Discussion: WOC Spectating Online

Will there be a broadcast of the WOC races that we can watch?

Looks like there will be. http://orienteering.org/world-orienteering-champio...

The team is arriving today in Tartu, tomorrow is the sprint model...we're ready! Join us on line and follow the excitement.

The sprint qualifier start lists are online on Eventor: https://eventor.orienteering.org/Events/StartList?...

They appear to be arranged by heat. Is that a mistake, or is it now normal to reveal who is racing in which heat ahead of time?

At any rate, here are US starting times (in local time):

90 364 Christopherson Tyra USA 13:15:30
23 366 Brautigam Evalin USA 13:34:00
71 365 Doubson Julia USA 13:46:30

126 360 Jorgensen Morten USA 14:08:30
175 362 Barbone Giacomo USA 14:22:30
231 363 Ahlswede Gregory USA 14:47:00

Good luck to all the athletes!

Don't recall them ever doing the start lists like that in the past, but not sure. Seems surprising.

That's a cockup! :-)

With 90s between runners in each heat it seems unlikely it would matter so much!

No they're not supposed to do it like that, and yes 90sec behind the winner will normally get women into the final.
It doesn't surprise me.

Fun facts:

Canada is 150 years old on Saturday (day of sprint final).
Orienteering Canada is 50 years old this year.
Canadian orienteering was started by Sass Peepre from Estonia.
WOC is in Estonia.

2016:
https://eventor.orienteering.org/Events/StartList?...

2015:
https://eventor.orienteering.org/Events/StartList?...

I doubt they were edited after the race - what's the point?

Oh Oh Hammer. Fact #3 is not quite correct as stated. (Apologies in advance for intruding on this thread)
However the confluence of anniversaries and the continuing legacy of Sass Peepre will be celebrated in Canada starting a month from now with the Canada 150 Orienteering Festival
All events open to all including Eastern Canadian Orienteering Championships, night orienteering on a golf course with pre-and post- race celebration in country club comfort, a re-run of the top three course from the first COCs on a 1968 style map and of course the COCs in a town shaping up to offer the most welcoming atmosphere ever.
And more!! Like the Sass Peepre youth orienteering training camp, Trivia orienteering on the sprint map the Orienteering Canada Conference and an awesome silent auction.
Register by Sunday and avoid the latest price increase.

No they're not supposed to do it like that.

Is there a rule that says the allocation of athletes to specific heats should be secret prior to the start of the race? It seems like that has been standard practice in the past, but I don't see anything to that effect in the IOF rules (e.g., section 12.8).

Graeme, for WOC 2015, the link for the Sprint Qualification Start List on www.woc2015.org goes to Eventor, which shows allocation to specific heats. Was the link (or the content on the Eventor webpage) different prior to the actual race?

The randomization of bib numbers within each heat in 2015 and 2016 makes me think that the heat allocation was in fact kept secret prior to the start of those races.

It's normal for start lists by heat to be made available once runners go into quarantine.

note that each heat has offset start times.

Anyway, how about we discuss the athletes
Sprint medal predictions?

sprint favourites

http://news.worldofo.com/2017/06/30/woc-2017-sprin...

Emma W starting in 1 minute!

Good runs all, so proud of the young N American women racing at WOC!

Great races by Julia, Tyra, and Emma! Well done!

Julia 29 seconds from the final and Tyra 37. Bodes well for the future!

Impressive run by Damian. Final?

Henry Mc (from my home city of Perth, West Aus) qualified 2nd in Mens C, woohoo!

It will be a close call for Damian. Maybe. Looks like he lost some seconds between radio and pre finish...

Oops jumped the gun, still racing.

I think Damian did just enough to get in. But yeah, it will be close.

tRicky>> Great run by Henry, indeed! But there are a number of great runners left in that heat, so I don't expect him to end up 2nd.

Yeah sorry, I couldn't access the live results until just now (website overloaded).

14th or 15th for Damian!?

