Discussion: 7th leg mass start

Undy, am a friend of Philm, saw you ask a question on his AP about 7th leg changeover at Jukola. Posted this reply there but figured you'd be more likely to see it here.

Last year we (BOK Kaukaa Haettu) were in 7th leg mass start (missed close of changeover by 5 mins) and we came in 377th..... so I reckon only about top 300-350 teams miss the 7th leg mass start. Previous year we (KauHa 2 BOK) were just inside top 800, and were still only in the 7th leg mass start.

This year our 1st team went out before mass start on leg 7, (final result 285 or something like that) 2nd team only had leg 7 in mass start, (dq'd so not sure what sort of position we would have been in) and 3rd team went out leg 6 and 7 mass starts, and our final result was 1103.....

The results website isn't behaving itself, but if I remember, I'll take a look later on tonight when it might be working at what time and what position our last actual change overs were to give you some better idea.... certainly the vast majority of teams will go out in leg 7 mass start...

OK, change over closes at 8:45am.

so this year it looks like:

BOK Kaukaa Haettu 1 changed over 6-7 at 8:10am in 292nd position

BOK Kaukaa Haettu 2 changed over 5-6 at 8:12am in 637th position

BOK Kaukaa Haettu 3 changed over 4-5 at 8:14am in 1001st position. Leg 5 finished in 1122nd position some 45 minutes after close of changeover.

Last year:

Team 1 leg 6 came in at 8:50am in 417th and missed the changeover by 5 mins.

Team 2 leg 5 came in at 8:40am in 1002nd and so just got leg 6 out before close of changeovers.....

So it looks to me like maybe top 400(ish) miss leg 7 mass start, and maybe top 1000-1100(ish) manage to get leg 6 out before the close of changeover depending on the year... My guess is that in the years with the bigger turnouts, it is the middle and slower teams that have the bigger increase in numbers, being mixtures of both foreign orienteering teams tempted when it's closer to Helsinki airport, and equally the total non-orienteering "let's just go and have a go for a laugh" Finnish teams that are also tempted since it is closer to the main population centres... I imagine the top teams are going to pretty well always have a similar presence.....

Hope that helps. Got a bit more obsessed with figuring out an answer than I intended, sorry!!

No worries - I did pretty much the same analysis, but came up with slightly different results, with even more teams in the mass starts.

Thanks for your help.