps, decent planning, decent logistics (setting aside the act of God that dug a hole stopping coach access on the first forest day), fabulous weather.
However, IMHO, the utterly ridiculous scoring system spoiled the forest events for all but the front end of the A final.
As a solid B final person, it would be nice to say that I was worse than all the A finalists and all the B finalists that beat me. BUT, it simply isn't true. Some of the A finalists didn't even complete the first qualification race, or were miles behind me !!
So, I don't know really where I finished, and frankly, now I don't actually care.
If there really has to be a Middle Event (for reasons I don't subscribe to) ...
> This is NOT the way to do it - if no-one can work out who is going to be in the various finals before the official lists go up, it can't possibly be right.
> losing one day of the sprints would be a better arrangement, or having an extra race
So, WMOC, I don't think that this year's model will prove attractive for most of your customers. You need to think again. I am very unlikely to make the trip next year - I'll probably use my annual foreign adventure somewhere else.
Quite an interesting summary of his run on facebook - haven't posted it all as its huge, but a decent synopsis of the "problem" with the current scoring system, which basically assume that middle and long are the same discipline.
[quote = "Vladimir Gusiatnikov via Facebook]
….In all a very frustrating and unsatisfying outcome to be denied a place in the distance I actually train for based on a very good run in that same discipline (the Forest Qualifier) and a mediocre run in a related but different discipline (the Middle Final)! The insult to the injury was that for the majority of the runners promoted to the Long A from the Middle B, both of their runs were worse than mine...
As Swampfox would undoubtedly retort to the whining, all you got to do is run faster and don't make mistakes... and as Herr Doktor Bührer would say, 65th-placers have earned no right to complain... yet the obvious way to exploit the current system for someone who is more interested in the Long than the Middle and given the two unequal paths to qualify is to simply not run the Forest Qualifier at all, then to blast through a weak field at the Middle B and to start the Long Final on fresh legs. This is an obvious loophole.
For the IOF, the tradeoff is between its two stated objectives of fairness vs. competitor enjoyment... those at the top will win no matter what... would you think the WMOC turnout, which is how the IOF pays a large chunk of its bills, will be more helped by having creative options to exploit in order to place higher, or by a competition that is as fair as possible? the answer isn't necessarily evident.
[/quote]
(of course this assumes only an A and B final in your age calss)
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- andypat
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Re: WMOC 2018
This is the crux of the issue. You really can't imagine someone qualifying for a 10000m athletics final, but then being removed from the start list simply because they had a poor run in the 5000m.Vladimir Gusiatnikov via Facebook wrote:…. a very frustrating and unsatisfying outcome to be denied a place in the distance I actually train for based on a very good run in that same discipline (the Forest Qualifier) and a mediocre run in a related but different discipline (the Middle Final)!
If we think Middle and Long are different disciplines, then there should be different qualifying races. People should be able to enter one or the other or both. And perhaps the program should be arranged with the Sprint in the middle of the week.
If they are essentially the same discipline (and it would be interesting to do some correlation of the results across the two events), then have a single final and revert to one or two qualifying races.
- Snail
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Re: WMOC 2018
Snail wrote:If they are essentially the same discipline (and it would be interesting to do some correlation of the results across the two events), then have a single final and revert to one or two qualifying races.
If both are planned properly then I think they are separate enough to have each as a separate discipline. Its quite common for the planning styles to overlap though so as not to make this the case and I think you do need a certain type of area for a middle too.
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Re: WMOC 2018
Snail wrote:If we think Middle and Long are different disciplines, then there should be different qualifying races. People should be able to enter one or the other or both. And perhaps the program should be arranged with the Sprint in the middle of the week.
If they are essentially the same discipline (and it would be interesting to do some correlation of the results across the two events), then have a single final and revert to one or two qualifying races.
Exactly.
(And if you do the orienteering equivalent of dropping the baton, you cannot possibly merit a place in the final.)
- Sloop
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Re: WMOC 2018
Snail wrote:If they are essentially the same discipline (and it would be interesting to do some correlation of the results across the two events), then have a single final and revert to one or two qualifying races.
Inevitably there are a lot of competitors who were near the top of both the Long and Middle A finals, that doesn't mean they are the same discipline. 7 of the top 10 in the M45A long final were in the top 10 of the M45A sprint final...
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Re: WMOC 2018
greywolf wrote:Snail wrote:If they are essentially the same discipline (and it would be interesting to do some correlation of the results across the two events), then have a single final and revert to one or two qualifying races.
Inevitably there are a lot of competitors who were near the top of both the Long and Middle A finals, that doesn't mean they are the same discipline. 7 of the top 10 in the M45A long final were in the top 10 of the M45A sprint final...
This!
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- andypat
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Re: WMOC 2018
So the survey for the WMOC 2018 participants is out and I've completed mine. Plenty of constructive criticism included
There's quite a lot of space to comment on the forest qualification system. I know people have strong views on this so make sure you get yours heard.
I had a thought when doing this which I dont know if is feasible or not. If there can only be one forest qualifier why not split the controls into middle and long, say the first 7 controls are middle and the second 7 long.
Then your time for the first 7 determines your middle final placing and the time for the second 7 (or possibly the entire time - although that would place an increased risk to mp on the first 7) the long final placing?
I'm sure theres probably some reason why thats a really stupid idea but I cant think of one.
There's quite a lot of space to comment on the forest qualification system. I know people have strong views on this so make sure you get yours heard.
I had a thought when doing this which I dont know if is feasible or not. If there can only be one forest qualifier why not split the controls into middle and long, say the first 7 controls are middle and the second 7 long.
