Discussion: Poor Norwegians

The WOC middle is really taking a bashing (shellacking?) on worldofo from the top athletes questioned about courses of the year.

There may be hope yet.

I must say men's WOC long final course was very very well planned. I mean, if you think of the frame they had - you had that map, you had to have early TV control, halfway TV control, spectator leg passing though arena and butterflies and still planners were able to pull out a course like that. I just out of curiosity tried to plan better course, but soon gave up, no chance even for a tie. I am not saying it's the best course of the year, I just say it was very well and carefully planned. Who ever did it, they did good job. Kind of sad it does not get noticed and there is just bashing.

But I wasn't there - my opinion is based on maps - but anyway.

i think middle, long and relay was some of the worst courses of the last years of World Orienteering Championships.

They were selecting the terrain due to spectators and not for the athletes.
They should have used the qualification terrains for the finals.

@jagge i remember there was somebody, i think he was even from Finland, who was showing courses he had drawn. i think worldofo had some news about it, and theses courses were much better!

@Jagge I agree. The long course looks really good on the map. But everyone was expecting so much more. There are better areas that could have been used in Trondheim but instead they used an area with a good arena that had too much forestry work going on. And the forest was a bit 'shitty' anyway.
They are bashing the long area. not the course.
But they are definitely bashing the middle and relay courses. Shocking...

Thierry: "I am still amazed that the WOC-organizers had to arrange fake forbidden areas to create route-choices…"

yeah, the fake forbidden areas were a disgrace. i hope we give up trying to improve the media for this sport, take our courses out into the remote areas they should be in, and bring 20-30 cameras! Why do cameras have to cost so much..

take our courses out into the remote areas they should be in

... and then it's back to the Scandies and the Swiss vying for the 5.5 Nations Championships, for other Federations can't get interest or sponsorship. There's been enough discussion in the immediate aftermath. It's not an either-or, it's a very diffcult thing to get both the technical level and the exposure right, or mostly right, and perhaps the correct path is to have less/split World Champs, only in the small number of terrrains that can accommodate both. It's great that the Trondheim organizers are taking a beating, negative feedback works wonders; but those athletes who argue for going "back into the woods" are being quite selfish because they are, in fact, eager to deny development opportunities to the next generation of athletes who wouldn't have the money or interest directed at them.

Or just accept that big media events will inevitably mean big compromises.

I´m gonna go ahead and agree with Tundra on this one. Heck, on vacation-orienteering events and similar it tends to suck a bit running in crap terrain just for the stadium. When running 25Manna, they really had the worst stadium area for a long time, but since the terrain was great, almost in the middle of nowhere, it made up for it.

But in situations with world champs, sometimes they´ll need to sacrifice good terrain for great arena. In most cases, no matter the terrain, the best will win. I didnt feel that there were any surprise winnings on any distances other than the mens relay, where it was more of the case of drama than anything else. Me, not being a course-pro, and more of an average joe when coming to course viewings, i found that they had route choices on long legs, and difficult that some made mistakes, so I felt they did the job, and other people who dont know too much about courses might feel the same (?). As of the unorthodox middle course, heck, the forbidden area did make a good route choice leg, so it pretty much did its job. If it all means that elite orienteers dont get to run in silk terrain for a few days contra attracting new runners, im all in for that.

What?
A better or more accessible WOC arena in Norway = better development opportunities for the rest of the world?

Is this a misstatement? There's a critical part of the if-then logic expressed above that evades me.

The people in that arena were the hard core of the hard core, not potential orienteers passing by from North America or even suburban Trondheim.

Even considering TV, internet, and other media, how did the choice of this arena get the event, or the sport in general, in front of more people who would not have otherwise seen it?

Did some non orienteers somewhere in the world decide to try the sport because of the wonderful arena?

I know firsthand that it is difficult to find suitable parking near suitable terrain, and compromises must be made, but exactly how did this unprecedented terrain sacrifice help promotion of the sport?

i hope i understand the post of Eric, but if i do i agree.

Theses guys who were spectators at the WOC in Trondheim, were i would guess 95% orienteering people.
So if the arena would have been where the qualification races were held, i reckon there would have been as many spectators.


and @mnipen, that the courses were bad, you can see if you would just read the survey Jan Kocbach is doing right now on Worldofo. Look how the WOC in Trondheim Final courses are named just negatively, while f.ex. some have named the courses from the WOC in Czech Republic positively!

What I tried to say the WOC long course planner(s) for most likely did not choose the terrain, they most likely just got the map and were forced to plan courses there, with all those spectator legs, butterflies and TV controls. From this perspective they did excellent work. If you don't believe just try planning better men's long course on that map. It is sad they get bashing too, it was not their fault. Quite the opposite, they saved a lot by doing it their work well.

torbensfunk, I haven't seen any alternative long courses planned on the same area, except the one I draw, it was just the same course with different spreading method. Maybe that's what you saw.

yes, can be that it was your course. :)

@Jagge: The long distance course has not got as much negative publicity, I think. The middle and relay are the ones getting bashed. I even suggested the WOC long distance as one of the candidates for the course of the year in my original article

http://news.worldofo.com/2010/10/27/course-of-the-...

A better or more accessible WOC arena in Norway = better development opportunities for the rest of the world?

No. I was opposed to the statement that courses (in general) should be in remote areas, whcih I quoted. If you interpret my post as being anywhere apologetic for the Trondheim Middle/Relay, that's a sweeping connection that I did not intend.

