Ranking Lists

[Atomic]

I would imagine all clubs know within ~10% what attendance they will get at most of their events. Certainly for Regional and National level events.

I wish we could predict to within 10% at the time of setting the dates / picking officials / registering events. We use pre-entries so have a solid idea a week or so before the event. But in terms of toilets, parking etc we are working in round numbers - might need to park 100 cars, might need toilets for 300. In reality that might be 50 and 200.

For our Level D, it's a little more guesswork, but it'd be highly unusual for us to plan a Level D and expect say 30-35 people to turn up and then suddenly 150 do.

agreed although we do get 50-100% extra if its a new map! We've had an influx when a neighbouring club has a big event the day after etc.

[Atomic]

From my experience of "controlling" about 40ish Level D events in the past 4 or 5 years and about a dozen Level C events is that really a Level D controllers course would look like a Level C course...
...The things that I concentrate on for a Level D are the same as in a Level C - are the courses safe and fair (whether score or linear), is the map broadly OK and where's registration and parking. ...
...The major difference is that for a Level D I've told our controllers don't bother visiting all control sites or checking on the day as this is the time consuming part. For most of our Level D areas, it's either close enough or the first person round tells the planner/organiser (same person for Level D for us) it's wrong and it gets moved to the right place. In the end it's a level D event and we treat it as such.

to me the two "cardinal sins" Level D planners make are:
- putting a control in the wrong place
- not accounting for terrain / climb on the course length, so people think they are going for a 45 minute run and have a 90 minute slog; or on urbans measuring the red line not the minimum distance

You usually don't need to visit every control to avoid the first - the high risk ones should be obvious to the planner and controller. Many of our planners don't tape level D control sites - but if you tape the high risk ones the planner just needs to bring the tape back to prove it was right (I do this if I have help hanging controls).

Course length doesn't even need you to visit the terrain. Also issues with placement of control numbers on the map so they are confusing, badly cut lines/circles etc. And both extremes of Orange course - the "Long yellow with a few control missing" to "short light green" - if they are on successive weeks it is very confusing for people to know what to enter.

I've seen some sort of error like this at a wide range of level D events across a lot of clubs and the "its only a local event" is often the response. Why don't people move beyond local events? IMHO some of it is because the experience locally is a bit random and paying £5 for random fun in the forrest 30 mins from home is fine but paying 2-3x that and travelling an hour or two to get there would be a lot more frustrating if the officials mess up. Experienced orienteers know that risk goes down as events become higher status but newbies won't know that.

[Atomic]

For a lot of experienced orienteers, quantity of events does indeed appear to trump quality. Fair enough. But I'm not convinced that frequent unpleasant experiences are better than less frequent fun experiences for attracting new people to the sport

I agree - I'm not sure why we have developed a culture where we need to compete every week. I'd much rather we had a well thought out training session each week building up to really good event at the end of say 6 weeks training which tested the skills that have been trained!

[roadrunner]

I think this debate is bringing us full circle back to the original proposal for a 3 level event structure. Once you specify that a level C event has all the requirements to be a proper orienteering event, then any distinction between levels is bound to be trivial.

It might be interesting to go back a bit further to see how the present structure arose. I have a copy of the 1999 rules, and they specify five levels (for standard cross-country type events, as distinct from relay, score and trail):

• International events, British Championship events (British Champs, British Night Champs, British Elite Champs, British Elite Short Champs), JK
• National Events
• Badge Events
• Colour-coded Events
• Local events and anything else

They were defined as follows:

• National Events are cross-country orienteering competitions held in daytime with courses designated by age group. Apart from the British Championship and JK events they represent the highest standard of competition available in Britain. National Events shall provide M/W21E courses as well d be at least 25% longer at a National Event. Also, Chames should be planned to test the orienteering ability of the leading competitors in each class.
• Badge Events are cross-country orienteering competitions held by day or night with courses designated by age group. They are intended to cater for all orienteers beyond the novice level. Badge Events shall provide M/W10A, M/W12A/B - M/W18A/B, M/W20L/S - M/W75L/S Courses (and M/W10B if terrain permits). Courses may be provided for a more restricted range of classes (eg juniors/veterans only) so long as this is made clear in advance. Badge Event courses should be planned to cater for the average and good competitors in the particular class.
• Colour Coded Events are cross-country orienteering competitions intended to cater for all levels of orienteering ability. A Colour Coded Event should offer at least Yellow, Orange, Green and Blue courses, with White whenever the terrain permits.

