Discussion: World Games!

The orienteering races at the World Games start tomorrow! Led by our fearless leader Cristina Luis, the team of volunteers has been working hard to bring world-class orienteering to the U.S. for the first time in over two decades.

Tune into the free live broadcast on the IOF website tomorrow to follow the action, starting at 10am Eastern. You will see some great action and might hear a familiar voice.

Good luck to all the athletes!

Broadcast: https://orienteering.sport/event/the-world-games-2...

Boris, did you run the model today?
How realistic is the predicted 5 min/km speed?

From Bulletin 4: Men 30-35min 6.4km 310m climb

The way Boris was running last week he should be there racing!

Not loving the double commentary, would prefer to stick with Boris rather than the random Kiwi.

Where do we find Boris? I was wondering who the Kiwi was.

Boris is in the background and slightly ahead of the Kiwi to add to the confusion

Is anyone getting live tracking or live results to work?

I'm hearing Boris in my feed, interacting with another guy.

Who's the Euro?
And nice run DMan!

So I guess Boris is doing the arena announcing? I'll give Mason Arthur some points for best stair descending technique.

Boris is definitely commentating in a booth with another man (with an accent I can't place). I can hear an arena announcer (or two?) in the background, too, along with pop music.

There’s an arena announcer (not an orienteer). Livestream commentary is by Boris and Erling.

OK, looks like there are two different livestreams on the IOF page (annoyingly, the Boris one is cut in half on my browser).

live results link still not active? anyone got a working link?

I don't have live results, either. Or GPS.

Tim Robertson won the men’s.
Women’s ongoing.

Bizarrely enough the best summary I found was on
a Ukrainian fb page...

Nice running from the North Americans!

Also, Boris' announcing keeps going from strength to strength. I hope we don't lose him to Formula 1. It's really good!

I had to do some futzing and clicking, but got the video with Boris and Erling to come up full screen, which was great until my work meeting started and then the internet dropped out here. But I got to see a lot of it, and it was quite good. Who was the camera operator following runners near control #53? I had a suspicion it might be Mr. Morse.

That was Ross White, Allison Campbell's (USA) boyfriend.

Edit: I know Ross White was a running cameraman; I don't know if he was the one near that location.

Great camera work and commendable speed! :)

In my view that running camera operator got too close to the ladies and was possibly a bit distracting particularly when they did the 180 out of the depression control. But on the other hand he really brought the action 'into the living room'.
Boris did great commentating. The commenting team could have used another spotter or two to keep eyes on the splits coming in from various stations and feed more information on how the later starters were overtaking each other to the on-air team.

Tim you're amazing. Leaping buildings in a single bound! O wait, lots of the others can do it too. Better watch your back...

There was a discussion on the WOC thread a few weeks back if North America had intricate enough cities to have a technical sprint. Today wasn’t any where near as technical as Denmark but route choice decisions and execution errors were a plenty today (without artificial barriers too). Are course planners over thinking the difficulty needed for international sprints? High speed decision making will inevitably result in mistakes and make for great spectating. Great race today.

@Hammer Yes.

@Hammer Yes.

@ Hammer: No idea. The real orienteering race is tomorrow.

I was second camera at first intermediate control - runners coming around a round building the often back down stairs - Control 40. I have no idea how the shots came out though.

Olympic Channel has an almost 2-hour long sprint race replay. Announcers are clueless horrible, but I bet some of your video footage is there.

https://olympics.com/en/video/orienteering-sprint-...

I forget the NZ commentator's name but he's usually pretty good value in the sports he knows (athletics and triathlon come to mind), which is probably why he's working for the Olympic channel rather than still working here (plenty of hopeless commentators in NZ broadcasting when it comes to anything other than rugby or cricket). But it seems crazy that he was paired with another generic voice from the channel's pool rather than someone with a background in orienteering. Not unique to us, even with sports that I know a lot less about, I can tell that the channel's policy seems to be to have familiar voices and it's not an issue if they have to just make things up. I guess it's too late to politely offer that someone like Boris could join him for the middle and relay?

They weren't helped by regular mismatches between whose time was being shown on the graphics and the runner on screen, but again someone who knows the faces and the uniforms could have made a huge difference there.