7th for Henry, a very good result!

Looks like three Australians through: Krystal, Henry and (by the narrowest possible margin) Tash. Another finalist worth noting from outside Europe is Michael Crone (also by the narrowest possible margin).

Wasn't sure about Natasha. She was listed with the same time as 15th but ranked 16th.

But same time as 15th, so through she goes

Simonin in narrowly, keeping Khramov out!

Great to see 2 US girls in the top 20!

6/6 for us :)

Good job Damian!

Not really online spectating but here's my photos from today:
https://hirppa.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Suunnistus/2017/2017...
Probably 97% of the runners covered.
Photos are tagged and pressing the tag gives you (possible) other photos of that person or nation.

@bmay Graeme, for WOC 2015, the link for the Sprint Qualification Start List on www.woc2015.org goes to Eventor, which shows allocation to specific heats. Was the link (or the content on the Eventor webpage) different prior to the actual race?
SEA: you must not reveal allocations to heats because of [important reasons]
us: OK
SEA: You must use our new Eventor System
us: OK. Can you show us how to set it up without revealing allocations?
us: Hello?
us: Hello?
SEA: you must reveal allocations to heats because of [different important reasons]
us: OK.

@Hirppa - thank you! A very nice collection.

@Graeme
That's interesting. The requirement for heat allocation to be kept secret was removed only in the Rules of 1 Jan 2017. So in 2015 it was against the Rules to reveal heat allocation before the start. I am wondering if it was necessary because Eventor as a pet project has a priority over sporting aspects.
I started a blog on the IOF recently (https://iofreflections.blog/). So far it is focused on the very messy finances of the IOF, but the Eventor story will definitely feature in it. I'll also use this little story, if you do not mind.

@graeme ... Thanks for the explanation!

@stalas: very interesting blog - some lessons in that for OUSA too. Suggest anyone interested in OUSA's financing disasters take a look at the IOF's version. Good to see we aren't alone in overambitious budgeting.

Hear tell that a landowner issue forced the reprinting of the qualification maps at the last minute. Digitally.

An interesting aside about yesterday is that the competition maps were laser printed at the last minute. The original versions which we got in the team bags after the race had slightly different courses and one tiny map modification. Don't know what the reasoning is yet.

Were there picnic tables on the map that needed updating to the fodder rack symbol?

Start intervals were 30 seconds (one person every 30 seconds) for this WOC. Previous WOCs used 1 minute intervals with three people starting at the same time so they didn't publish who was in which heat. Now it's easy to work out because someone on your heat will be starting 90 seconds after you, so they are published.

90 seconds looks like overkill for this course - 41 seconds behind the winner in Mens B was 16th and too slow to qualify. Well done by the way.

I think that it came from the argument that two people in other heats starting at the same time can throw you off. So to be fair they'd rather have only you on the start line. To be honest the bigger the gap the better. You don't want one person catching another to have an influence on who qualifies. Obviously this is more of an issue in the middle and long. But in the long in 2011 Thierry pulled his team mate to a bronze medal, something that ideally shouldn't happen.

And thank you!

I can vouch for the argument of having no-one else in your start grid to throw you off but I had a different situation in last year's WMTBOC middle race where the girl starting a minute in front of me had SI stick issues and the starters completely ignored me to sort her out so I had no idea what was going on. Threw me right off from the word go.

We only had individual starts in the middle and long (W/M alternating on the 2 minute for the middle and W/M/blank alternating on 3 minutes for the long) but the sprint we started in W/M pairs and also had the same first three or four controls!

Only time I recall for starting at the same time as others in my category was the 2012 long qual where we had three on the start line on three different courses and I had to start behind the other two due to space limitations so that wasn't nice.

Tash Key leading for Australia at this stage in the sprint final.

Am having 0 luck with connecting/buying TV coverage :(

same here. paid 20 euros yesterday and cannot find that TV coverage ( indeed was a short night sleep-however ). anyone ?

Just got it going; it took a while to load.