There were also various requirements about grades of controller etc.

Of course, a lot of things have changed since, but I feel that the distinction was clearer back then than it is now. What does seem clear is that National Events were intended to be few in number, and planned for a different standard of competitor. This meant the courses would be longer: for example, at a National Event the target M21L winning time was 80-90 minutes, whereas at a Badge Event this was the target Gold badge time, which is 1.25 x the average of the first three results (for a large enough entry), i.e. the course would be at least 25% longer at a National Event. Also, Championship badges could only be obtained at National Events, the British Champs and the JK while Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron badges could be obtained at these plus Badge Events - now the Iron badge has (sensibly) been dropped, and the others can only be obtained at the British Champs and JK. So it seems to me that National Events had more of a purpose then, whereas now they appear to be just higher-standard Regional Events.

[SJC]

National and Badge events were for competition in age classes.
Colour coded events were for competition based on ability.

Perhaps this could be the best distinction between National and Regional events.
National - targetting people who want good quality competition against people in their own age class.
Regional - targetting everyone and letting them run "competitively" based on their ability, with no attempt to link colour coded courses to age classes. Most Regional leagues seem to operate on this basis.

[Karen]

And Nationals gained 10% extra ranking points.
There were only 10-12 a year, on top terrain (urban hadn't been invented) - I don't know who selected them. It did mean the best orienteers made an effort to go to them and run against their peers.
It did involve a lot of travelling, but introduced me to areas I would not otherwise have discovered.
Now we have a multitude of "British Champs" with all the sprint and urban stuff, I'm not sure there is room in the calendar for a proper series of terrain Nationals.

[Tim]

Perhaps this could be the best distinction between National and Regional events.
National - targeting people who want good quality competition against people in their own age class.
Regional - targeting everyone and letting them run "competitively" based on their ability, with no attempt to link colour coded courses to age classes. Most Regional leagues seem to operate on this basis.

You could be on to something...
National Events started in 1985 and replaced the even older 4 open regional Championships. There were 8 NE's per year (at least initially), fairly well spread across the UK.
So pre-1985 there were 6 events you really tried to get to - JK, British and the 4 Regional Champs. If you lived at the extremities of the UK you managed 4 or 5.
Winning a regional champs in your age class was a big deal.
When National Events came in that number of events grew to 10 - as a result they didn't always attract extensive fields and hence never really had the kudos of the regional champs. I wasn't around when they died off, so have no idea what the logic was, but I guess their loss of importance didn't help.
We now only have 2 open events a year run in age classes (talking classic races and excluding 'holiday' events). On Sunday I ran a National Event where my age class (M55) entries were spread across Black, Brown, Short Brown and Blue courses. I think this is a shame. Reintroducing age classes to a (significantly?) reduced number of national events would distinguish them from Regional Events. The point of the history lesson is to suggest that even 4 might be enough - less is more?
Or maybe the British Champs for the proliferation of new formats has filled the need for important events and we should (as other have said) just bin the distinction between national and regional. (The inclusion of a black and short brown course being the thing that usually alerts me to which I am entering).
All that said, I've got to the position where my decision about which events to do is a factor of quality of terrain and distance from home, nothing to do with event status.

[pete.owens]

Going back to the event structure from 25 years ago is a good reminder of why there was the need for a simpler system - and hence the proposal for a 3 level structure.

A long time ago there were significant differences between big and small events. You would expect recently surveyed pre-printed map at a national event, and a region could scrape together enough kit to offer electronic punching at a badge event. At district events you would take a red pen to copy on map corrections to an old map - and then copy your course from a master map at the start of your course. By the time of the revised structure, most clubs had laser printers and even local events used SI.

