Discussion: Honourable Draw

In a few sports (like Aussie rules) a draw is looked on as almost a defeat, but for most sports, including orienteering most people would be happy to share a win. (I've been in a tie for first myself for Oceania Long Champs, and I felt absolutely fantastic about the 'win'.)

Start draw - the organising team for the whole carnival made a decision not to seed, except where required under NOL / WRE rules for elites. I agree yours and Geoff's starts are a strange coincidence, but as far as I know it was done by the OE system. However, there were other classes on the same course starting before you that you could have watched into the control, so I'm not sure that Geoff had that much of an advantage.

I agree the position of 1 was not ideal, but there were limited options, and using a similar start to the other courses would have meant extra distance that would have required major surgery to the middle part of the course in the canals - and probably a less interesting course.

When I look at the map, the wall West of 10 clearly stretches between the two buildings, meaning that whole NW face of the complex must be impassable. It's also clearly impassable once it comes into view, which it would have before you reached the car park. In sprints people don't usually expect their route choice options to be 'left' or 'wider left' with no right option - that's not a 'trap' in my view. I'll acknowledge that 9-10 is not a great leg, and leaving out 10 would have been better, though you would probably still view it as a 'trap' having determined that a right-hand route must exist somewhere. In my original planning the leg went from 9 to the tree on the foreshore, giving a right hand choice vs straight, but up and over. However, this was rejected because it creates dead running to 12, and with no other options there's already dead running from 12-14.

The flower bed was unfortunate. The ground cover was continuous (and covered the manhole) until 10 days before the event when the maps had already gone to the printer. The Council had cleared that patch to access the manhole for some reason, and then not replaced the vegetation. We asked them to put a cone there, but in retrospect we should have taped it and included an OOB sign.

18-19 has 3 sets of steps which admittedly are hard to see (ISSOM at fault?), but there's always the option to go around to the left very fast on paving. The section from 16-20 was on all courses except the shortest three, and was generally well received, especially by the elites.

:-)

#16 - I read the cone as blocking what might have looked like a path to the unwary. A quick check of the map confirmed it, although it was hard to be certain. The train of runners I was with all went around, but a couple of them paused briefly to have a second look.

I'm a bit surprised that no one seems to have picked up on this one: (#17 on your course, O-ing)



A combination of the low wall symbol and the contour symbol completely obscure the underlying fill, which is OOB. Nearmap shows a strip of dirt between the seat and the grass, but I saw quite a few people either leap it or lean over to punch the control beside the seat - I mentioned it to one of them afterwards, who had to have a really good squint at the map to see the implied OOB. It's also a bit of a nasty trap, since the only other logical route choice is around the point of the garden to the SE.

Simmo, I would suggest that the contour lines in that area are redundant, with the passable walls there to indicate height change.

The fault I think is partly the ISSOM passable wall symbol. 0.35 is too wide in this situation. I wanted to use the stone wall symbol (0.21 black line with blobs) but that's only allowed for non-urban maps. I then experimented with 0.3, but didn't use it as being a WRE the map has to go to IOF for minute examination. I put a thin black line (cultivation boundary 0.07) around all the gardens (as seems to be common practice including for WOC maps), and in your example above, that together with the description 'Foot' should be enough for people to know that they can't go up the steps onto the platform and then reach over. This leg was one that did not really have any route choice, but required careful map reading to pick the sensible, safe route.

The other half of the problem is that despite IOF (and my) exhortations, competitors in sprints don't read ISSOM which they are supposed to do.

Several other passable walls on the map were double-sided, non-retaining walls (eg 7 & 9 on M21E, 6 & 8 on O-ing's course) so the contour is there to indicate that these are actually single-sided retaining walls. The contour may be redundant when you get there, but is essential for pre-visualisation.

In this case would it be better to draw the wall as "uncrossable", as one side is OOB anyway and there is nowhere that the wall can be crossed without going OOB. This removes the problem of pinching out the area symbol between the wall, contour and open ground. The alternative is to shrink the open area on top so that the OOB remains visible.

The problem with using the uncrossable wall symbol is that people expect it to be quite substantial - there's generally a physical reason (as opposed to a legal one) why it's "uncrossable" even if you can cross it without killing yourself. The walls in question were ~0.7m high, and similar walls across the map were all marked as crossable (especially the non-retaining ones).

Simmo - surely clarity (and being able to see what is a legal route choice) has to trump previsualisation, especially when you're only talking half a metre of height change. Given that there was no actual plants in the strip behind the seat, competitors could argue that it wasn't OOB since it's just dirt and there's no green on the map there.

Personally I would ditch the contour altogether, or at least merge it with the wall recess at that point so you can actually see the green.

I agree with Juffy about uncrossable wall, which is also a substantially thicker symbol and would cause other displacement problems.