I'm getting TV coverage; is there separate GPS tracking?

I'm getting GPS but no TV. barb - we should be together right now!

Oh!
Yes, being together would be way more fun

TV is at liveorienteering.com; are you seeing GPS tracks there too?

I'm seeing nothing but the 20 E hole in my bank account so far.

yes

I paid, too, and can't get anything. It keeps offering to let me pay again! Barb, what did you click and where did you wait for it to load? Oh, and it also keeps asking me to login again!

Same. Every now and then I get to see the events I have bought access to, but then get booted back out.

@khall - not sure if they fixed something, but I finally got in, hyperlinked from http://woc2017.ee/live/sprint-final to https://liveorienteering.com/#/live?id=5738

Good luck

Thanks, about to try those links. I finally got to the event list, clicked on sprint final, then it gave me an ad about orienteering in China, and then it went to a Chat box. Grrr.

Nope, no luck. It brought up the Chat box again!!!

Looks like Tash did the fastest time but got DQd ?

(nope, been looking at start times).

it didn't work for me either so I looked up the national TV-Station. Eesti TV:
http://etv2.err.ee/

>> MM.Sprint

I have TV and GPS...well, hopefully I'll get the men's GPS when that starts.

The TV link works :-) Of course I can't understand the commentary, but it is way better than nothing! Now I can't even load the page with the IOF Live Center link. The browser says there is a problem with the site. I'm feeling extremely frustrated, so I'll say it: they didn't have any problem taking my money! Yeah, yeah, I know that was PayPal instead. But I have to vent my frustrations somehow. Guess I'll go for a run :-)

For those who know that paying money is a recipe for frustration, there's precious little else. Just the online results and no maps until afterwards. An audio usually adds a bit of atmosphere to the numbers.

Do you have the chat box on the LiveOrienteering site?
Mine has disappeared, and the GPS window got larger. Is it only my setup or was there too much criticism in the chat box?

I have both, after some reloading.

I got tv and gps after giving up on my home wifi (nbn) and connecting to my phone 4g, would be nice to have been able to full screen and separate them but at least I got to see something for my 6 euro.

Not in time to see Tash though - any idea why she was dq?

I think her emit didn't register at the spectator control :(

I love orienteering but I wonder if it will ever be a real sport that can at least make itself watchable to a casual interloper, or is the viewing rigmarole part of the sine qua non and its essential charm? Kind of like concert tapes of Dead shows or something?

Hey! :-) Currently Dead related concert recordings are first rate, and available in an amazingly timely fashion, like minutes after the show for a fair price. Granted, in decades past, there was more "charm", but even in the "charming" era, the GD sound and recording world has always been at the tech forefront, to capture missed lyrics and off key singing, as well as the technology allowed, not behind it, the way live O seems to be.

10 and 12 by Spain in the men's, and wow Hubmannnnn! And wow Majaaaaa!

I was thinking that might get JJ or Eric riled up ;)

The frustration (at least as expressed on AP) that seems to be part-and-parcel of live WOC/JWOC coverage has, so far, put me off from even trying...

Seems I was not able to get the stream to work on my Mac but it worked on my PC.

I wonder if it would work on the Windows virtual machine on my Mac.

@jayne - looks like she went to wrong first control if you look at her GPS.
I was confusing start times with results, so her 14:41 stood up for a long time :)

It's #6 (the arena passage) that Tash is missing on the splits - I think #1 is just a GPS quirk (there was no other control in the area).

Sprint Relay 4th Leg

Emily Kemp? What is happening?

DNS? Faulty live results? Injury?

Pulled out to rest for other races. Canada sent a team of 2 women and 3 men.

Julia in 25th, 3:33 behind the leader. Looks like Emma mispunched?
http://r.emit.live/followfull.php?comp=12628&lang=...

Pretty sure that is a side effect of Emily not running, as Emma was marked okay earlier in the competition.

Will Critchley mispunched on the 3rd leg for Canada.

