Dave Peel

[Kitch]

So this set me thinking again It should be significantly easier to produce top class females, than males, as the competition at the top is no where near as high, as was quite clearly shown yesterday on TV.

The flaw in this argument is that you have to work with the same raw material - women.
The point is not that the women were poor, but that the women are women.

Our women are as motivated and hard working as the next country
As Harry's analysis shows - our women's and men's results are absolutely on a par, which shows our women are as motivated and hard working as our men.

No-one expects the women to run as fast as the men - physical differences are accepted. Would you deny there are fundamental psychological differences aslo ? I'd suggest it is fundamental female psychology that results in the navigational performances you saw yesterday.

I absolutely agree that if you could find the key then the opportunity is there and perhaps from that perspective worth investing in, but it would be a mistake to say it is a significantly easier place to look for improvement

[Guest88]

Well technical training versus natural talent for navigation...

I believe that orienteering navigation is linked to spatial abilities, and men are meant to be better than women at this...(on average)

maybe people can try the following test and post their scores - would be interesting to know yvettes, simones and minnas scores. if they all score very highly, then our other ladies could all try the test and find out whether or not they are wasting their time.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/ ... ogin.shtml

[mharky]

but if you ignore the winners for a moment - in the mens, 10th place was 2min 23 behind second, in the womens, 10th was 2min 38 behind 2nd ...

What a pile of jobbie. Why ignore first place at WOC, isn't first place the place everyone if aiming for at WOC?

The only way to judge performance is to look at the time behind, positions mean nothing, the women's race shows that. Sarah Rollin's was 19th, Jon Duncan was 22nd. Jon Duncan was +4:10 behind, Sarah Rollins was +7:21. JD's time behind would have put him 8th on the Women's and we would all be praising a top 10 performance, be that isn't the case.

And you can't even use the fact that Minna Kauppi had a stormer so alters the statistics.. Minna won by 2:02, 10th place = +4:40, 20th = +7:35. In 2007 Thierry had a stormer, he won by 2:01, 10th place = +3:13, 20th = +5:17.

It would appear that a top 10/20 position requires men to be closer to the winner than women. The medals are just as hard to get, Minna won by a lot this year, Thierry won by 35s more in 2003. What this does mean though, is that the further down the results you go the less comparable things get between men and women.
It's not because the top women aren't as good or try as hard, it's because the top women aren't as many.

[harry]

hmm some sensible posts from Barny and Kitch
Dids I know you just like to stir up trouble but do you watch for example tennis and complain that the women only serve at 110-120 mph instead of 140 and are therefore crap or perhaps you are disgusted that the female marathoners are only down to 2:15 when all the top men run well under 2:10? I reckon you'd find female snowboard coverage pretty lame. Check out Baptiste Rollier's blog: http://baptisterollier.blogspot.com/200 ... iddle.html
He made lots of mistakes, and he was 12th!

Mharky: If positions don't matter why does everyone set performance goals like top 10, top 20? The time gaps vary a lot depending on the terrain anyway.

Guest88: re: wasting our time. Maybe we think that racing elite orienteering competitions is the most fun ever and no matter whether we end our careers with a woc medal or best of 37th maybe it won't have been a waste of time? I blimmin' hope I can do better than 37th though.. i definitely want to do better than 19th in a qualifier! But it's not all woc i want to better 5th in tio mila and various other things too. But running elite at Oringen next week is going to be sooo fun no matter what placing i get.

[harry]

well as long as none of the Americans beat me.

[greywolf]

...

perhaps you should've quoted "Lies damned lies and statistics" & "A smaller pool of women competitors means (probably) less strength in depth" ...but then you'd've had less to disagree with

then again if I wanted to argue that the women aren't completely crap perhaps I should've used the time gaps in the sprint....

[Patrick]

Oh dear. Let's be clear - no one (except possibly Kitch, but I don't think he meant it) has suggested that women can't navigate or are just crap. The point that I (and I think Mharky and Dids) were making is that there are fewer numbers and less competition among the women in most countries to drive the standards up, so outside of the Big 4 nations there's less pressure to be a perfect navigator in order to make the team. If you look at the results lists for most continental WREs, the number of elite women is often 30-50% the number of men. We seem to have accepted in the JWOC thread that lack of competition causes our talented juniors to crack on the big stage in comparison with their Scandinavian peers, so I don't see why the equivalent argument in this context is remotely controversial.

Harry - women's tennis isn't crap because they serve slower. It's crap when, as has often been the case, there are one or two players who are so much better than the rest that it becomes embarrassing. Women's orienteering has often been like that too, especially when Simone was winning by miles. How many long races over the last few years have had Niggli, Kauppi, Jukkola, Hausken and Ryabkina all in the top 6? Quite a few, I suspect, usually with Simone several minutes ahead of 4th place.

What this lack of depth at world class means is that if we can get our runners consistently within, say, 5% of the best in the world then they'll be that much higher up the results list. Medals are still hard to get because the best are very good. In fact, because the best women are good enough potentially to win at all disciplines it could be that medals are actually harder to achieve. That's why we need to be careful about the goals we set - there are no easy medals at WOC, but some top 10 positions might be easier than others.

Barny - converting runners to orienteers isn't just about teaching them to navigate, though I have tried this and know just how frustrating it can be! People who have developed as track/road runners are often useless in terrain, especially going downhill. At a pre-WOC training camp in Germany in 1995 they got a Tanzanian (I think) junior track champion (10k pb: 28 minutes) to run behind Petter Thoresen (pb: ~31 minutes) for a few legs in runnable continental forest - he couldn't keep up, despite Petter still having to do the navigation. Given that, I suspect he'd have lasted about 50m in Norwegian grot. It takes an awful lot of effort to persuade people to switch from something they're demonstrably good at to something different that highlights what they aren't good at.

Where I agree with you completely is your last paragraph and the importance of quality coaching and (though I hate the term) "centres of excellence".

Patrick

[Kitch]

Oh dear. Let's be clear - no one (except possibly Kitch, but I don't think he meant it) has suggested that women can't navigate or are just crap.

I said women are women

We seem to have accepted in the JWOC thread that lack of competition causes our talented juniors to crack on the big stage

nope,
lack of competition allows people to get good results at home despite poor discipline and sloppy navigation, which lead to mistakes.
lack of experience in difficult terrain can also lead to mistakes

cracking under the pressure of competition is due to lack of confidence

[Patrick]

I said women are women

...and how right you were!

lack of competition allows people to get good results at home despite poor discipline and sloppy navigation, which lead to mistakes.

OK, that's what I meant - I still think it applies.

Patrick

[mharky]

so back onto the GBR coach thing... it looks like Göran Andersson is going to be a free agent again: http://www.opn.no/?side=03670

[JennyJ]

I asked Goran if he would come back at O ringen and he said he's had enough of coaching. Shame - he was such a great coach!