Discussion: Tiomila 2016

Tiomila will take place in Falun, Sweden this weekend!

This year they promise high-quality web TV, including a channel in English (and Finnish).

A few Americans are running this year:
Sandra Lauenstein (ANCO, 2nd leg)
Ross Smith (OK Linne)
Samantha Saeger (OK Linne)
Cristina Luis (Nydalen 3, 5th leg)

Feel free to add more!

Live results don't work

They were working in the middle of leg 4 - then I went out for a few hours. Nothing now :(

Working again

10.5 hour forked relay race and it's won in the finish chute!

Slightly annoyed by the coverage - it was advertised as having some English commentary, but all I could find is a Finnish/English channel, which was all Finnish - at least when I was watching (maybe my fault for sleeping through a few legs?). Even when they interviewed Ralph Street it was is Sweedish (I think). Good on him for speaking the language, not so good for us who don't.
The only bit I caught in English was the interview of Jan Petrzela. None of the commentary, analysis etc.

The footage seemed much improved and more interesting, so I don't fully regret paying for the service, but still feel a little bit cheated...

Did anyone catch anything significant in English?

I tried the Finnish/English Channel for a while, for the end of the women's race too, but no English. Only English from interviews with non Scandinavian runners.

The production was much improved this year and the Running Cams video were top notch. Three good runners (I think I heard) had trained hard for this. The video had no losses at all. How did they accomplish that?

I don´t know what happened to the English commentary (or what they actually had promised). As you noticed there was only the studio in Swedish with interviews and forest footage + a Finnish commentary.

Live results were down for a while in the middle of the night and then off and on - which also affected some of the inside work - don´t know why.

Apart from the language issue and the online results I think everything worked as well as one could expect. There are always things to handle and problems to solve during the production but usually this doesn´t show to outside viewers. Technical problems like empty camera batteries and GPS receivers that didn´t work as expected are some things that occurred.

One of the "funny" things that happened was an unannounced Windows Update that shut down our GPS Tracking computer for a short while in the middle of the night!

I hate these updates that causes you to think WTF happens. I assume there is a config somewhere that make them announced.

Falun ski stadium must have had great studio space in place.

I noticed now that the English language page only had the link to the Finnish radio reporter while the Swedish page had links for both Swedish and Finnish.
I suppose that someone wanting the Swedish sound may also read the Swedish web page.
If you wanted the pre-announced English radio commentary there was nothing to find which is disappointing. Not much information about any of the alternatives either since most of the effort was put into the WebTV production which was only Swedish.

From a language policy perspective it does make a refreshing change from a world where everything tends towards English only (inculding Finnair's inflight magazine). I of course agree that if you advertise English you should provide it, but from an economic perspective I wonder how large the realistic audience for speakers of languages outside of the nordic community really is.... potential audience is huge, but realistic audience of people willing to pay 150 SEK might be more limited.

Of course the answer is to learn Finnish/Swedish before next year, fortunately FInnish is well known for being one of the easier languages in the world to acquire ;0)

I bet most Finns can understand Swedish (and English), but almost nobody who isn't a Finn can understand Finnish. (Maybe the Estonians.) English is the official language of the IOF because it's so widely understood.

So did any North Americans run well?

Emily Kemp was 17th on the anchor leg, and brought her team (Angelniemen Ankkuri) from 71st to 42nd place.

Louise Oram was 24th on her leg for Baekkelaget

Samantha Saeger was 57th on the anchor leg, and brought Linne 3 into the finish as the best 3rd team.

Sandra Lauenstein was 125th on the second leg for ANCO 1

Cristina Luis was 199th on the anchor leg, and gained 8 places for Nydalens 3

Ross Smith was 193rd on the anchor leg for Linne 2, but the team mispunched on the 3rd leg :(

Thanks Boris! I hope you wrote this with a Swedish accent.

Hi all,
I'm really sorry we missed out on the english part. The order was 70/30 finnish/english but I must admit I never followed that up during the night. I simply had to much to do.

The plan from the beginning was 3 streams with commentary in swedish, finnish and english.
2 months before 10MILA LiveStream (our streaming supplier) raised their fee with about 500% which made it impossible for us to cover 3 streams. When that happened we had already contracted the finnish commentators and sadly had to drop the english ones.

I hope you all understand our situation and that you had the possibility to enjoy the broadcast anyway.

For 10MILA 2017, I will keep fighting for replacing the finnish commentary with an enlish one instead.

If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me on peter@lofas.se

Cheers,
Peter Löfås
Head Producer, 10MILA-TV 2016

Tack så mycket, Boris.

Peter, thanks for the explanation. Sorry to hear about troubles you had with LiveStream.

Thanks from me as well Boris!

I forgot Will Critchley, who had the 47th best time on the Long Night leg, and brought VaTe 2 from 73rd to 66th

tunapeter>> Thanks for the explanation. I'd be happy to volunteer to be an English-language commentator next year. :)

That would be a good choice!

I would be very sad if you replace the Finnish commentary with English one. That would be a very sad world. If you can provide both, then that would be fantastic.

