To follow or not to follow

[graeme]

If following devalues your run - Monika Depta is the true world champion. Funny how she got no credit for the only undevalued run at WOC05 Where were you all when she needed you

Graeme

[Kitch]

The flaw in this poll is that you have not defined what you mean by "following".

So
Following;
not knowing where you are, or where you are going, and relying on someone else to find the control for you.
If the person you are with were to disappear in a puff of smoke would you be able to carry on and navigate to the next control without undue delay or hesitation ?(apart from the that caused by someone disappearing in a puff of smoke right before your eyes, obviously) If not you are following.

I truely hope that 50% of the orienteers on this forum do not believe this is acceptable in any way.

Using people, i.e. keeping an eye on them, keeping pace with them, in the forest is not following as long as you know what is going on and could find the next control yourself.

[Stodgetta]

As Kitch says, there's a difference between deliberate following where all your effort is put into staying with the person you are following, and watching/running with other people whilst navigating yourself.

I think it also depends on the importance of the event and the consequences of the results.

At the Warrior short race a few weeks ago, I took up one of our juniors for the day for her to get experience of terrain more intricate than the Chase. I caught her up at number 8, so sat down and watched the world go by for 5 minutes to let her get ahead and get more out of the exercise. If she had "followed" me around the rest of the course, she would not have got as much out of it (and neither would I).

At the Welsh Champs, someone started a few minutes behind me who is a much faster runner, but I would hope to beat her on a technical area. The first few legs involved following tracks through snow, and soon she was visible 200-300 metres behind me. OFD is tricky because it is vague as much as anything, but visibility is good, so I navigated carefully to all the controls, hit them spot on, and when I looked over my shoulder, she was the same distance behind, but could clearly see where I was punching. She wasn't "following", but would be stupid not to watch what I was doing. Unfortunately, I never made any impact on the starter ahead of me, so never got the same advantage.

As others have said, if someone else is running the same route as you have selected, you are not going to select an alternative in case you are accused of cheating, and if they are ahead and clearly punch a control, it will make your fine navigation easier and quicker. Where controls are placed closely together with little route choice (as it sounds as though the end of the BUSA race was), it's inevitable that groups will stay together. Looking at the Splitsbrowser race graph for the final controls of the race, there was one group of 4 and eight pairs (at least) who were together.

I know BUSA is a selection race for the World students, but so are other races, all of which will be taken into account in the selections, and with information available from eg Splitsbrowser, selectors will know exactly who has done what.

[FatBoy]

As someone who's not fit enough to follow the elite, and hopefully good enough not to need it I often end up being followed, but often from being behind! We've all seen it - you end up with somebody - they tear off then scratch their head somewhere near the control - you catch them again going direct into the control - they see where you're heading and get there just before you. Only problem is on Splitsbrowser looks like you're the one following (not that I care personally).

Running with somebody is something inevitable, although it can be broken up by good start time allocation, and good planning (not saying either of these were wrong for BUSA - I'm in the dark on that one).

I'm also sure that any Elite even when running with somebody else will be watching where they're going (ok the TioMila incident, and the famous map loss incident excluded). Fact is you may be getting a tow of somebody but it doesn't mean they won't make a mistake or take a stupid route.

[Supersaint]

quite an interesting debate - i wonder what will happen at the JOK Sprint this weekend? if anyone follows in the chasing start i'm going to ensure they get DSQ'd and get myself a bundle of UK Cup points as i shoot above all those cheats

[Dave]

Ther's always going to be following at JOK, it's part of the event basically

[housewife]

We were debating the ´following´ rules at the pwt last week. The consensus was that IOF rules disallow getting or giving information in an individual competition, or something along those lines, which possibly leaves following in relays, and debatably mass starts fair game. Morally whether an orienteer would follow is a different matter. Surprised that anyone thought Becky would take a tow! I first coached her at Laganlia years ago, and she was a pretty flawless navigator then!

[bolder]

When people refer to the Tio mila incident what happened; did a large pack follow someone on a poor route or the opposite of a lone runner taking a faster route than the pack?

[mharky]

Last leg was not forked (for whatever reason) SNO came in just ahead of Halden on 9th leg. Losman's orders were to follow Sandvik the whole way and have him on the run in. This he did, Sandvik tried to played little games, pretending to be lost and doing strange routes. Losman just stuck with him saying "We can play games all day". They punched the last control Sandvik just ahead, as the came alon the back end of the run in they were running the same speed, sandvik metres ahead, then there was a bend and the run in split into 5 finish lanes... last leg finished on the right most lane... Sandvik went down the left most lane... oops. Losman takes it, SNO win.

He followed, and he won.

Moral of this story... make sure last leg has forking on it. And know which lane you should run down... who knows if sandvik could have held him off, he was doing ok until that point...

[Lizi Beee]

I've only just had time to read all of this topic, (i first saw it when it had 2pages so i didn't think i would bother)

Firstly, i agree you have to define "following" otherwise there is a whole grey area. But really it's all individual opinion anyway, what are you willing to do to win? Personally i don't see the point in blindly following anyone in a race, but if on the rare occasion i catch someone, or the slightly less rare occasion that someone catches me, i will not go out of my way to NOT run with them, because it would generally be detrimental to my race. I try to ignore other people as a rule and just focus on keeping contact with the map, but if someone is going the way i am i find it very helpful for keeping my pace up as most people would. I refuse to tuck away my map and just leg it after them though.

As for using splitsbrowser to decide who followed who, you can't do that, the situations have been described and truely the ONLY person to know if they were following or not is the follower. The person being followed can't know if the one behind is keeping track of the map or not, and they shouldn't be paying that much attention to them anyway!

Relays and mass starts are a whole different game to individual races, but i still follow the same principals... but that's just my personal preferences and i'm not saying they're right.

People can make allegations about who followed who but unless you were the follower you can't make that judgement so i think it is unfair to bash specific people and races *keeps out of it 'cos i wasn't there*


Also, i'm sure when i did my portfolio for PE ASlevel last year and had to sit and read all the rules there was something about following... can't remember but i may dig out my file and take a nosey... any rule boffins know?? and sorry for such a long post, they're such a pain to read!

[Kitch]

Mharky omitted to mention that Losman actually waited for a fair time at changeover until Sandvik got the handover, before following him into the forrest.
Losman deserves to break his leg

[PKJ]

In this case the answer's obvious - have some team-mates hanging around near the last control with big sticks. But, in general, if following (however defined) is cheating or devalues the results, what more should be done to stop it happening?

[Gross]

Losman's a hero... he was told what to do & he did it and won.... WOC relays and if GB had done the same thing & won gold then... no one would call them cheats...

[FatBoy]

Disagree Gross. If GB won something by doing something against the spirit I wouldn't consider it a victory. Maybe Losman was doing what he was told but you can always say no - particularly in amateur sport. In football if something like that happened I hope the team/individual in question would get charged with bringing the game into disrepute.

[Lizi Beee]

What would the footballing equilvalent be though? I wouldn't say Losman was a hero, and personally wouldn't do that, but i agree they had a plan and he stuck to it and it worked.