Discussion: Euro Champs

Euro Champs are on in Estonia. Some big names struggled today. Reduce the visibility and more mistakes are made.

https://twitter.com/worldofo/status/15548444362192...

Terrain looks fun!
This is also a World Cup. Canada's Vegard Jarvis Westergard qualified for the A final; US's Evalin Brautigam will run in the B final (30th in her heat of 39, ~18 min back of winner).

So looking at the long. What are the rules with regard to the river? Is it not allowed to cross it or is it not crossable? That bit of OOB on the long leg route everyone seems to be taking is interesting.

2.4 of ISOM2017-2 suggests it shouldn't be crossed, happy to be corrected.

if there is no purple markings it is allowed to cross. As usual.

Is the tv coverage working for anyone? I'm seeing a replay from the Borås world cup race...

Welcome to the European River Swimming Championships :-)
Just because ISOM says it's uncrossable doesn't mean it can't be crossed! (however tracking suggests a few athletes have crept along the south bank of the river, which is OOB) Areas, routes or features that are actually forbidden to cross are listed in IOF Competition Rule 17.2 (if this was a sprint map the river would be forbidden to cross, obviously...)

@BorisGr same here. Any IOF communication open?

Looks like Web-TV start time has been pushed back an hour from time previously advertised.

Hopefully they’ll be some cameras at the river! Be interesting to see what it looks like.

rumours say about ankle deep water. I guess thats why some did not cross the rriver but hiked in water along the bank instead.

Some seem to take it serious and go south around the forbidden area (like Aebersold) or over the marked bridges. Those loose time.
Ohlsson seems to go straigth through on the road ...

DQ incoming for Ohlsson

bad choice of the course setter to play with the river as obstacle with passage symbols if it is legaly passable...

I assume the OOB was put there to try to shift the route choice balance, in which case surely there are officials there checking it? (leaving aside the GPS evidence).

not really a good balance if the option of going around the OOB is to cross an "uncrossable" river...?

That course setting kind of looks like planner believed rivers are forbidden to cross.

planner can make mistakes... but IOF surveyors?

It seems that a successful Swedish team effort secured the gold in ME.
Another great testimony that fair play is an issue only in China.

@stalas Your comment is extremely disrespectful to Regborn, who caught the guys in front of him and then ran from the front. Do you have any basis for your accusation?

@BorisGr You may want to look at the GPS from CP 19 to 29.
http://www.tulospalvelu.fi/gps/2022eocLm/

For 29 minutes over the technical section of the course the two Swedes were running very close to each other with Bergman in the lead most of the time. A successful Swedish team effort that secured the gold.

Why do you see this as disrespect? We shall celebrate the cooperative attitude of our elite, as it was done after the Long WOC a year ago.
https://iofreflections.blog/2021/07/29/whats-the-p...

I don't understand who the anger is at, they don't set their own start times and ran what would give them a better time. Quite a stretch to compare to memorizing courses and flagging routes through the terrain.

I agree with Jagge, that it looks like the course planner didn't understand the river crossability issue.

If the OOB was installed to balance the route choice on THE crux route choice leg, around which both courses were designed, then... I am at a loss for diplomatic words.

Andudi, I think you make some of the most important points in this thread.
Would you care to introduce yourself?

So, despite being in close proximity to a river crossing point, the road through the OOB was itself OOB?

Around 12:25:18, check out Yogev entering the OOB, realizing what he had done, and then hightailing it directly back to the finish. Would it have been a problem for him to finish the course, then DQ himself?

I missed the live TV due to time differences. Was there an interview with Karolin Ohlsson?

in a arena interview during the race course planner told runners crossing the river will be disqulified. So I may well have been combination of planner not understanding the rules and advisors not understanding planners intentions correctly.

Teini told they had no infromation depth of the bigger river. I think teams were informed about the smaller one (maybe that was the ankle deep information?). She tells it was slightly over waist deep in places she crossed it.

Maybe I am seeing an other gps traking. Martin several times did not just follow, once he lost time for going too much left, once too much right and once Gustav made mistake but Martin did not follow and spiked the control instead. And later there was Magne in sight. Martin even crossed rivers only by using marked crossings. As fair play as you can imagine in a situation like that.

