Discussion: USOF championship start rule

I quote:
13.2 At US Championship events, the starting order shall be designed such that top ranked competitors and those with the same interests (same college or club) start as far apart as possible.

Good rule or bad rule? Discuss.

Sounds like a hassle for the registrar. Do we actually do this or enforce this?

What I don't like about it is the presumption that the higher-ranked runners results are more important than middle of the packers, and the presumption that middle-ranked runner may be so ranked due to an extremely high standard deviation of past results (perfectly capable of winning the race, in other words), and thus could be offered an advantage denied his higher ranked peers. What seems silly about the wording is that "top-ranked competitors" seems undefined in the above snippet. I guess that would be up to the registrar?

If prevention of following is the issue, then a solution that applies to everyone equally should be deployed.

Yet another thing that should be a guideline.

(Note it also forbids a spectator-friendly 'red start group,' based on US rankings or any other way of putting the best competitors at the end. See current discussion in the COC results thread, here.)

USMAOC hosted Interscholastic Championships at our 2009 A Meet, and I can say that yes, we did try to follow this rule in assigning starts, and yes, it is a massive hassle for the registrar - particularly the part about top ranked competitors. Generally speaking, we put the greatest effort into slotting runners from the same team/club/school as far apart as possible in the start window, particularly because Interscholastics seems to be dogged with complaints about following. In that regard, I think it is definitely worthwhile, provides some semblance to equality to the start list, and gives coaches less to complain about. Slotting "top ranked runners" is a rather more difficult proposition. The best we were really able to do was slot people as far apart as possible within our start window (close to 4 or 5 min I think on red and blue) and to try and mix the age classes, so that we didn't have packs of F21+s (or any other class) all starting in row. A rather time consuming process, especially when trying to slot 500 people...

I know this is an area of great dispute, but I do not like intermixing categories. My feeling is that this injects even more unfairness into the start draw. For example, mixing M35 & W21 can lead to "lucky" benefits from the start draw. Okay, that luck will also happen if the classes are not intermixed, however I feel this is more acceptable since then the race is all within the class and no outside influences are present (it also allows easier tracking of if any problems exist).

One other point about following in the younger groups. I think this is due at least in part to the poor navigation skills at that level leading to pack formation as later starters catch up to those in front who are hunting in the vicinity of a control.

So I say the start draw has some very complex issues, and that different classes have different issues, making it even more complex. At the 2009 Canadian Champ, the W17 category was a huge problem as the women bunched up in each race and then stayed together - the only solution would have been to give them widely separated start times. On the other hand there was very little bunching in the M21, W21, M17 groups which were all drawn with two minute intervals (no intermixing).

To see bunching in action you can run Route Gadget animations with the "Mass Start" box turned off. For the COCs, go to http://rg.orienteering.ca

The part about "same club", by the way, seems like something that should be stricken. Although there is something to be said about "same school" at the Intercollegiates or Interscholastics, there is no club award at the other champioship events (despite the fact that one is provided for in the rules), and no reason to think that people from the same club would have any particular reason to help each other more than otherwise, the way orienteering currently exists in the US. In my opinion.

And in fact at large events (eg: in Europe) it is often a kindness the organizers provide in giving all club members similar start times so they can have easier travel logistics.

Just having done this for the local national Champs. Our rule for A and E classes:

"competitors likely to fill a place are to be seeded"
"Seeded competitors shall not start consecutively unless the number of seeded competitors is greater than one-half the total number of competitors. They should be spaced as evenly as possible throughout the start sequence."

To that must be added split start times for those with young children, early start times for helpers and those with transport issues and an expectation of member sof the same club not starting consecutively.
I suspect its not too hard in most years as long as you emphasise the word 'LIKELY'. I have assumed that anyone with a top 6 ranking might fit the likely to place criteria. From personal experience I know it is possible to achieve a ranking of 7th but have no hope of a placing ;-{. This year the difficulty is the presence of a large number of overseas entrants who will be travelling on to the WMOC the following week in Sydney. I have no idea of how to rank these competitors, so I am just assuming they are all likely to place and acting accordingly. Using OE2003 it took me about 4 hours for 600 starters in the event. I ignored junior classes and AS and B classes. I can live with the 3 hours. I spent more time sorting out the start box structure. Its the late entrants etc that make me grumpy.
Postscript: dd another three hours for split starts and similar issues.

On Blue (and Red for F21) I try to separate the "top" runners - "top" being purely subjective on my part. ;-)

And I try to separate people in the same age group, as I have heard people say that they prefer not to be bunched with others in their class.

For WY there are so few competitors that you don't have to try hard to keep everyone apart. Their start times are usually determined by their parents' start times

For interscholastics/intecollegiates I try to separate team members, but for big teams like West Point it's hard.

