Discussion: WOC in the Future

The Nordic proposal didn't get accepted...the Council proposal did. This eliminates the middle and long quail races and adds the Sprint Relay (1 team each nation - 2 men & 2 women).
Brian Porteous was elected President.

Just wondering how the USA (and Canada) voted, and why?

What an innocent question.

Change occurs in all sports.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/olympics/can...

Interesting take by two very mature and experienced athletes. Disappointment turned to opportunity.

@PG - I assume that by "and why" you are asking about the logic and reasoning that our representatives used to decide how to vote at the GA (General Assembly) on this particular issue (one vote of many taken during the meeting).

Those decisions about how to vote were made by individuals (volunteers in Canada's case) representing our federations and I don't see anything but negative reaction should they answer this question. To me the more useful question is "what process was used to select our representative and what instructions and information were they provided with on the issues to be voted on at the GA". This question will at least allow us to look to the future to see how we can more accurately reflect the general views held in our countries.

I can say that CharM was the Canadian representative. She gave up her run on the final public race to represent the interests of Canadian orienteers during this day-long meeting. On this particular issue she had previously asked the COF's High Performance Committee to consider the issues and make a response to the proposals that she could use to guide her voting. Magnus took on this project and polled the HPP athletes. Several athletes responded and Magnus gave an ordered list of preferred options to CharM. CharM had hoped that Magnus would actually be able to be at the meeting for the vote, but the vote took place at the same time as the WOC Relay Team Leader meeting that Magnus had to attend. This complicated voting since some options were either amended or removed during the voting.

In my opinion, I think that the majority of the people voting at the GA had nowhere near the background information than CharM had, and I was not the only one thinking that perhaps the GA is not the place to be making decisions such as this. IMO, the issue was far too complicated for the GA and should have been trusted to a smaller group of dedicated individuals. But I guess that is what was perhaps attempted and this vote was an attempt at endorsing the "WOC In The Future" committee's research?

Perhaps it's not that interesting to know exactly what countries voted in what way and why. But as AZ said, the bigger picture is clearly that the General Assembly spent time discussing stuff that should have been discussed months ago and then, once again, voted for (or against) unclear proposals. With only 36 voting nations some of the decisions ought to have been influenced by who showed up and who didn't. Interesting questions to ask:

- Was the decision from the last GA to introduce mass start on the WOC programme overturned?
- Is there anything that guarantees this years decisions won't be overturned again in 2014?
- Will there be a new workgroup set up to create the qualification rules for the new WOC? Does anyone who was involved in the WIF-group still have the support from IOF and member nations to work with this issue?

Interesting observation by WorldOfO about the "public" support for the council proposal: http://twitter.com/worldofo/statuses/2262818262877...

For what it's worth, it looks like I'll be leading the process for developing qualification rules (although exactly what that process will be is still unclear).

You have my sympathies.

What an innocent question.

It seems to me a very reasonable question. Not trying to make waves. Just wanting to know which of the various WOC options the NA countries supported and why. And I have the greatest respect for Charlotte and for the professional way she does things.

But, after all the discussion at various times on AP -- none of which makes a damn bit of difference it seems in what really happens -- we get to an actual decision point, the IOF congress, where decisions do matter and where our federations got to vote. What did we do? Or, at least, what did the USA do?

I am not surprised Canada was an engaged and thoughtful participant in this process which has great importance for the future of competitive orienteering around the world.

I agree with Peter. It's entirely reasonable for people to know what vote was cast in their behalf. They might be pleased with the vote that was cast. They might feel that it wasn't the best choice, in which case they can make an effort to have their representative be given guidance to vote differently in the future. An innocent question? It's a question from an interested particiapent.

@blaritrewin - that is excellent news.

@blairtrewin I'm sure Monkton's disciples will want to check your algorithms. ;-)

Whoa, haven't checked email in a couple of days but as the US reps at the General Assembly we listened to all of the discussion, considered the input from the team, listened to the Canadian slant on issues, used our best judgement and voted as follows: (keep in mind that our direction from Glen was to consult with Tom Hollowell (Sweden) and Charlotte McNaughton-Canada as well as the team to decide how to vote...the discussion was extensive to say the least)
1. Nordic Proposal (alternating Urban/forest years) vs. other proposals - we voted for the Nordic proposal which was defeated.

2. Council Proposal (no quails for middle and long, add mixed relay) vs. Swiss (chase event instead of mixed relay...Italians withdrew their proposal to support the Council Proposal) - we voted for the Council Proposal which was adopted.

3. Italian proposal to make the number of women/men on the council equal - we voted for, the proposal was defeated.

4. Spanish Proposal to adopt Adventure Racing under the IOF umbrella (i.e. establish rules, sanction events etc.) - we voted for. Since this required a change in the statutes a 3/4 majority was needed to pass, did get a majority but didn't get the 3/4. It was decided that the Council will crate a working group to investigate the proposal further.

5. President of IOF - we voted for Brian Porteous (Scotland)
The 3 VPs on the slate were elected by acclimation
The remainder of the Council positions - I don't have the names of all of the candidates with me now but the ones that won were the ones we voted for.

If you have further questions you should address them to Rick ;^)

Thanks, Linda!

Thanks!