Sure, there were parts of the course like leg 16 with the river crossing that they did completely independently. It is the 19 to 29 where they were running very closely to each other. Over 29 minutes that must have benefited them by more than the 31 sec winning margin.

The GPS is also interesting for Kinneberg and Egger who apparently ran within the OOB area on leg 7. The edge of the OOB area is clearly in the water. Their speed suggests that they did not run in water.

I think Stalas would like 15 minute start gaps with members from one country separated by 90 minutes, but only if the start and finish are separated by 3km just in case an early runner happens to pass by and they stop and chat for a while about best routes.

Alterative could be that controls are on the map and everyone decides their own order, maybe they could have differing values and there is an unreasonable time limit so it's best score wins???

In that terrain, I suspect the truth is less likely to be that athletes were following one another, and more that they were following the same path trampled through the undergrowth by earlier runners.

That said, we seem to have this conversation after every Championship Long race. I'm yet to hear a better solution than increasing the start interval.

The start window for EOC was five hours. If we'd filled that time with 40 runners starting at 7.5-minute intervals, we would still have had all the potential medal contenders (40th place was over 20 minutes down in both men's and women's classes), but there would have been less pack running and less advantage to a late start.

The only problem is how to determine who gets to run - qualifier race, world rankings, World Cup standings, guaranteed number of places per nation, personal places for reigning champions, wildcard places etc. No doubt whatever was chosen would cause equal amounts of controversy.

Does anyone have a definitive view on the river crossing information provided to runners in advance?

Was it:
- "There is a big river on the map. It looks scary but it should be OK to cross if you want to"

Or:
- [No information provided, runners need to make a decision in the race]

If it's the latter than that clearly wouldn't be great, especially given the OOB just before the obvious crossing point...

Jagge, I think you are giving being charitable. According to the minutes of the Team Officials Meeting, led by the advisors, the yellow/black tapes either side of the strip of crossable river were highlighted to the meeting, which suggests to me the advisors did not understand the rules on "uncrossable" rivers either- not that I did.

@lost
Maybe final A (30 best) and FINAL B (all others). Who q for LONG A final? 20 from middle F (country places) and 10 places is up to IOF to decide. Maybe we should put more recognition to Long FINAL B from previous champ. 5 best countries from Final B. So lesser nations have a small window to get in Final A. So they have a motivation to qualify thru Middle Q/F (qualifier race) or Long B final. So all races counts.

TOM notes are on IOF Eventor, slide 16 refers to Uncrossable Watercourse

https://eventor.orienteering.org/Documents/Event/5...

So, course planner and others around him/her thought that uncrossable = not allowed to cross? Had they been too focused on sprint rules lately? Sad to think that course planning, with the two, mostly "uncrossable" rivers crossing the terrain, had probably been greatly affected by this beginner mistake (I'm a beginner myself).

Still, the bigger problem is the OOB area. It wasn't marked in the terrain, I assume? This would be a big enough excuse to partly cross it in the south (like almost everyone who chose that slower route did, both women and men?). But it seems many crossed it along the river shore (stalas mentioned Kinneberg and Egger, I'll add Kuukka and Liland), where it was clearly drawn partly into the river. What kind of a precedent this sets regarding OOB? OK to cross a bit, if it is a stupid OOB in the first place?

WOW!
I detest responding to unidentified posts, but Rafjell seems to have it exactly right.

It must have been marked in the terrain, because that cross hatch has a border line. OOB area not marked in terrain has no border line on map.

Jagge: I won't challenge your knowledge of the rules. But then again, did the organizers know it? Why I assume it wasn't marked is because more than half of the participants must have crossed the tape (assuming it was correctly marked in the terrain...). One would expect at least one of the runners to go all the way around it in the south? Unless they followed the tape that was not where the border is on the map.

From someone who ran on the road through the OOB, it seems like there was some tape out there.

https://www.facebook.com/1561627080817830/posts/pf...

OK, thanks. Then we probably have to assume that Kinneberg, Kuukka et al ran around a tape that wasn't placed all the way into the water? What still bothers me is that there seems to be a bit too much variation in GPS tracks in the south, and that some chose to go around the longer way on a path? One could assume that there would be a clear, new path along the tape for everyone to follow (at least for the men, after women's race).