So what is it? MP for Will or did Canada not run a full team?

I think they didn't run with a full team.

When I was following online, Will came in with a valid result and then Emily just never got to the first radio control. Once they switched Emily to a MP, then all of the Canadian runners are showing a MP.

For comparison, Ukraine showed up with a DSQ during the relay, so I figure that if Will mispunched, there would have been a DSQ next to Emily during the 4th leg.

Emily didn't run, so they had no anchor leg. Looking at the final results, I think the other three ran ok. Their status is mispunched because of not having a full team. Compare to Chinese Taipei, which also did not field a full time, but two of their runners are shown with "mispunch" instead of a finish time.
https://eventor.orienteering.org/Events/ResultList...

OK, so having paid for the coverage and sort of managing to watch after 2 days, I have to raise serious concerns about the way it is technically put together. (This is my profession, after all).

One can question the whole structure both from a technical perspective (not working on several browsers, partially loaded pages, login issues etc.) as well as from a user experience (no visible signs that something is still loading on the page or there are issues, the live results and GPS tracking not changing with the changeover in relay or as the women finished and men started in the sprint final) and ergonomics design (cramming 3 key elements on one page with no chance of positioning all in one screen, etc.) perspective. Plus, it seems to me like IOF changes platforms almost every major event. This does not help as each time there are new kinks to be sorted out. It looks like they now want to consolidate every element into one platform they own, but of course there are issues with this. And having the WOC, with paying public as testers seem a bit... well, let me call it unconventional!

I suspect (I haven't seen any comms on this...) they are working like crazy in the background to try and iron out the various issues, which I can only suspect from the various changes that seem to have happened on the page in the last days - which on the one hand is commendable, on the other hand, is something that should not be happening to this degree at the biggest showcase event for IOF, but way earlier.

I know the pressures of delivering a technical solution on time for a big event, but this is why, perhaps, it would have been wiser to at least have a back-up plan for rolling back to the previously existing solution in case things don't come together as expected...

I couldn't watch the sprint final as I was busy but yesterday I had no issues logging in and watching. My have had to reload the page a once or twice but think that might have been a error from livestream not the page. A scalable server might help with some issues.

That said the live orienteering webpage is way too busy. Too much text. Too many elements. Events layouts feel like they are a second thought currently. There is no description of what events you have to pay for and there is no mention that you can buy a pass for the week other than a couple of buttons and small icons. Anyway enough on that.

As for trying to cram 3 things in one window. We all know that is a hard thing to do and really does need external links available. I think last night in the relay if you refreshed the page after the first leg then the tracking changed over. Anyway some more testing would have been good. Though they have used it for a number of world cups already.

It is difficult to produce a slick and well working solution for live coverage. I could suggest many things that would produce a better experience, but of course at the end of the day they all cost money (and even having read stalas' blog I would say that the money seemingly spent on this is not nearing what a commercial organisation would need to spend to get this right from all angles).

At the same time - this is not branded as a "trial" service, but one that is delivered as is. So anyone buying any of the packages can reasonably expect to receive a full, well functioning product, which is not something that could be argued is what they get. Anyone in marketing knows that the best way to measure the success of a service/product is by looking at its NPS (Net Promoter Score), which essentially asks of a customer: would you recommend this product/service to your friends? And at the moment, I think most people who paid for the service would struggle to genuinely be persuasive when our friends (as happened to me) would be taken aback once they learn how much money is being charged for a few hours of coverage and say "no way am I going to pay that amount of money". At the moment, with all the technical shortcomings and minimal content (yes, I consider video coverage starting 5 minutes before the start, and ending 5-10 minutes after it finished, with one edited feed etc. basically a bare minimum content) this is not an easy sell.

After I got through the frustratingly poor website on Saturday I got what I wanted from the broadcast. I made the stream full screen and it was really good. Good commentary/insight/knowledge, good production and good quality of stream. I did pay with very low confidence I would get any content but was pleasantly surprised at what I got, on a par with previous broadcasts. So they got some stuff right at least.