Terrain sacrifice doesn't help the sport. Lack of visibility has been hurting it for a long time, and continues to do so. I argued in favor of only holding WOCs in places that are both accessible and have sufficiently suitable terrain. For example, Kiev strikes me as having been a very reasonable compromise.

Kiev struck a lot of us.

Vlad, I appreciate the clarification, and I really didn't want to see this thread get sidetracked. I think this negative feedback is important for future events and as venting for those of us who are still sick from what happened. I just hope the relevant people are listening.

That said, I actually wanted to say some positives about the Norwegian effort.

First, I think Jagge makes a very important point about the course setters role, and absolution of responsibility, and I second his comment. I too thought the course designs were very good to excellent, given the canvas and parameters presented to them. I think the effort of the Middle designers was truly heoic. I would have walked off the job.

I know Olav(edited:-)) Lundanes criticized the forking in the Relay, saying it was too limited and unbalanced, and he may have a point. However, aside from the forking, I thought the Relay terrain and course design were actually very good. It was not classic Norwegian terrain, which some may have hoped for, but which doesn't necessarily make good relay terrain. This terrain was somewhat continental in character, but provided some commonly held relay objectives, such as many route choices, some low visibility, a good arena, and limited technical difficulty so that the competition stays close.

If the Middle vacated its terrain, the Relay could have had a much more interesting spectator loop, for the one event that justifies a spectator loop, in my opinion. As it was, all of the spectator loops were weak to terrible. The women's Long loop especially was mind bogglingly brutal and stupid. I walked it

Hopefully one lesson to come out of this arena, is that the cameras and animation displays were so good that they should make these stupid Middle and Long spectator loops a thing of the past, immediately (at least when cameras are affordable). Even with runners passing through the arena, it was better to watch them on the screen, rather than trying to see them directly. My vantage point was from the elevated/preferred/$ seating section, and it had to be even worse if you were on the flats. This is not a criticism of the arena design, which was great.

I agree with others that the Long was a very fine course, with reasonable terrain, and design that made the most of it. I strongly dislike butterflies, but at least these butterflies used the best piece of terrain very appropriately. I had a very enjoyable time walking every control in this section. If only the Middle could have used it.

As for that damnable Middle, simply using the Qualifying arena again could have provided a much improved course. I know it isn't that simple since that arena had a five ring circus going on there as well.

I believe that the selection of this non Middle terrain did alter top results results for both the men and women. Of course I can't proove this, but I am rather sure I am not alone in this opinion. In France, they seem hell bent on providing a WOC Long course that is of Middle character. Normally I would criticize this, but in this case I am very sympathetic

Lastly, I'd like to say something about the mapping. I walked for many hours on the WOC maps, covering terrain used by all of the events except the Sprint qualifier. Those who know me will confirm that I would gladly find faults with the mapping, However I found nothing systematic to criticize in the terrain. A slight disagreement on the shade of printed brown is the only negative comment, and I give them bonus points for mapping the greens to a more international standard than is usually applied in Norway. I know the Lidar helped, but it took some great skill to get this result, especially in the claimed "30 hours per km2", which I don't quite believe.

i believe even if they would have used some of the terrain the public races were held in, they could already have made a much better middle distance event. the problem would have been than to get the public races somewhere else, but since the competitors were orienteering people, and had to wait sometimes over 3hours before the WOC races started, i think it would have been now problem for them to first run their race somewhere, than change, have nice food and coffee in Trondheim, and that coming out to the WOC races. how it was right now, they had to stay in that arena and buy overpriced food there.

just some short tip for Erik: its Olav ;) not Olaf ;)

They might have done better by using part of relay terrain for middle. I clicked this pretty fast without planing much. Isn't that good but not much worse than the original, one might get better setup using this warea, relay terrain east from the beginning of this course might do better, easier to get one longer leg there. And there would still be space for relay. I'd say long was fine, but relay and middle setup was mistake, even with this arena setup they could have made it work. But of course if you compare this to my previous alternative middle you can see the terrain/arena choice makes big difference.

@Jagge, nice work in both examples.

At Jervskogen, I especially like the spectator loop, in good terrain that seemed to be underutilised by all the events. (I don't know all the courses) Perhaps the Craft Cup used it?

Also, I had a chuckle on your 8-9 down through the cliffs. One of the public races had the walk-to-start directly up through there, and it was quite severe. :-)

After the Japan WOC, I heard some Finn designed (on paper) some proper long leg, route choice courses for the Long terrain. Was that you?

Following this with great interest in the hope of needing to scope areas for Scotland-2015 soon. Unless the Swedes beat us to it.

Do people think it will be possible to have decent/affordable remote cameras (i.e. without trailing wires) by 2015? If so, will the need for spectator controls in the arena (particularly in middle) go away? This could have a big effect on the areas we'd consider.

EricW: s'cuse ignorance, but were you an advisor for these events?

Wasn't me. Most likely it was Jukka, he often does stuff like that. Here is his WOC 2010 course speculations.

Graeme.

I hope they have some cameras like that by 2012. We intend to use them for the 2012 NAOCs. It won't be WOC quality, but it should be a good start.

I hate spectator controls on middle courses. You have to be pretty lucky to find an arena/terrain where they are something less than a disaster.

Graeme, if you are asking about WOC 2010, no involvement, just a very interested tourist, and self appointed critic.
While in Norway, I did some slightly productive work for the Norwegian Ultra Long (2? weeks later), including my crudest mapping (since a certain 1977? Rutgers map) at 1:12,500, last minute, to show a road under construction, overprinted on the competitor's maps, used by many, and near a couple controls.

Jagge, thanks for the link to Jukka, very entertaining. Kiitos.