At the same time, if a team has a long bus ride home, I'll keep them close enough together so that they can get an early start home and not have to wait around for late starters. I'll start the slower runners earlier if I know who they are (or the coach tells me)

And I always honor specific start time requests, although I suppose if I suspected somone of asking for a start time for a competitive advantage, I would think twice. (I do know people who like early or late starts because they perform better in those conditions, and I've honored those requests. You could consider that an unfair advantage, but if everyone who asks is granted their preference, then I guess it is fair to all.

It's a big juggling act for the Registrar. Is it worth it? I'm willing to do it if it makes for a better competitive and general experience for all. I'd like to hear all sides.

I think that many of us who have small children would agree that if possible, any reasonable request for split start times should be granted. And if you're not going to grant split start requests, then you'd better have a childcare solution in place....

(up until about 4 years ago I had no thoughts on the split start time issue, but these days, childcare or split starts are among the most important things we consider when registering for any race)

Yep. And it gets even more complicated, Wil, once the kids get old enough that you have to fit in shadowing them on their course in addition to running your own. It certainly doesn't help matters any when some organizers use "compressed start windows" that don't allow sufficient time. When you get to the shadowing stage you start looking critically at logistics like "walk to start" advertised times, whether the finish is near the car park, and especially at shuttle buses that take away control of your time. (You can save boatloads of time by running the "walk to start", but you can't do anything to cut the shuttle bus time.)

I hate being a pain by asking lots of questions to meet registrars who I know already have more work than they need. But when the logistics aren't clear in the meet announcement I have to get answers.

White and Yellow are actually the courses where the start list makes the most difference with regard to following. All too often I have worked the finish at meets where all of the White and Yellow runners were packed in at the beginning of the start window at two-minute intervals, and they all finish at the same time. There are a couple of reasons for this, one being that these kids have less self-confidence than older orienteers, and once they are together, the reinforcement that somebody else is going the same way makes them stick together like magnets. The other is that there is little to no route choice on these courses, and visibility along a trail is usually quite good, so there is a lot of opportunity for them to encounter each other. Since there are usually few entries on these courses, please, spread them out. No reason to not use an 8-minute start interval.

I have heard USOF insurance does not cover child care, and clubs are advised to avoid this potentially litigous activity.
In the 80's we advocated for child care at A meets, and succeeded in getting it implemented in every A meet.
Looks like it going away with the paranoia of the lawyers.

Yagottabekiddingme. How about the teenaged babysitters that get hired to come over and babysit. Are we so worried about insurance that we ought not to have babysitting at all? C'mon.

To hell with health care reform - Obama would make a big step forward with a large dose of tort reform!

If that is the case, then I suppose that split start times will become even more and more important to us. Simply put, these days we can't go to any race unless there is some form of childcare or split start times. Period.

And, for me, I really prefer childcare. This takes away the stress of worrying if my spouse will get back in time for me to get off for my start (or vice versa, being out in the woods and thinking about hurrying up and finishing so I can relieve my husband). Max has more fun in childcare, too. I'm willing to pay for all that.

We haven't been to the WP meet or other events that don't have childcare since we became parents, since split starts are just a bit too stressful for me, and there are plenty of other events to go to instead.

I do know how hard it often is for meet organizers to arrange for the childcare, though (at least for QOC's recent A meets), and then after all the organizers' angst there are usually only a small handful of us taking advantage of it. I can see childcare going away for those reasons. I haven't heard about insurance reasons but that would be a shame.

There are two issues. One is that in some states, 'child care' is a licensed activity (so 'babysitting' is what USOF tries to encourage, and 'child care' advertising is a little risky unless you know what you are doing). The other is the insurance issue. coach's own club seems to contain the people who are most worried about this, so he should know the state of that.

IANAL, but you'd think that so long as the club wasn't providing the service itself, there would be a way to keep the risk at arm's length.

I'm interested this thread went this way: I was really provoked by our inability to put all the top ranked competitors at the end of the start list in next week's sprint champs. (For which I don't think babysitting is the issue.) Everybody's already happy with where we are on the spectator excitement versus fairness continuum?

this rule reminds me Buffalo fest this year :)
all 3 days same order in Male elite category and all teams were packed together ;)

this reminds me of the Buffalo meet...

NOT a championship event
AND people were given the chance to request alternate start times...

GET OVER IT!

Good rule or bad rule?... The answer is yes ...

Good rule. Here in the UK we have the same rule for the Championships - keep the fastest people apart.

Bad rule. Here in the UK we have the opposite rule for the elite Championships - start the fastest people close together.

... go figure ...

It's obviously all about whether you are trying to create some entertainment and excitement for the spectators. If you have arena production, race announcer, spectator controls and so on, then it's probably worth it to have a "red" start group of the best elites that start late (so that the rest can be back in time to spectate). There will be a price to pay in terms of risk of following (largest in the Long, smaller in the Middle, minimal in the Sprint).