I don't agree with Juffy's other suggestions though. Brown is below the passable wall in the colour table, so the contour line would disappear if 'merged' with the wall. It's clear looking at the other raised lawns in the area that they are all surrounded by garden - all for one, one for all. Despite the shade in the latest Nearmap photo, I can clearly see vegetation in the strip next to the control, and all the previous Nearmap photos (without shadow) show it as well.

Rockman's solution of shrinking the yellow a little is a good one - I actually used it, but maybe should have done it a bit more than I did.

Simmo "most people would be happy to share a win"
first sentence of my post "really happy to get my third Australian Sprint title".

The purpose of the post was to consider the influence of minor technical issues on the competitive result.

Agree the start draw was just "bad luck". However, lucky or not, there is a real difference between being the first starter with a two minute gap ahead of you to a W40 who recently rubbished anyone taking notice of where she is going (zootrio) to last starter with 3rd place at Easter starting 1 minute ahead of you.

I guess I'm a little surprised at the "no seeding" decision. When I've controlled events previously I've always at least reviewed the start lists to take out obvious discrepancies such as two favourites (or same club members) starting one after the other.

The no seeding decision was based on a number of factors:

With multiple races over the carnival if we had seeded then the start draw would logically be the same each day which I would say would be rather boring

The relative ranking is not well established, in most classes orienteers do not race against each other often enough to have a quality comparisons across all the age groups, so modifying a few people based on anecdotal knowledge would introduce bias that would have been hard to justify. Even in the WRE events were seeding is based on the World Ranking list several very good runners were running "out of place" as they had not entered ranking events for a while so the seeding in the WRE elite races was far from correct to current or expected form.

Finally the process of creating the start draw is for a number of reasons quite complex, with considerations of courses having common first controls or sections that need to run in sequence, requests for split starts for child minding, the relative inflexibility and limited facilities in the software system. Withthe time pressures to get the start draw completed and published it would have added further workload to the team that did not seem justified. It seemed that moving one person around within the draw was a difficult task within and it had the potential to destabilised the whole draw when we did move a few people for various reasons.

With multiple races over the carnival if we had seeded then the start draw would logically be the same each day
That's not what I mean by seeding - I mean making sure the top competitors in each class don't start one after the other. To have the same start order for each of the 3 days of Easter would be ridiculous and unfair as well as boring as you say.
In fact, what I mean by seeding is the opposite of having a "Red" start list as per the WRE based on World Ranking. Seeding to me is separating the top runners, the WRE Guidelines require the top runners to start one after the other and in the same order. I'm not sure they've thought that through. Perhaps the phrase "based on" gives organisers some leeway?

I totally agree that extra workload for the organisers is to be avoided. I'm not even suggesting that the start draw for M55 in the Sprint should have been altered. I'm saying two things - The M55 draw was "bad luck", but that other obvious anomalies (not like this one) should be reviewed by the organiser/controller and fixed - seems like you were doing that anyway to give split starts.

The question is how do you decide the Top 3 competitors in a class? There is no fair way to do that so it is better to be random and random does not mean spreading out the people who you think might win. And we don't know everyone's form so "who might win" is pretty subjective. Random is what you got in the M55 Sprint draw. You might have thought it was bad luck, Geoff might have thought it was good luck :-).

Simmo "When I look at the map, the wall West of 10 clearly stretches between the two buildings, meaning that whole NW face of the complex must be impassable. "
Well, that means you are seeing the map better than the top 4 in the M55, and nearly half of the rest of the field who chose the right hand route. The evidence from people who ran the leg in competition suggests it was not clear.
Neither was it "clearly impassable once it comes into view, which it would have before you reached the car park". I didn't see it until I was right outside and no way could you see anything of the sort before you reached the car park Take another look!

On the passable wall example at 17 provided by Juffy, someone suggested that, similar to rockman's suggestion that the passable wall symbol shouldn't be used when the area behind it is Out of Bounds. The variation in the suggestion was not to mark the wall at all. Given it was only 0.7m, I think thats a valid argument.

In addition the hills were probably less than 2m high, so the contours could have been left out as well. More debatable, but the control site would have been a lot clearer on the map.

PS I went around as I looked up and saw a flower bed. However I did hear reports of others punching that control from the west by reaching over the OOB and wall.

I think there is a fundamental problem with Sprint maps compared to Bush maps.

On a bush map where there is too much detail to fit onto the map, say lots of rock as there was at Frazzle. Alex would simplify and use a Boulder field symbol and then no controls could be set inside the area unless there was an obvious contour feature or something else that was clearly described.

On Sprint maps it seems as was the case in the garden beds near the end of the course that the mapper try’s to get detail beyond the bonds of scale of the map which is very hard to see, my eye sight is not as it was 30 years ago and I struggle to see the subtle differences.

Maybe Sprint maps should have more of the generalisation that bush maps have?