I recommend watching the IOF live stream replay instead: https://orienteering.sport/event/the-world-games-2...

@Boris, thanks for the coverage! For the other races, l you have any influence to get the live results actually published during the race, and also the GPS made live during the race, that would be an excellent accompaniment to your commentary :)

Thanks! I have zero influence over those. :)

FYI, today's live feed starts at 9:30am Central time

None of the IOF live stream links (on the page Boris linked) work.

This is incorrect. The sprint replay link works fine. You may need to refresh the specific section of the webpage that contains the live stream.

Boris's commentating is great! It pleases my ear, I do not know why..

Apparently one must log-in to view Web-TV...

Definitely better than Olympic Channel for an orienteering audience!

Announcers are clueless
I'll say; they actually said that the athletes got to scope-out the campus before the race.

Agree that the Sprint technical issue deserves more attention, and that less technical Sprints would be healthier for the sport, but I am afraid the majority/ plurality of Sprint enthusiasts (competitors and organizers) don't agree.

There will be no dedicated live GPS tracking today. All the tracking will be shown on the free IOF live stream, so tune in! We start in 15.

I'm listening on my drive down to a scouting trip! Thanks!

I don't think I've ever seen a gopher while orienteering.

Is that Peggy I hear in the background?

I recruited Peggy to help the non-orienteer arena announcer (on about one minute warning) and she’s killing it!

Absolutely great commenting job today. They kept on top of everything and kept us on top of everything right down to the Women's winner going to head straight for the lake.

Sounded like Peggy was doing great!

And nice job on the winning times. ;-)

Thanks for another great commentary day today! Highlights for me were definitely the athlete interviews. Excellent job.

Great job, Boris, Thank you. I was able to watch/hear you in real time here in Italy back at the hotel after our runs (WMOC), 7 hours difference in time. It was exciting, especially being able to see the map at times. You sure nailed it on the second loop where the Swiss Simona Abersold had that crucial route choice to put her 40 seconds ahead of the Swede and win.

Only on Attackpoint do we congratulate the announcers more than the racers. ; )

Awesome! Go, Peggy. Yes, I was pretty impressed with all the announcing. And really fun to see US orienteers on their “home” turf (even though none live close to Alabama). Well done, team!

(Also really fun to watch the livestreams with the Swiss juniors, who shared accommodations with us).

Kudos for getting the winning times right. Having planned major events before, it gets super stressful especially when everyone says your courses are too long or too short.

(We also congratulate course setters on AP. Just never any athletes.)

Like others I have had trouble getting the TV to (re)play. One cannot simply start with the WG website and work your way in. I cannot now recall what links and clicks got me to success, but it was certainly worth it to see the excellent coverage.

Which is more than can be said for the World MTBO Champs, also on now. To paraphrase yurets, it does not please my ear. I couldn't watch it.

I think the key is to use the little refresh arrow button on the Web-TV tab.

Sprint relay climb: 12m for women, 14m for men.

Climb makes up for today’s courses!

Congratulations to Linda Kohn (Rochester Orienteering Club, NY) and Sandy Fillebrown (Delaware Valley Orienteering Association) on getting the winning times right! :-) Samantha Saeger (with onsite vetting from Sandy) of New England O Club now living in Sweden is course designer for the sprint relay on Sunday morning.

decent article

https://www.infobae.com/aroundtherings/articles/20...

gruver, if you're getting the same WMTBOC tv coverage on the web as the (limited) coverage we're getting at the finish then yeah it's pretty crap.

Today's coverage is pointless. First start at 9am, we need to be in quarantine by 9:30 and tv coverage from 11am. What's the point of the quarantine if there's nothing online until 2hrs after we start? Everyone will be out on course by 11am. The early starters will be finished.

On Friday there were races at JWOC, WMOC, WMTBOC and WG all at the same time. I guess it doesn’t really matter but it makes it hard to follow them all.

Finally got to see the courses and maps--couldn't figure out how to do so on my phone.

Anyway, courses and maps seemed excellent. Not surprised given the people involved.