In my opinion the price is worth to pay to be able to celebrate our best athletes, to show that these guys are real athletes and to make it easier to understand for outside observers that this is a fast race and not a geeky treasure hunt.

To state the obvious, this kind of arena production only apply to high level events such as national champioships.

Indeed - the only events for which USOF has special rules forbidding excitement... ;)

(BTW: we are doing our best at the sprint champs next weekend to achieve excitement anyway, despite the start list rule that I don't like. I think we will succeed pretty well, inshallah.)

this reminds me of the Buffalo meet...

NOT a championship event
AND people were given the chance to request alternate start times...


I wasn't at the Buffalo meet, but from I heard, it was a good meet. There's no reason for me to doubt that report.

But the comment brings up an interesting point. It seems silly to have a different rule for the Buffalo and Rochester meets. Aren't these places only a handful of counties apart? When they say the right thing changes from state to state don't you at least need a state line between rule changes?

Assuming this seeding confers some sort of advantage or disadvantage one way or the other (and it seems pointless to debate that at this point), why should one race have this advantage, and the next one a few counties over not? Who knows? Do "championships" (which it seems rare that a USOF weekend doesn't contain), make it a different sport?

Well, my opinion (well, I already had an opinion earlier in the thread, but now we know the motivation), is that if ignoring this silly rule will make it a better experience, then ignore it, Important rules are ignored; no one will care if an unimportant one such as this is.

JMHO (again), of course. Looking forward to the meet in any case.

There is a way around this.

As mentioned above, "top-ranked-competitors" is not well defined, so if you interpret that as "competitors ranked in the top 50 of the IOF world rankings" and ensure those people are pushed apart, that should, at least for now, limit the amount of work needed at US meets to comply with this rule...

And BTW, the rule does say "as far apart as possible", so one interpretation would be for 1st and 2nd ranked to be required to start first & last (either order, but hours apart), 3rd ranked to start dead center in the window, 4th & 5th to be 1/4 and 3/4 through the window (either order), etc... I recall thinking this through long ago - I think perhaps I was required to do this for some event, or at least debate it - I think in the context of a Team Trials seeded list conflicting with this rule, when one of the Trials days was a US Champs. In that case, I think the rule won, and the Trials seeded starts (which was an ESC recommendation at the time) lost out.

It seems that the unstated motivation for the rule is something like "to create a more fair race by reducing the chances of following". At least that is what I read into it. But the rule fails in two ways.

First I don't think it does reduce the chances of following at all, and perhaps even increases them. If we use Wyatt's algorithm to assign start times then we run the risk of having fast runners starting in front of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th ranked orienteers. It seems not too unlikely that one of these fast runners could latch on to one of the ranked orienteers, injecting a huge dose of unfairness into the race. So chances of following are perhaps increased even.

The second issue about fairness is that runners should, as far as possible, run their race under similar conditions. Using Wyatt's algorithm again, there is no doubt that which ever of the 1st & 2nd runners is given the last start time will have an advantage over the one that starts at the first start time. This is due to tracking in the forest (making nice runnable paths on hillsides and through thick vegetation for example). Also I believe that the overall density of other runners in the forest should be equal for a fair competition, since these other runners can have small influences on the race (for example, if spotted punching at a common control).

So I think "start top runners as far apart as possible" rule probably does not meet its objective. In fact I believe the Red Group start draw is not particularly more unfair. Certainly runners in the Red Group the race will be running under similar conditions, and if there is any following it will be among those ranked runners and we won't be getting any "strange" results by non-ranked fast runners following top orienteers. Plus the Red Group gives us the exciting arena possibility.

Fairest solution: mass start. Long Live the Goat!

Fairest solution: mass start. Long Live THOMASS!

I find it hard to let go of this topic. So, the US has just revised its rules for orienteering. Are you seriously going to have a rule that specifically enforces top runners to start "as far apart as possible" at US Champs? A rule that implies a start draw procedure similar to what Wyatt is describing? A rule that kills any attempt at creating race excitement for spectators?

And you are going to enforce this rule?

If yes, it boggles my mind. If no, then why not take the chance with this round of revisions and remove the rule?

This thread was an attempt to see if anyone else cared enough to justify the effort of trying to push a change through Rules.

This thread was an attempt to see if anyone else cared enough to justify the effort of trying to push a change through Rules.

Yes. The rule is well intended but antiquated and probably ineffective. Get rid of it.

" overall density of other runners in the forest should be equal for a fair competition "

Please, let us not go there. Whether you see people on your course or not is not something that should be covered by the rules or regarded as "fair" or "not fair". It certainly isn't something that can be cooked up and organised by a really clever start draw.

O-ing, I fear you misunderstand my intention. I do not at all advocate for the rules to address such an issue, I simply point out that cooked up, clever start draws may create the problem of differing conditions in the forest. I am all for simple rules and simple start draws (as long as they allow for seeding ;-)