The surprise I guess is that they got the stream out to however many people at high quality with no (to me anyway) bandwidth issues. We know from previous experience that they are capable of a good quality broadcast (in terms of cameras/production/overlays etc) but it was the delivery I was worried about.

I didn't watch Sunday's race but it looks like it's free to watch now so I will hopefully watch it in full this week.

What would be an interesting discussion is what % of viewers want more than just the TV broadcast. To me the broadcast should include the highlights of GPS and results/split times, so if it's good you shouldn't need more than that. This certainly avoids having any issues with html layout and extra tabs etc open.

There's a YouTube channel called Orienteering Tube that has recordings of the
broadcasts. The sprint relay was just posted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weDMz-6jlZg

These are the TV broadcasts, not the webcasts.

Hi, AFAIK they invested 600 000 EUR for TV broadcasting or something like this. Please don't blame organisers for absence of good will. Also IOF regulation can take a part.
But overall, my impression that it's best WOC TV coverage I've ever seen. Yes, my impressions came from Estonian TV, yes it's with language barier, yes, I would prefer english and Par as commenter, but I'm smart enough to tune up laptop services, to check what's important and build big picture from TV and live results.
Great job, and awesome courses, it's really about orienteering, forget that track'n'field

With all the complaints on AP in the past about poor coverage, I've been hesitant to actually pay to watch an O broadcast. But opted to take an early lunch break at work Sunday and ponied up the money to watch the sprint relay coverage and was quite happy with the whole deal.

No glitches or error messages, put the video and leaderboard on one monitor and the GPS trace in a second and watched the whole thing without a hitch. The video (and accompanying GPS trace/commentary) seemed about 20-40 seconds delayed from the live GPS but perhaps its some digital version of a broadcast tape delay. It was odd waiting for the video commentary to catch up with the GPS tracks on the third leg errors happening in the woods. I'd do it again..

It appears that Canada doesn't have a man running the long tomorrow. Anyone know why?

They don't have a lot of men?

That 26min sprint relay summary is excellent.

I'm in two minds about the coverage. 1. We HAVE to develop the technology for live coverage, and its reasonable to charge for it. When its up to scratch. 2. There isn't an international "Consumer Guarantees Act" like we have round here, which says that goods must be fit for purpose or your money back.

Alongside the paid coverage (you have to pay to watch most big sporting competitions live) I would like to see a better free service (of course). Something that brings the split time numbers (which are displayed more usefully than they used to be) to life. A good audio for example. When I was small we used to use a thing called a radio.

10 min after start of broadcast I see GPS, but video is still "Waiting for the event to go live" - Anybody had more success?

12 min after start of broadcast some intermittent picture showing the start - plus sound of lot's of birds

15 min after start of broadcast message back to "Waiting for the event to go live"

Well, well ....

Seems to be working(ish)

I'm getting a message saying commentary will start at 1300 (presumably Estonian time), which is about 30 minutes from now.

Worked for a while (no speaker though) - now back on GPS only

"IOF" claimed in the chat window that "it was announced start of broadcast today at 13:00 [Estonian time] as the TV. We are just presenting the arena production the first two hours as a bonus"

I saw no announcement like that. All times on Live Orienteering referred to 11:10 start (Estonian time).

Did anybody see any announcement about starting the broadcast as a "bonus"?

Messages from the live results at about 1min intervals (auto refresh rate?): "Message from webpage. Data Tables warning (table id = 'divResults') Requested unknown parameter 'splits.1004' from the data source for row 0." The results no longer seem to be sorted in increasing time order. Clicking "OK" sends me back to the top of the page, no matter where I was. The live results worked OK in the hothouse atmosphere of the sprints, woulda thought the long would be a breeze:-) I'm on IE11, Windows 7.

Having the same table id issue, and it jumps to that tab, so with live results in 1 tab, and the overall production on another (which includes live results), it keeps hopping between tabs - very annoying.
Moving to firefox (from chrome) now though to see if that solves it.