Actually there was no WMOC race Friday. It was Saturday where they would have all clashed except for the cancellation of the JWOC event. Mind you since no-one cares about WMTBOC that's one less to worry about. It does matter to me because with WMTBOC being my #1 priority it means I miss WMOC every year and will do so again for the next two years at least at this rate with the continuing clashes.

We'll be starting at 855 local time: https://orienteering.sport/event/the-world-games-2...

There are currently 167 of us waiting for you to start talking mate :-)

Another reason to buy WiFi for my flight (if I ever get on it).

Brutal outcome for Karolin, but fantastic coverage! It was amazing to see Kyburz, Fosser, and Regborn battling it out for the lead at an orienteering race in the US. The commentary was excellent!

Yes the video footage showed her running right past #19, within a couple of metres.

What an incredible pace! Congrats to Switzerland.

I think that makes it 5 World Games in a row that Sweden didn't win a mixed relay medal (Sweden won bronze in 2001)

When I saw Ohlson's miss live I thought that those new SI Airs must have some great range. She was within 10 meters of the flag but....

Hey folks remember a few months ago there was a famous AP boo-bird knocking the choice of Railway Park as a World Games orienteering venue.
As they say in baseball, the course setters 'knocked it out of the park'!
Great job and congrats to the USA athletes edging the Canadians.

Agree with gordhun!

I think the organisers have done a brilliant job in getting access to three contrasting areas that led to some great racing!

Congrats to Boris on the great announcing!

@j-man, I agree, the orienteering course offered on Sat was good. On Mens course, it's fun to watch rerun of legs 7-8, 10-11-12, 15-16. Some of the best world athletes were making errors there. My only reservation is about leg 15-16. It is clear taking the right route along the lake was a better one, winning about half-minute. But those who decided to go straight , climbing with contouring, were punished even more, as they got in the area of long-leaf southern pine, with the ground on the steep hill-side became soft and slippery+ some vines, instead of expected good footing with good grip elsewhere on the course.

If the goal was to create a viable alternative with 2 equal routes, then #15 should have been higher (further south).

@gordhun, кому и кобыла невеста

Yes it was good to put a voice to the name at long last.

Yurets: My translator tells me you wrote:"to whom and the mare is the bride" so the closest I can figure it is that you are saying I 'have the stud power of a stallion'.
I'll accept that criticism.
But I agree it was good relay.

Just watched the coverage of the relay and it was so fun! Boris’s commentary is so so good—his knowledge really adds to the show. And, while we (several organizers and volunteers) were at the event, seeing how everyone else saw the race was great fun. We are all now huge fans of Karolin Ohlsson.

Yes, i think that interview at the end was the greatest and most honest insight into the mind of an elite orienteer battling for the win that I've ever seen or heard. Huge kudos to Karolin for her honesty and thoughtfulness under very difficult conditions, and also huge props to Erling for asking the hard questions and not treating her with kid gloves.

Great commentary all weekend and amazing interview. We were imagining the fingers of the CBS blippers getting tired if the network had access to the interview.

Great commentary all weekend! Really fun to see people you know walking around in the background of shots. Really good interview at the end.

That Ohlsson interview belongs on You Tube. If Jimmy Fallon or Stephen Colbert get ahold of it orienteering will be going viral.
Apparently in Sweden she already has a media reputation for her colourful language and seemingly free spirit.
Lucky Nashville. Here cone the Swedes.

Congratulations to everyone involved!! Dream team!

Can someone please post the link to the interview?

Sprint Relay, 1:08:30 or so.

Another "only in orienteering" interview moment was the competitor "towel changing" in the background during Boris's interview with Sandy F. on Sat.

"I'm f*ing pissed so I'll train like hell to not do this shit again".

Surely a good motto for any aspiring orienteer. We should print it on mugs or towels or something.

Did many of the athletes use cooling vests?

I saw at least one woman orienteer jogging after the sprint at BSC wearing such a vest, but can't say I noticed any others.

I watched the excellent coverage the next day in replay, and want to give the link to others. Now I cant get it. The IOF Live page seems to have only current and future links. orienteering.sport/event/the-world-games-2022/welcome/ shows a pretty picture but no live links. And theworldgames.org/sports/orienteering is hopeless. Does old coverage disappear into a void?

