JWOC

[Becks]

And yup, although Edinburgh is one of the two large centres of orienteers, it's just about an hour before you hit any decent terrain that isn't Gullane (which is great, but totally overused). And we're mostly students with no cars, which makes it even worse.

[Lard]

But Edinburgh, like Sheffield could become a mecca for sprint training.
You have the areas and the maps (which need updating to proper ISSOM but this can't be too difficult).

If you can be a fast, accurate decision-maker at sprint it should translate to the other disciplines. But heck, why not go for sprint gold!

Perfection in training IS key - making sure the skills are top notch, but also making sure you have the discipline to apply the skills properly. The latter breaks down under pressure and thus our athletes need to seek high quality races/go abroad to experience the pressures not often found in the UK.

In Sprint and Middle and Relay our juniors who want to go places should be taking on and beating the senior elites - anyone aged 15 to 20 could do this without the courses being too long or tough for them. Combining the UK Cup and FCC races at these distances has helped.

The next step is to acknowledge that 15/16 year olds need exposure to competition and race pressure - let them take part in the FCC!
18-20 year olds need to challenge the seniors - scoring in the UK Cup (which they can do) aswell as FCC where races are combined (and try to ensure there are enough combined or non-clashing events for a junior to fully partake in the UK Cup).

Personally, I'm not too worried if an athlete doesn't achieve their best internationally until into their 20s, as long as they continue to be driven and motivated by their junior international experiences (be it performance highs or lows).

[Ed]

18-20 year olds need to challenge the seniors - let them score in the UK Cup aswell as FCC where races are combined

they already do - anyone running the top course (i.e. the same as M/W21E) can get points, regardless of what class they've entered.

[Kitch]

In Sprint and Middle and Relay our juniors who want to go places should be taking on and beating the senior elites -

I don't get the impression that the juniors have this expectation at present. Do they need to raise their sights ?

[Gross]

18-20 year olds need to challenge the seniors - let them score in the UK Cup aswell as FCC where races are combined

they already do - anyone running the top course (i.e. the same as M/W21E) can get points, regardless of what class they've entered.

Now this isn't getting at Lard before anyone jumps down my neck.... but for the Head Coach of GBR Juniors to suggest something needs doing that is already being done according to one of the organisers (scorekeeper).... then it shows the entire confusion that exists in GBR performance orienteering. Things have developed in a muddle over the years it would seem:)

[geomorph]

In Sprint and Middle and Relay our juniors who want to go places should be taking on and beating the senior elites -

I don't get the impression that the juniors have this expectation at present. Do they need to raise their sights ?

Or maybe we (UK) just don't need MW20 simply because the depth of competition is not there?

Once upon a time it didn't exist.
If used in the wrong way for uk circumstances it just becomes a nuisance step on the ladder, like AS levels.

Would putting all the MW20's on 21 courses even at Championship level ruin the experience for all concerned?

[Gross]

As said many's a time.... MW20 doesn't exist as such in Lithuania... well it does on paper but in effect they run the same course as MW21.... all the time... and they have produced 2 JWOC medallists in the last 8 years... now what happens to all that potential after JWOC... that's another question:)

[Doug T]

An opinion from the 'inside'.

Firstly, i think the amount of discussion on this thread is great and all the comments, even Gross' , are encouraging.

for me personally this years JWOC was jobbie, and i don't expect or want to hear encouragement about my performances because i didn't perform.fact. This however doesn't apply to some of the other performances in the team, hectors 16th was a great result and one that he can build on next year. the 6 girls all getting in the top 60 in the middle shows real depth and they all have the chance of another jwoc and if they really work hard to improve they could achieve alot better.

I beleive that a big problem with junior development is the lack of numbers in junior classes. i ran 20 this year, and i did put pressure on myself to win but i think in the back of my mind i knew that all i really needed was a solid run to achieve this. a run mith mistakes would still get me 2nd, a poor run 3rd. Looking back i should have ran up to 21, but i didn't want to devalue the competition for the other athletes. Though the competition in 21 is often not to impressive either unless at the JK or british.