The only real difference was the confusing array of different course classifications at different levels of event. It took a while to realise that "ORANGE", "JM3", "W14B" all meant exactly the same thing.

The same is now (and always was IMO) true of level B & C events. There was a demand among traditionalists for different levels of event - so rules were devised to provide a distinction. And given orienteers seem to be culturally averse to rules they tend to be ignored. So now there really is no difference between regional and national events so we might as well merge the classifications.

[awk]

Or maybe the British Champs for the proliferation of new formats has filled the need for important events

I've heard this quite often before - this "proliferation" of British Championships (presuming one means a lot more rather than 'rapid' increase?) On the individual front we've gone from 1 championship to 3 (Long, Middle, Sprint). For relays, we now have 2 rather than 1. Certainly more, but not exactly a multitude. Although, yes, the 2 extra individual races might be regarded as sufficient replacement by some of the 3 open English area champs (the Scottish still exists) - I don't. At least the area champs helped towards a reasonable geographical spread and a nicely straightforward Championship 'badge'!

All that said, I've got to the position where my decision about which events to do is a factor of quality of terrain and distance from home, nothing to do with event status.

Exactly!

[graeme]

A lot of the problem came from starting with an insistence that there should be four levels, then trying to invent rules to distinguish them.

An unfortunate effect was that when half dozen people put on Christmas Cup: focussing on low-key organisation to concentrate on supertechnical orienteering with new maps and some of the UK's top planners, we didn't have enough bells and whistles to even be level C which meant, no ranking points.

Anyway, that's fixed now, so if you want more technical orienteering than you got at any of this year's level A, check out https://christmascup.co.uk/. Allegedly "regional", but the start list doesn't look especially local.

[pete.owens]

On the individual front we've gone from 1 championship to 3 (Long, Middle, Sprint).

4 - night

For relays, we now have 2 rather than 1. Certainly more, but not exactly a multitude. Although, yes, the 2 extra individual races might be regarded as sufficient replacement by some of the 3 open English area champs (the Scottish still exists) - I don't. At least the area champs helped towards a reasonable geographical spread and a nicely straightforward Championship 'badge'!

The area champs still exist - though they are not always put on at level A with full on 90 minute elite courses. Then there is the JK.

So that is 11 nationally significant individual open races.

[awk]

The area champs still exist - though they are not always put on at level A with full on 90 minute elite courses. Then there is the JK.
So that is 11 nationally significant individual open races.

They certainly do exist, but not in the form, nor with the importance, of the old championships. They used to be open championships, and were nationally important races, for which people were prepared to travel significant distances. Nowadays, they are events with an attached closed championship, and usually make barely more than a ripple of impact outside the area itself. They are certainly not 'nationally significant', more akin to the old badge events. The only races nowadays in that sense, are the 4 British Champs (thanks for the correction!) and the JK, although,even then, the Nights is IMO very niche (he says, hunkering down waiting for the flak!).

[Snail]

I guess this is what the UK Orienteering League is trying to address.

... Encourage greater participation at a national level and thus increase the quality of competition.

[Homer]

trying

Not very successfully IMHO.

[buzz]

That's just not true. How many National events have you been to recently? Certainly the summer multi-day races and regional championships tend to use the best areas and clubs make a bit of an effort for other national events from my experience.

Have you been to a YH Champs lately? The last one I went to (the weekend before last) was definitely 'just' a regional event. Very enjoyable, but not exactly above other equally enjoyable regional events. Pretty much the same with the other regional champs I've been to in the past couple of years, with just a couple of exceptions perhaps.

Sorry terminilogy again - my mistake! By regional champs I meant the area champs Southern, Midlands, Northern and Scottish Champs which generally are National events on better areas etc..

The kids I coach tend to go to most of these plus multi days other national events to get a variety terrains and hopefully better maps and planning to practice on. Competing on the same local forests isn't challenging enough to test and improve their skills - which was the point I was trying to make regarding rankings.