I will happily pay 150 kr (or 300 kr) to listen to Finnish commentary, but I am not sure I would be willing to pay for the English version. For me talking about the forest is infinitely more beautiful in Finnish as the words speak to my heart. If you replace that with English, it will just be a report about men and women running around in the dark. Maybe I am in a minority.

I do understand that there are cost implications and problems and I am sorry to hear about them, but there must be solutions.

Peter, I also appreciate that you came forward with the explanation. An unfortunate circumstance with the streaming provider (and sounds quite unprofessional behaviour as well).
Hope you can sort it out for next year.

I think some of it is actually an editorial approach. For example, I have now re-watched (with lots of winding forward/back) the coverage, and it seemed to be commonplace that when a leg winner was interviewed in the swedish cast (sometimes in English language), the finnish/english cast just did not carry the same sound, i.e. it was the finnish commentators talking. So in the end the Swedish cast seemed to have more English content, than the Finnish/English one...

Tommig, I am not sure I agree with you. Surely what the commentators are talking about is down to directing and selecting the right commentators, not innate in whatever language is chosen for the broadcast? It is true that a lot of commentators (not only English) do struggle to portray the beauty of a particular sport (not only Orienteering), however that does not need to mean that no one can.

I dont know Peter, I have no experience in listening to orienteering commentary in English, I wouldn't know where to find it, but I have listened to lots of Ice Hockey, Cross-country skiing, Biathlon and Ski Jumping commentary in both languages. These have all been somewhat muted for me in English (I am bilingual brought up with both languages, spending mostly time in the UK). Part of it is purely an emotional response to learning these sports in Finland, part of it is partisan. I pay good money for VPN services so I can watch Ice Hockey with the Finnish commentary, and gladly do the same to watch orienteering on Finnish TV. Of course some of it is down to the way that an English speaker pronounces Finnish names, partly when I watched the Tiomila it was not just to enjoy the orienteering, but it was to cheer on Tampeereen Pyrintö, Kalevan Rasti, SK Pohjantähti, Pellon Ponsi and Rajamäen Rykmentti, and all the Finnish teams that English people would pronounce in a funny way. Even extremely knowledgeable Eurosport commentators cannot get their mouths around the name Martti Jylhä...

For me, so much of it is poetic in Finnish(vitikko sounds so much better than thicket, varvikko better than undergrowth shrubs), the sound of the words, not just the content etc., in just the same way as I cannot imagine listening to Cricket commentary in Finnish, or Italian, or German, no matter how competent or knowledgeable the commentators are it just isn't the same as Radio 4 English.....

Anyway, like I say, I would gladly pay for Finnish commentary, I would still happily pay for a 70-30 Finnish-English, and maybe even for a 50-50. But I might be in a minority on this, all I know is that if it was an English only commentary I would probably not pay and watch it the next day when it was free to watch, or just wait for Jukola to enjoy an overnight relay with Finnish commentary.

In my opinion Tiomila and Jukola are more interesting to watch than WOC. WOC is getting somewhat predictable but these big relays aren't. Yeah sure the big clubs are going to be in the top of the relays but who ends up winning is going to always be up in the air. And that makes for good watching.

The WOrld champs not being THE TV/internet event to watch is not unique to O. Tour de France (for example) is more interesting to watch than the World Cycling Champs. And so it is important to get the internet coverage of these O relays dialed in the host country language and English. Good for the sport internationally. Anybody can enter into these races which makes it appealing as well.

Also it would be good to get a 1-2 hour post-production summary version that can be sold across various sports networks internationally.

I really enjoy watching the orienteering relays and I invited many of our club's juniors over to watch it so that they could get a sense of the scale of the sport and the level of the competition in other places. We started out with the Finnish feed since it promised English but eventually switched to the Swedish to have a chance of understanding a bit more and hopefully making it more accessible for them.
I found the production to be one of the best I have seen and the exciting end didn't hurt either.

NEOC#1>> The running camera is a GoPro mounted on a gyro stabilized handheld stick. Connection is by redundant mobile connections (One 4G (LTE) and one EVDO (Net1)).

The same technique was used for the Kalle-Cam (which actually was the exact same kamera and backpack used during the broadcasts from Vasaloppet and the skiing reporter there)

We had about 4-5 seconds delay of the picture from the running camera and Kalle-Cam which was about 2 seconds more than we had hoped for.

All our cameras in the forest are wireless, IP-based and movable. Around each control site there was built a WiFi-zone with WiFi-link back to the arena where the camera could connect back when entering the zone.
This way we could also have many different kamerapositions but using only a few cameras and instead moving them (and the cameraman) around.
Also, since the camera is wireless, you can do small runs even with the fixed kamera like the cameraman at control 139 did.

Best Regards
Peter Löfås

You can see how it looks here:
https://scontent-arn2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/1317...

Until we got the streams un YouTube, you can watch them freely on LiveStream

Swedish:
http://livestream.com/accounts/17629489/events/531...