Juniors do get exposure to the high level of competition at JWOC, O-ringen, spring cup, EYOC. it is all there but there is never the same really high level of competition to get in the GB team that really forces people to excel.
after experiencing how tough JWOc is and what level you need to be at to get on the podium, the buck really has to stop at the athletes. To go out and train, prepare, improve when the coaches aren't there to show them the way and hold there hand.
i think juniors need to push each other along more, train together more, race against each other more, race the seniors more.

How do we create more competitive junior classes in britain? that is a whole other issue about getting people into the sport......
I would encourage any juniors wanting to really achieve something at jwoc to forget about aiming to be the top w/m20, and start pushing to be the top M/w21. the junior classes to not offer enough of a challenge to drive people to become world class.

[Ed]

In Germany they've dropped the W20 class at nationals and merged it with W21, M20 is still there though (although the same course at middle/sprint races). Basically only due to the very small number of W20s.

An opinion from a 'has been'.

I would agree that top juniors should be comparing themselves against the seniors. In my last year as a junior I ran M20 only 3 times when it wasn't the same as M21: JK long, BEOC long and JWOC selection race/FCC final long. Apart from that I was running M21 at all races (and had been doing so at the majority of races since 1st year M18), and running usually first leg on the open relays.

It probably sounds very arrogant, but I knew in that year that domestically M20 was mine for the losing - I knew that so long as I didn't do anything silly (which to be fair I did on one or two occasions) I would win, probably by a couple of minutes at least, and that I therefore probably even had margin for 2-3 minutes of mistakes. Basically running M20 domestically I was unable to really put myself under pressure.

On the other hand, aiming to get in (at minimum) the top 10 at the UK Cup races meant I needed a clean run and to push myself physically (thus putting my navigation under a bit more pressure). That was definitely good training for JWOC where in the previous year(s) I'd either not pushed myself physically hard enough or made mistakes.

[graeme]

But Edinburgh, like Sheffield could become a mecca for sprint training.
You have the areas and the maps (which need updating to proper ISSOM but this can't be too difficult).

I'm working on it ... Pollock to Dumbiedykes should be ready for freshers week. But if anyone with a bit more mapping talent want to help...

The latter breaks down under pressure and thus our athletes need to seek high quality races/go abroad to experience the pressures not often found in the UK.

Trouble is, once you select a small group of people to race abroad, the standard/pressure in the UK drops even further, as does the profile of the sport, and the willingness of people to prioritise it against summer jobs/exams etc. Its simply not credible to think we can find champions by looking only at each others children.

So what is the point of 20(not really)Elite anyway? At an age when Wayne Rooney was leading the England team, who believes our juniors lack his level of maturity ?

Graeme "what's the point of M45"

[andy]

I would encourage any juniors wanting to really achieve something at jwoc to forget about aiming to be the top w/m20, and start pushing to be the top M/w21. the junior classes to not offer enough of a challenge to drive people to become world class.

Why don't the top juniors get together and take a proposal to the squad managers / BO saying 'we're not going to run M/W20/18 any more, we're going to compete at M/W21 level'
If it's such a small number of people (which it is) then surely if the top 6 M/W20s are going to run 21E that'll 'devalue' the 20s competition so much that the rest of them might as well run the same course (21E) or just run 20L. Selectors can then just look at these classes as part of their selection processes. The competition can still be the same (call it 20E if you will) but the course will have more competitino on it. And if the response to this is 'I can't cope with that distance' then the chances are they aren't able to compete at JWOC level anyway.

[ifititches]

some great posts going on around this.

Unless I missed it in the years I spent out of orienteering, I'm not sure that we've ever had a more coherent junior policy/training structure than we have at present.(Happy to be shouted down or Grossed out about that if I'm wrong) But although I think development still could be far better (whatever it ends up being called), it will be a miracle if we get consistently high class results in the next few years without retention and development of the current top performers AND an influx of 17+ year olds into the sport.


One good thing is though, that top orienteers can reach their peak in their 30s, which leaves masses of time for someone coming in via a Uni club or as an adult club recruit in their twenties to make it to the top if we get the training and coaching right.