I'm having the same issue with Firefox.

We appear to have a couple at the pre-warning, but without any times from 7.3km or 9.8km, suggested in the title line.

You have to be quick to find who' s leading at 2.2km, between being tossed back to the top. Looks like Anastasia Rudnaya RUS when I finally got a fix just now. And some finishers, yay. At least there's no black hole out on the physical course:-)) And Emit never fails, does it?

Frequency of data table msges is variable, as short as 15sec.

Estonia has a reputation of being one of the world leaders in IT, and but for IOF imposing its own platform they (Estonian organising team) could probably have done a really good job of providing coverage.

NZL briefly holds top slot. First to break 100. Well done Lizzie.
... Well that wasn't a bad reign Lizzie. Broken by a train of 3.

Not Kempsters day today... :(

Looks like Greg is having a solid run. He'll have the top spot for a bit when he finishes.

Looks like the live results are having a solid run for the men, too:-))

Estonian TV was alright to watch if you didn't want English commentary (other than a bit of an interview with Tove).

Our sport sure has some incredible athletes. It looked really physical and lots of route choice. Though to have mulch in the Euro Flop Zone at the finish made the long courses even extra cruel.

For anyone who didn't follow the live coverage, you can see replays of the GPS tracks here at worldofo.

Concerning the start interval, it seemed that there were still groups forming. On the men's side, medalists William Lind and Olav Lundanes ran together for most of the race, Portin and Regborn ran together, and an intermittent pack of Daehli, Sedivy, and countrymen Coupat and Trachand formed during the butterfly. While the impact of the packs on the results didn't seem as egregious as last year's Long partyfest, a 2-minute start interval again seems inadequate to ensure separation among competitors - leading to a competitive advantage to certain start positions. The women's side also had packs, though they seemed more intermittent than the men's side.

Perhaps Estonia lends itself to a greater pack formation because of the impact of the green on route choice? Is a 2-minute start interval compromising the fair competition of the long by effectively deciding the race during the initial seeding? Discuss.

I started responding to Ian's question with some thoughts, but then decided that should probably be a separate thread. Maybe Ian should start one with his question?

Nope, it's entirely relevant to have a comment about the 2-minute start interval in a thread about the online broadcast, because media coverage and the TV viewing window are the reasons given for the rule variation from 3 min at WOC every year.

It's already been debated ad nauseum, anyway. Check similar threads on AP around this time last year, and before that, and go back to 2005. There is nothing new here.

Route choice awesomeness!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWIWfKbFnqN/

It's interesting that Estonia chose their average terrain, definitely not the best technical one, more on a physical side, for the Long at least.
Maybe that is the right approach, like having WOC in Cincinnati.
Green there is very tough, it is reducing visibility to the minimum,
but then route choice on the edge of marsh/hill, and visible paths are formed,
and running is easier for those who start later thru overgrown with stinging nettles dense forest.

Well, paid today for the last two races, and it all worked fine (same computer, same browser, same place ...). Guess they got it worked out! But thank goodness for Estonian television on the other days.

Thought I'd post one more time a link to my WOC photos since now they're all uploaded.

Plan is to shoot JWOC as well and if someone needs some news-photos from some certain people, I might be able to help.

@yurets: There were very few paths in the terrain after the long on the longer legs, some on the very short legs. Runners spread out a lot, so paths did not seems to be an issue. Also, I think the terrain for the long was excellent - giving a lot of route choice options and many technical challenges. I can't see which other terrain-type in Estonia would be better for the long distance? Certainly not the middle distance terrain. For the middle/relay the choice of terrain was also excellent, very technical orienteering all the way, especially for the middle it was a perfect fit for the discipline.

@jankoc: Love your site and analyses of all the big races.

My second most visited website after AP.

The definitive source for orienteering, (at least for English speakers).

There'd be quite an orienteering void in my life without it!