What I heard from runners that there tape in the beginning of the race, but it was less obvious for the later starters. That is a bit strange, but it is from the horse's mouth.

So, it seems that there were issues only with the mapping, course setting, course controlling, pre-race communication, markings on the terrain, and marshalling.
The rest was more or less fine.

Similar artifical OOB to "improve" terrain was used also in 2010 WOC middle final
http://news.worldofo.com/2010/08/14/woc-middle-map...

stalas, what issues with mapping?

There was plenty of warning. According to Bulletin 4, the leading women were expected to run at the same height adjusted speed as the men! Women 12.9k, 225m climb, EWT 73 mins. Men 17.3k, 275m climb, EWT 96 mins.

@Jagge When a map shows a river with a solid, unbroken "uncrossable" border, the competitor shall not expect to be able to cross it at speed with no particular difficulty.

Well, ISOM 2017-2 chapter "2.4 Barriers" quite clearly states the exact opposite. Also, some may see wading in waist deep water is not same as crossing at speed.

Looking at the photos of the "bridges" from the TOM presentation, some may have seen wading in waist-deep water as speedier than teetering along what appears to be a fallen tree.

Does anyone know if there was a uncrossable river present on the model map or any other way athletes would have been able to gauge the crossability of such a feature prior to the start of the race?

@Jagge The text in 2.4 - in my reading - clearly implies that when something is mapped with the barrier symbol one should expect that it is not crossable, though it is not excluded that there is a chance to cross it.

In an ideal world, all features mapped using barrier symbols would be impossible to pass / cross. But nature is complex, conditions vary over time, maps have to be generalised, and the competitors do not have equal physical abilities. This means that a feature that is mapped using a barrier symbol could turn out to be passable /crossable, but to what extent it is possible to pass / cross cannot be determined by inspecting the map.

When apparently all competitors who aimed at crossing could cross the river at any random place they arrived at, then that suggests that mapping it as uncrossable was deeply misleading.

Orienteering maps, however, are not designed solely for World Cup athletes who have distinctly less varying physical abilities than the entirety of the orienteering community. There will be people who struggle with the crossing, but this group of people is especially not it. If they see a river that isn't flowing especially quickly, a reasonable person would assume that they would be able to cross.

When it comes to crossability, ISOM maps should be designed for "the average elite orienteer under normal conditions" (the next paragraph of 2.4 after the extract that stalas quotes above). I think that is roughly equivalent to saying that they should be designed for World Cup athletes.

Jagge, you are teasing me to take off on your WOC 2010 Middle reference :-), but I've beaten that horse enough, and I'll stick to a relevant comment.

The Middle course setting team in 2010 was handed possibly the worst WOC terrain ever, but did an extraordinary job on course design, with no(?) problems that I remember. I'll forgive them an OOB area that I didn't realize was phony.

This Long Euro Champs team was handed an exceptionally good terrain, and well... we have this long AP thread.

Around 12:25:18, check out Yogev entering the OOB, realizing what he had done, and then hightailing it directly back to the finish

He was moving much too fast to have been hightailing it. Looks to me like he was in a vehicle, for reasons I could only speculate on.

I detest responding to unidentified posts

May I please be present when some of you finally stumble upon the anonymous land of Reddit and have to judge posts solely on their content.

I'm not sure I'd be quite as harsh on the WOC 2010 terrain as Eric; what was definitely true was that the arena location made the terrain very hard to use effectively for the shorter races.

Blair, in case its not clear, I'm not talking about the 2010 terrain in general, only the Middle which Jagge linked.

Agreed, the arena was exactly what defined the terrain, but that hardly improves it, and the mandated spectator passage through the arena made it even worse. There was nothing with any Middle quality, anywhere accessible, the prime casualty of the epitome of the Liebniz agenda.

The Long terrain was deservedly good, even excellent, if they would have ditched the lousy spectator loop.
The leftover Relay terrain was still weak, and drew its fair share of criticism, but I even defended this as justified by the good arena, which is relevant to the Relay.

However the Middle was a different story. If you remember, one of the Brits used an expletive over the PA describing the terrain in his post run interview, and my tour of the terrain confirmed his choice of words. It was no better than it looked on the map. (map quality was indeed excellent)
Has there been another WOC or WCup terrain that even approached this level?
Sorry for the negativity, but that is part of at least trying to be even handed.