I'm sure far more countries in Europe now have their equivalent of our "3 Ps" in their orienteering development plans than was the case a few years ago, and some of them have far more good accessible areas than we do, so it will take a supercharged policy and the huge sort of committment shown by people like Doug to keep ahead of that upward flow of achievement rather than just riding along with it.

Personally I think that has to start with harnessing energy and ambition at club level; I don't see how it could ever happen from the top down.

In the 1970s "senior" women did begin at W19 and winners were often from the lower end of that age range (or below and running up) Although our international results were not as good then, I can't see that "W19s" can be any less capable of running full length womens' courses now then they were then, and if it makes for more challenging competition then go for it! If classes are still too small then there's really no point having an E course anyway. I don't think you develop in sport unless it seriously challenges you at that age.

[distracted]

I'm sure it used to be argued that it's harder to get a placing at JWOC than at WOC with 6 runners from each nation, and therefore more scandis etc to beat. However I'm not sure if there is so much dominance from these "traditional" 'O' nations nowadays. Take the men's long results from this year - in terrain that would arguably suit the scandis there were 22 nations in the top 50, 'only' 20 of these runners from scandi/baltic countries (NOR(5), SWE(3), FIN(4), DEN(2), EST(4), LAT(2)). But 4 czechs, 4 russians, all 6 swiss and 5 french in the top 55. There are a lot of nations out there producing a lot of good runners - these guys will be benefiting from having high quality, competitive fields to race against on a fairly regular basis. If those fields don't exist in the UK at the moment for our juniors, and/or the juniors feel that they don't exist and so don't have to be pushing the perfect run to win, then something needs to be done.

The point made earlier about juniors being able to score UK Cup points - as far as I'm aware this has always been the case if the junior courses have been the same as the senior courses. But the emphasis might well need to be that the juniors are competing on the same course - at the moment are they trying to win their FCC class, or compare themselves against the best in the 21 classes? If the former, why not the encouragement to try to get a few big-name scalps, put themselves under a bit of pressure, strive for a perfect run...?

[EddieH]

It seems to me that competition and squad culture both work in the same way - it helps to bring the lower members up in their level. If the level at the top is good it reall pulls people to extraordinary levels (current Swiss men), however if the standard is not so high then that is the level that is generally attained.
Clearly we do have a shortage of juniors and this means that the general standard is just that bit too low for major success at JWOC level and necessitates going abroad to find the competition thus further depleting the situation back home.

However there is a counter situation which would ideally lead to wishing different age group competitions which is the huge self belief that can be generated through winning.

I hesitate to write this as a very fringe elite runner ferom the distant past that was nowhere near the current elite standard, but I might have something useful to add as even to this day I can perform above my weight and training in major races. therefore I use my past as illustration.

As an M40 I was dominant even over those then running M35. Fear of being beaten was great motivation (even though as Ed points out I knew all I had to do was run clean, rather than intensely). I created more motivation by trying to win by bigger margins. In time I got beaten and as I saw it that gave that person the belief that they could after which it was far easier for them to do it again. I lost my dominance but I believe that in so doing I dragged the standard up so that now M55 is an infinitely more competitive and technically better class than the same group were 15 years ago.

The main point here is that winning generates belief - take out all classes and only award the top 3 runners from everybody will make it harder for many juniors to generate that belief.

However combine the courses so that they ARE competing against the top guys WHILST maintaining the classes for title purposes gives the best of both worlds. I suggest keeping 20E (or whatever you call it) but scrap the course - combine it with 21E - whether you can do this with 18 or not for long races is more debatable, but definitely with middle and sprint.

And yes Graeme, I do believe that you would be a much better orinenteer today if you competed with Bilbo, Mike, Quentin, Clive etc. with real pressure than simply enjoying plodding round Elite courses where you have no real pressure to perform

[EddieH]

As further evidence to my previous post I was a pretty ordinary fell runner until one day I found myself passing everyone to lead a long category A race. That was motivating and drove me to victory by an extraordinary margin. I wasn't suddenly miles fitter, but somehow found that I quite often won races after that - I simply believed I could and forced that much more effort than I ever knew I could before.

Interestingly I never REALLY believed that I could do it in the North Western heartland of the sport, and never had quite the same drive there.