O-ing, the map segment you've photographed shows the impassable wall between the two buildings very clearly. It also shows that a good look at the map indicates that even if there had been a gap, this route is still longer than the one using the stairs at the end of the curved wall, and almost as long as going left around the road (a very simple and fast choice) so I'm at a loss to understand how anyone would select it unless they were trying to run faster than their mapreading ability. I think people forget (I do it myself) that sprint orienteering is still about orienteering over running. I've had my best results when I've been 'in control' of the mapreading, and I am sure this is true for most successful sprint orienteers.

Regarding the wall in the garden area, firstly without showing a wall on the map there could be no control as it could not be described. The final WRE bulletin available on the Frazzle website included detailed notes about garden beds and walls, which I regret was too late to be included in the general program for non-WRE competitors. Secondly, the previous contour is around the lake, then there is a gradual slope to the grassed area below the gardens, where there is a form-line. So I think the contour on the lawn platforms is warranted - it also tells you that they are not sunken gardens which could be a strong possibility if you were just looking at the map without having been there.

I reiterate the necessity that everybody who competes in a sprint event (especially a national championship) be aware of the rules. Evidently we need to educate people, especially re crossing, jumping, and reaching over garden beds.

Richard, the ISSOM stresses the importance of showing impassable and out of bounds areas - these cannot be generalised, even if garden beds are very narrow, they must be shown. Lots of things were left off the map, that O-ing in a previous life of writing specs for Metro Series maps would have insisted be shown, such as seats, light poles, signs, etc. There are too many trees perhaps, and possibly all the 'small' ones should be omitted as they are not 'prominent' - however I considered they were a useful navigation aid to the first controls on the 21E courses, so all the rest had to be shown. Just like many bush maps, even more so perhaps, there is extreme terrain variation on sprint maps - the park near the start was completely different terrain to the canals, which in turn were completely different to the council buildings area. This is why 'sprint orienteering' is perhaps an unfortunate name, because it implies that simply being able to run fast is more important than being able to use orienteering skills.

Thank you Simmmo. I looked at the route to 10 and my first thought was wider left down the road. Two benefits, a simpler route, and fewer turns. It is perhaps a little bit longer, but doesn't involve as many turns, meaning you can run it faster. The route choice is about the fastest route, not the shortest.

Did anyone run along the wall to cross the OOB garden? Technically allowed :)
Simmo - without a wall, edge of paved area as control site?
Otherwise, yeah, distort the map a bit more...
I think those who hopped or reached over read the map well, so what can you do?

O-ing, I'm afraid you lose on 9->10. Well done on the win.

Richard - you are absolutely right about simplification. Sprint mapping, just the same as bush mapping must allow the map reader to interpret and navigate the terrain whilst running. The smaller scale does not necessarily imply that everything must be represented, that is impossible in some complex areas. I believe that IOF does recommend not using areas that are too complex to legibly represent on a map. If terrain is mapped as simplified then course setting should be done sympathetically to reduce the risk of inadvertent crossing of out of bounds. This is as much about respecting the land managers as the competitors.

The primary reason for establishing ISSOM in the first place (as opposed to using ISOM for sprint maps) was the need to clearly represent impassible features of the terrain. This is necessary to ensure that the potentially more stringent requirements of land managers can be clearly and easily shown in sprint terrain.

As foot orienteers we are used to maps being prepared with the primary intention being terrain visualisation. One thing that I needed to get into my head when MTBOing overseas (and really struggled with) is that the MTBO mapping standards do not always represent the visual appearance of the terrain, but rather the way in which one can proceed through the terrain. I see sprint mapping as the middle ground between these two mapping styles - both visualisation and route identification are important. This is an aspect that we ALL need to appreciate better - mappers, setters, controllers and competitors. In doing so we will emerge with much fairer and more enjoyable competitions.

Simmo "Lots of things were left off the map, that O-ing in a previous life of writing specs for Metro Series maps would have insisted be shown such as seats, light poles, signs, etc" Not true at all in the slightest. Mapping is subjective and orienteers have to cope with a myriad of mapping styles.

I certainly have not and never will insist that certain things have to be shown on any particular map. That is up to the mapper. When I map I attempt to produce a map that can be read on the run, provides a suitable navigational challenge and incorporates features in the terrain that can be identified at speed.

There was a problem in the Summer/Metro Series event maps that you are probably referring to which was that some events were set (not yours!!) where controls were placed on features that were not mapped. This was largely due to a lack of possible point features on which to hang controls in suburban streets. So controls were sometimes placed on light poles halfway down a straight street. What I and others attempted to do was to make sure that such controls were placed on mapped features like road bends or junctions; or in the case of parkland areas obvious identifiable features such as signs or seats. In no way whatsoever did I ever "insist" or even suggest that all such features such as light poles, signs or seats be mapped. That is ridiculous.