Then your time for the first 7 determines your middle final placing and the time for the second 7 (or possibly the entire time - although that would place an increased risk to mp on the first 7) the long final placing?
I'm sure theres probably some reason why thats a really stupid idea but I cant think of one.
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Re: WMOC 2018
andypat wrote:I had a thought when doing this which I dont know if is feasible or not. If there can only be one forest qualifier why not split the controls into middle and long, say the first 7 controls are middle and the second 7 long.
Then your time for the first 7 determines your middle final placing and the time for the second 7 (or possibly the entire time - although that would place an increased risk to mp on the first 7) the long final placing?
I'm sure theres probably some reason why thats a really stupid idea but I cant think of one.
I can see one flaw - if you aren't bothered about qualifying for the middle you could effectively manipulate your start time for the long section and wait for somebody good to come by.
- frostbite
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Re: WMOC 2018
Hopefully they will do some data crunching which has a high probability of showing that although middle and long are different races there will be a strong correlation between those that do well in one discipline and those that do well in the other. That could then justify a single qualifying race. Although there have been calls to add a 2nd quali race - for those of use for which this was our main holiday of the summer it was nice to go to the model events at 08:30 and then spend the rest of the day doing something else.
You will never please everyone. Anyone capable of winning a medal in the long can probably cruise round the quali and middle final without having to resort to bizarre tactics. Cruising round two courses may be better preparation than sitting out one and then blasting round the other. The promotion/relegation system will upset those that feel that they were done out of their potential 70th place in the long A final, while at the same time pleasing those that feel that their top finish in the middle B final justifies a stab at the long A final. Again some data crunching based on mins/km may give a better estimate of the numbers to promote/relegate.
You will never please everyone. Anyone capable of winning a medal in the long can probably cruise round the quali and middle final without having to resort to bizarre tactics. Cruising round two courses may be better preparation than sitting out one and then blasting round the other. The promotion/relegation system will upset those that feel that they were done out of their potential 70th place in the long A final, while at the same time pleasing those that feel that their top finish in the middle B final justifies a stab at the long A final. Again some data crunching based on mins/km may give a better estimate of the numbers to promote/relegate.
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Re: WMOC 2018
frostbite wrote:I can see one flaw - if you aren't bothered about qualifying for the middle you could effectively manipulate your start time for the long section and wait for somebody good to come by.
I guess the answer to that would be not to make the changeover public.
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Re: WMOC 2018
NeilC wrote:Hopefully they will do some data crunching which has a high probability of showing that although middle and long are different races there will be a strong correlation between those that do well in one discipline and those that do well in the other.
If by "they" you mean me, then I've just done some crunching on the data, choosing as my sample those who had successfully competed in all three A Finals and discarding anyone with a mins/km speed >20 at the same time. This gave a sample of 628 runners.
I plotted min/km for each runner in pairs of races (from Sprint Final, Forest Qualifier, Middle Final and Long Final) against one another and obtained rough proportionality as you'd expect. Using Excel's R squared (coefficient of determination) test to judge correlations produced the following results for R squared:-
0.72 Long vs Sprint
0.78 Long vs Forest Qualifier
0.79 Middle vs Sprint
0.81 Long vs Middle
0.85 Middle vs Forest Qualifier
I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from these
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Re: WMOC 2018
DJM wrote:I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from these
Not a lot because it's not clear what hypothesis is being tested. Those data indicate that competitors ran at different speeds in the different disciplines (but less different in the two shorter forest events). To justify a single race for both finals some indication of relative performance is required - even if something as basic as speed relative to average speed.
The more interesting result would be to plot the individual mins/km for the different middle finals and see at which point they intersect each other. For some age classes it has been argued that few of the B finalists would be competitive in the A final - something that needs testing.
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Re: WMOC 2018
Some sort of rank correlation test for Middle Final position v Long Final position (with "position" redetermined after excluding runners who were only in one of the two races), by class, might indicate whether from a competition perspective having two different finals is justified. Could also test one or both against Sprint Final ranking.
(Accepting that there could be other reasons to retain multiple finals, even if not competitively justified).
(Accepting that there could be other reasons to retain multiple finals, even if not competitively justified).
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Re: WMOC 2018
NeilC wrote:DJM wrote:I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from these
Not a lot because it's not clear what hypothesis is being tested. Those data indicate that competitors ran at different speeds in the different disciplines (but less different in the two shorter forest events). To justify a single race for both finals some indication of relative performance is required - even if something as basic as speed relative to average speed.
That's not how I understand it. If (just as an example) everyone ran half as fast again in the middle as they did in the long, I believe the value reported would be 1.0 - perfect correlation, just as it would be if they ran the same mins/km in both. From the description given, the hypothesis is surely that the mins/km in one race is linearly related to the mins/km in another.
As a comparison, I tried plotting ranking points in the BOC vs. ranking points from the ranking list for the M21L class (excluding those who didn't have 4 or more scores and correcting for the number of valid scores). The initial r squared value was 0.59 - much lower than any of those in WMOC. However, removing one very obvious outlier (out of 41) increased this to 0.78, and removing a slightly less obvious one increased it again to 0.85 - as good as the best that DJM found from WMOC. What this seems to show is that a few outliers can drastically affect the answer - in other words, if you exclude the people who had a disastrous run at one event or the other, the answer will probably increase quite a lot. It would be interesting to see how this affected the results. (I don't know whether this was the aim in removing those slower than 20 min/km, but if so then I think that the threshold needs to be different for sprint, middle and long: 20 mins/km in the sprint would be exceedingly slow!)
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