Still there: https://orienteering.sport/event/the-world-games-2...

Click on the box below web TV, do a little more random clicking and you'll get full screen.

Arnold nailed the quote of the event. Good slogan for a training camp t-shirt.

Thanks Gord. I was tricked by "CX-80" and "News" about the MTBO Champs into thinking there was nothing further down the page relating to WG.

@Arnold: TikTok it!

Does anyone know if maps and courses for all events are available to download somewhere?

I do not see anything on the World Games site, World of O, IOF site or the local orienteering club (VOC).

You can see them on the Eventor World Games site.

Sprint: https://eventor.orienteering.org/Events/Show/7547
Middle: https://eventor.orienteering.org/Documents/Event/5...

I don't see the relay yet...

yurets wrote: “If the goal was to create a viable alternative with 2 equal routes, then #15 should have been higher (further south).”

If everyone knows you’ve designed legs with equal routes, what’s the point of route choice because then it doesn’t matter which the runner chooses. When I design legs, equality of route choice time is not on my mind. I can’t always explain my designs, but I mostly try to reward aggressive route choices and penalize easier ones. And honestly I don’t usually know which route choice is better. Maybe I try to make it hard to choose, to penalize indecision.

But isn’t that the same leg that Aebersold won the race on by going straight’ish? a little south of the line to start

Thank you Boris! Nice to see that the maps are in good quality.

Is there a place that runners uploaded their routes or GPS tracking?

I can attest that runners wore GPS trackers which were used in TV some productions. The tracking for the sprint relay is on that event's page reachable from here:
https://orienteering.sport/event/the-world-games-2...

Perhaps in a few days all routes will be posted.

I've added the Sprint Relay map: https://eventor.orienteering.org/Documents/Event/5...

@ cedarcreek, I did not say a designer always tries to do that. In the end it may depend on runner's strength, weather conditions etc. which way you go. This leg got my attention after Kratov (5th place by then) suddenly stopped the race soon after it. I have no info why. He went straight. I imagine he realized mid-leg he was losing on this choice, as a result pushed too hard to compensate, overheated, collapsed?
I ran legs thru that hill maybe a dozen of times. What I recall is that its one of those areas --there are quite a few on the Oak Mountain -- where oak /mixed forest turns to pine, and footing is much softer and more slippery on the steep hillside, unexpectedly tough physically for a straight aggressive route choice. Just a guess

While I appreciate the kudos for the technical aspects of the event and notes on the actual racing. I find it a bit disappointing that the extremely hard work done in the months and years before the events by the local Vulcan Orienteering Club is not highlighted here in this general blog. So I'll take that on as another aspect of my role as Assistant Competition Manager. While our club is small, we do provide meets at Oak Mountain 6 months a year and Wind Creek State Park twice yearly. We have members who compete nationally, and we put on the Extreme-O during the GAOC Navigator cup. Since our work was in the background, I'd like to highlight a few things the local club accomplished. Recruited 51 volunteers with experience and vetted 26 more to make sure they were capable. Ensured all 77 completed TWG required 8 hours of online training, 1 hour of Orienteering role virtual training and 4-6 hrs of onsite training. We only lost 4 to illness at the last minute and everyone stepped up to fill in. We provided free lodging to 12 people during the games and hosted 4 Technical Officials multiple times during the planning phase. We vetted several printers and finally found one that could achieve quality maps (not as easy as it sounds). We found and rented a generator for the TV production. We researched and sourced 99% of the equipment and actually built the wooden bases, map table and cup racks. We loaned the team our stakes, clock, printer, and tables and chairs for the workroom, which, we also obtained for free. We made multiple trips to BSC to reconnoiter various locations. We, well, Joey, mapped 350 additional root stocks at Oak Mountain after the tornado. We met with the local committee and fought for answers to the Technical Officials questions regarding permissions at venues. We found a free location for the Relay Quarantine. Picked up, gassed up and eventually returned the box truck (we're still returning gear). So, when considering hosting a World Cup, don't underestimate the need for strong local volunteers.

You are completely right, Anne, and thanks for reminding us of all of the work that VOC did. I know that you lived and breathed (and agonized) this for the past few years. And James went the extra mile whenever he was asked. And Joey definitely helped to make the middle a success. It *is* important to remember the vital role of local volunteers.