Finnish:
http://livestream.com/accounts/8712572/events/5288...

awesome

I have to agree that the coverage was awesome, very exciting, especially towards the end when we were literally running with the top three, and being with the eventual top two as Thierry took different decisions and seeing how they worked out. I personally would not have even noticed the 4-5 seconds delay, it definitely did not affect my viewing pleasure! Many congratulations for putting it all together.

tunapeter - thanks. Great job with the system solution and configuration. Perfect connection from what I saw Far better that the Boston Marathon. Redundancy is always good.

The cam runners must have carried a multi port router in their pack + quite a bit of power. Woods-WiFi is awesome - via LTE and EVDO also?.

Is the cam guy in your picture a moving control man or a cam runner? Looks like he has illumination available.

Lol, agree with Tommi. I particularly enjoy the very unbiased Finnish hockey announcers when they play Sweden in the World Championship finals.

People in Canada are getting better, but I always dread any attendance taking, as they get closer and closer to the M last names, and I'm starting to think, how are they going to butcher my name this time around (just pronounce every letter, people).

Plus some of the Finnish club names are awesome.

Ikaalisten Nouseva-Voima. The ever increasing power of Ikaalinen
Turun Metsänkävijät. The forest visitors of Turku.
Hiidenkiertäjät. I think this one could mean doing laps around the devil, but not sure.

Helsingin Suunistajat? Boring!
OK random Swedish town? Boring!

Hey Juha Forest Beach, Cdn announcers are doing a decent job of pronouncing Laine though no

They are not exactly doing a great job with Puljujärvi though. The only thing that could be worse for him is if his first name was Yrjö instead of Jesse lol

Appreciate the feeling for the qualities of language. Around here there's growing interest in the indigenous language. Even though not spoken much in the street it gave rise to many place names, which usually tell a story. Oddly, the indigenous TV station has taken over the role of quality broadcaster, as the rest turn to ratings-driven rubbish. Rediscovery of traditional instruments, and modern compositions for them. But I digress. Replaying selected Tio Mila coverage was awesome.

Orienteers who grounded the club Hiidenkiertätjät back 60's used to do long training runs together and usually they ran together from Lohja to Tavola and back, around the giant's kettle at Tavola. Giant's kettle is "hiidenkirnu" in Finnish (and word hiidenkirnu means "Devils butter churn"). So they named the club as Hiidenkiertäjät for thats what they usually did. Clubs logo illustrates giant's kettle and arrows around it.

Jukola podium is called "hiidenkivi". A hiidenkivi (Devil's rock) is large piece of rock that has been relocated by glacial ice. And why not, these boulders are so large those must have been moved only by the devil. In the Seven Brothers novel brothers escaped bulls by climbing such a boulder.

Hiidenkiertäjät have not been going a around hiidenkivi, they have climbed to hiidenkivi several times and twice as a winner.

I can understand the sentiment of wanting to hear the names sounding right :) Not that it makes a lot of difference in Orienteering, but I can seldom hear Hungarian names pronounced correctly either (And incidentally it was quite funny hearing the commentators trying to get the name of the first runner for the ladies Hämeenlinnan Suunnistajat 1 - Ildiko Szerencsi - correctly... as she was running with the front runners, she featured in the coverage which is unusual for a Hungarian orienteer).

In a coverage as long as these relays, I would think the time allows for, and I would find it very interesting if the commentary would cover these aspects. Get a couple of natives from the main countries featured, and discuss proper pronunciation of individuals names as well as teams, the history of teams and their names... In a way, you can then make the English commentary a very international commentary and educational as well. Clearly discussion on these topics would happen during the less intense times of the coverage, but would be interesting nevertheless. Some of it may have already happened in the native commentaries, sadly I don't understand Swedish nor Finnish. (Despite what linguists say about the close relation of the Finnish and Hungarian languages, I can't understand anything from Finnish. Although some people who don't speak either but listened to both tell me that they sound similar.)

NEOC#1: The man in the picture is a running camera man.. The forest cameras have a slightly more advanced camera with optic stabilization among other things.
The Woods WiFi shot back with a 300Mbit WiFi-Link (Nanostation M5)

Psuba, I have heard exactly the same comment from my Hungarian friends. They cannot understand a word of Finnish but if they are in a crowded place, the "hubbub" sounds familiar!! I would love to go to Hungary and experience the same... And I agree, there was quite a lot of quiet time which could have accommodated an English language coverage, or French, or Hungarian. Of course the more languages you add to a multilingual coverage the more complex it gets, but I would imagine that it would be relatively easy to get data on what countries the coverage was most watched in....

On the pronunciation front it was also quite funny to hear the Finnish commentators pronounce "Dane Blomquist" with a Swedish pronunciation (like Daa-ne Bluumkvist) and wondering why they didn't know him, then coming back later and saying "oh, I believe it is pronounced "De-in" as he is from UK, but he must have nordic heritage....".

Finnish and Hungarian aren't closely related, they're distantly related. Kind of like English and Sanskrit. But they're pretty much not related to anything else.

And whether they are even related at all is under question again. The postman...