Multisport orienteering seems to be popular amongst Baltic course planners - e.g. WMOC 2019 long final.

The middle terrain looks very much like SE Michigan.

Today’s terrain looks horrible!

Interesting competition between lady pairs forming before the first radio control. Apparently, individual competitors have no chance on this terrain.

Still Ridefelt ran alone, did not see anyone, and won.

Terrain in Estonia is very arrogant, no color-coded certified-accessible trails, huge parking lots, ---the usual setting in America. Only pure wild nature, tricky contours in a low-visibility dense forest, creeks teeming with piranhas

Back to a discussion on athletic performance…
I find the large number of mistakes in this terrain interesting. I wonder if we will see more middle distance courses tuck into thicker / less visibility terrain to mix things up. It certainly seems there is more range in skills in this terrain type. We saw that in the stellar courses at last year’s WOC middle. Do NorAm athletes have an advantage in this less visibility terrain?

I thought it interesting that the decisive moment in today's men's race was Ridefelt's decision to go round on the track to #20.

@ lost
I checked the splits and #20 wasn´t the decisive moment.
http://obasen.orientering.se/winsplits/online/en/d...
It was a good move with 3rd best but Bergman going straight was 2 s faster. Kirmula going around was fastest 5 s ahead of Bergman. So it was a got move but it didn´t bring the decision. Ridefelt was already in lead from #17. According to splits #6 was really decisive.

@Jagge Look at the WE results. Only those could get a medal who were lucky enough to get a quality companion by CP 5. The reward for the team effort was podium place also for the companions.

I thought the forking today was generally awful, particularly the last one on the women's course which cost SUI a medal, but also the first one on the men's where A was much slower.

Surely experienced planners should manage to create forkings that are more or less equal (if necessary, using 2 controls) rather than have one be 1 minute faster?

I think this forking issue is worthy of discussion, although I won't call it awful. Also, I think it is an overstatement to suggest this cost SUI a medal, in part because the team unquestionably ran the same distance/legs, but mostly because the tracking shows the SUI runner seriously botched the next leg to 15, accounting for most/all of the time difference.

However I think it is still fair to say that this women's fork occurred unusually close to the finish. Note the men's 3rd leg was not forked through this same cluster, and their last fork was about twice the distance from the Finish, which strikes me as normal/reasonable. Sorry I didn't find an easy way to get distances.

At the same time I can see that the design team wanted at least one fork on the last loop, and this cluster was at least a reasonable option.
The next most likely forking option might have been around control 11, which would be the same place as the men's last fork, but the leg angles and trails don't work as well for the women.

The other thing that strikes me about this complete set of forks is that they are relatively perpendicular to the course flow, rather than along the line of the course flow, which inevitably creates bigger time differences. I always thought that similar forks were considered preferable, but maybe the design team wanted to create some disparity, for the sake of race excitement. Still, I think forking disparity close to the Finish is not desirable.

This took some homework.

in addition, SUI are running back in sixth until getting catapulted up to third with the short first fork. So it all evens out.

Evens out? Its really pointless competition in a first across the line race if the people running close to or in sight of each other are not running a similar course. If one of the pair / group has a minute faster or slower fork coming up then what the runners sense or what you might see on TV or tracking is completely meaningless.

On the other hand, if you don't want following, maybe uneven forks are a useful tool. Or is a relay all about pack running?

IOF rules appendix 6, 4.2 (Relay course planning considerations) recommends "when forking is used, the time difference between alternatives should be small", however course planners are constrained by our old favourite, 19.4. 14 G and H (shallow gullies) would have to be at least 60 metres apart. As they are approached from the west, the differences might be more relevant than if they were approached from the south, especially as they are located in "walk" forest, so option G is definitely favoured in head-to-head racing, but all teams would have been equally affected.

A Google Earth guesstimate is around 900 metres from that control group to the finish, so consistent with the requirement that "For fairness reasons the very last part of the last leg must be the same for all runners".

Obviously it evens out over the whole race and “it cost SUI a medal” was probably overstated.

But as an experienced planner I still find it disappointing that they couldn’t find a way to make the gaffles more balanced. I certainly wouldn’t have stood for it.