And, here I go..left out a very important group .....neglected to mention that we had 6 members of the GAOC,came over and helped in a BIG way! Loaned us radio controls also!! So when I say local - that includes Georgia!!

@Anne & VOC - you all were the perfect host club, taking care of those of us who came to visit/work and making our jobs easier. The number of hours that not only you, Anne, but James and Joey put in is remarkable. I think that James was in the background on most our many zoom calls helping check on questions that we had for Anne. I'm hoping that your club will benefit from the publicity generated by this event but if nothing else 77 volunteers have an idea of what elite orienteering looks like and can appreciate the fun of being out in the woods.

Thanks for reminding everyone of the crucial roles played by the local volunteers. It is truly remarkable that a small club like VOC could host a successful international orienteering event and meet the challenges of operating within a major event like the World Games.

Well done.

From the athlete side of things, I was thoroughly impressed by how smooth everything was handled in all aspects. Huge thank you to every volunteer that made these races a success and a ton of fun. My only request is to turn down the heat next time :P

+1 annemathews

Just to clarify, both VOC and GAOC dramatically improved quality of what they offer at their local meets over the past few years. You can now expect on average a better course/map than what I saw back in DC area from big-mouth hotshots.

Shoutout to James and Paul' HAM radio crews... @James all potential ARDFs ;) ?

I wonder if the role of working with the World Games organisation has been emphasised enough - would that have been shouldered by the locals? Stories from Australia and NZ when they ran WMOC in conjunction with the World Masters Games suggests that this is hair-tearing work.

I can’t thank Anne enough for all the work she and Vulcan did. Anne contacted me a lot in the months before to ensure various things were done and on-track, or to tell me I’d missed a deadline. It was absolutely essential to the success of the orienteering events at the World Games.

There were a lot of local people who were not orienteers who volunteered, then just showed up and put in a lot of sweat to help us strangers. The finish everyday was about four pop-ups and say six tables, and was an absolutely minor effort compared to the spectator leg chute and finish/street barricades. The woman from SportIdent said, “How do I get another table?”, and the answer was “Just ask one of these volunteers” and it’ll appear.

The venue management people were pretty awesome as well. I saw a golf cart guy taking a couple bags of ice somewhere else. He said, “You need ice?” I said, “5?” Him: “Five what?” Me: “Five bags?” Him: “Oh oh okay. I’ll get you ice.” Leaves and comes back with seven, all of which we used. They were the big “3x” size of ice. Saturday we used maybe 14 bags total.

@gruver, yes, working with local The World Games organizing committee and navigating that bureaucracy was a large factor in what made the planning much more difficult than for a standalone O event. That pain was spread out, so we all got to enjoy it.

Photos from Sundays Sprint Relay at Railroad Park have been posted to the Orienteering USA Facebook page. Over 100 photos so split between 2 posts.

Hi again,
By chance is there a publicly available video on the World Games Orienteering Middle event competition. I saw some pretty good video at the time of the Games. It clearly showed how the best navigate and run in the Oak Mountain terrain. Anything available now?

Gord - The livestreams from all three days have been posted to YouTube by the IOF. Some of the forest video at Oak Mountain had some early camera issues, but the full stream is there.

Check the OUSA Event Recap page for the links - https://orienteeringusa.org/2022/09/the-world-game...

Yes, I went to the IOF pages and that is why I asked if there were 'publicly available video'. For the Middle event at least the IOF is asking me and I presume others to log in. (or is that a cache issue on my part).

You needed to have a login to view on the IOF Live site. Feeds were provided free for The World Games, but required registration. The links posted on the OUSA Event Recap are on YouTube, no registration portal required.

{edit} The Event Recap has the link to IOF Live near the top, but if you go to each events summary of available media further down the page, you'll find the YouTube links.

Thank you very much.
Was that you doing the running camera work?
That will be very helpful in showing the kids in Florida how to run in southeast US forests.

I was one of two running cameras for the middle. But there was a problem with the gimbal for much of the men's race and it wouldn't stabilize. So had to resort to shaky panning shots. Was better for the women's race.