Hold on a sec, those were the votes?
1: Nordic vs Other combined
2: Council vs Swiss

and then 2b? Council vs status quo, I presume?

Correct! With a comment from the current President before the vote that the Council would likely eliminate the qualifiers regardless of the outcome of the vote. Council alternative won by wide margin.

I'm shocked.

Does the AR community want to be under the IOF umbrella?

I very much doubt it - the attraction of AR to many of the participants is its flexibility, variety and spontaneity. Add the bureaucracy that orienteering groans under and it will similarly stifle the sport. Bear in mind that AR doesn't even have its own organising body yet!

IOF already tried the takeover with rogaining and mountain marathons, about 13 years ago.

AR is made of commercial groups/bnusinesses which I doubt very much will want to be told what to do. They try to differentiate their products (races) from each other to be competitive in their market and maintain a successful business. What ebefit would they gain from falling under a blanket body?

none

We voted against, mainly because I agree that it's pretty presumptuous for us to be asserting authority over organisations we haven't even talked to, but I do think that the result of the vote gives pretty strong encouragement for the development of stronger links at the national level - something Spain seems to have been pretty good at. As I understand it, one of their approaches has been to market endorsement of an AR event by FEDO (the Spanish orienteering body) as a 'mark of quality' (e.g. there's a greater-than-usual chance that the controls will actually be in the right place) which makes it more attractive to potential participants, and encourages AR organises to engage with FEDO too.

A better fit under the IOF umbrella would be ARDF, aka radio orienteering.

But that is affiliated through the radio side of the sport.

While orienteering is a major component of ARDF (Amateur Radio Direction Finding) -- dare I say, more so than AR -- its international governing body is the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU).

I'm shocked.

I was too. Maybe they did not make it clear on purpose, but the council proposal was about having shorter start intervals, more following, more short leg and less challenging orienteering. And it won, maybe small nations used to have less than 4 finalists on average simply thought it is good for them, now have 4 final slots every year.

maybe small nations used to have less than 4 finalists on average simply thought it is good for them, now have 4 final slots every year.

Good point. From Pink Socks July 16 post:

Number of qualifiers per country through 18 heats:

19 Sweden
18 Switzerland
17
16 Lithuania, Finland, Norway
15 Russia, Czech
14 France, Denmark
13 Great Britain
12
11 Austria
10
09 Hungary, Estonia
08 Bulgaria, Latvia
07 Poland, Ukraine
06 Belgium, New Zealand
05 Australia, Germany, Spain, Italy
04 China, Belarus
03 Canada, Romania
02 Portugal, Ireland, USA
01 Japan, South Africa, Slovakia, Croatia

There must be some that didn't get any...

There must be some that didn't get any...

Based on the entry list on the WOC website (plus seeing a photo of a Kenyan):

Countries with zero finalists:
Argentina
Brazil
Hong Kong
Kenya
South Korea
North Korea
Liechtenstein
Macedonia
Moldova
Netherlands
Serbia
Slovenia
Taiwan
Turkey

CHARLIE-B, you have sprint figures included there and you should not. Just middle and long.

Charlie got those numbers from me, and when I compiled them, there was never an intent to use them specifically for future Middle and Long qualifications. If you want to strip out the sprinters, go ahead.

So, about 16 countries guaranteed to do better in terms of finalists than this year. Including Canada, Ireland and the USA - all major posters in this thread.

One - there's no guarantee so far.
Two - having a guaranteed spot in final is not nec better than having a right to fight for spots in final.

I don't disagree... just sayin'.

Of course, guarantee seems to be implied. No?

But, if Sweden, Switzerland, Lithuania, Finland, and Norway all get 5 runners in each "final" (can't they?), then it's going to be a lot harder to be 20th in the final than it is right now since they can only have 3 each qualify as it stands. No?

So how did Canada vote?

Don't know why this couldn't have been said at the start of this thread, but better late than never.

Well, for one reason because the start of the thread happened before that was posted ;-) As for "better late than never", I don't think it is late at all - it has been posted within a totally reasonable amount of time.

@charlie-B - does that mean you think that it's the same as, say, the men's 3000m steeplechase where if it was entirely merit-based it'd be almost entirely a Kenyan affair?

Old threads never die
They just outlive the President, CEO and Sports Director.

Bring back qualies!

I hope the alternating WOC passes. It just seems like the right thing to do.

Given that it only failed 20-16 at Congress in 2012 when Council wasn't supporting it, you'd have to think there is a fairly good chance it will get up this time.

I haven't seen any details of the proposal yet (in any of my capacities), so don't know if qualification races are part of the deal.

Need to change current qualifying/relegation rules if alternating WOC's are introduced (sorry Blair)

And, if going alternate, is night-o's time ripe?

No.

Night O sure would deserve to get there. It is shame it with all the already proven spectator friendliness has never been there.

I wonder how to get it there. As a mass start race? so those who want first-in-finish races and more head to head racing would be able to support it - big night relays are like that today and that's what night runners are already training for - and also those who think qualification races are too much pain would be happy. And open it up to crazy unorthodox forking systems (runners would not have to run same legs in the end: skips, map exchange with alternative maps and so on) to make it circus enough to make it not possible to just follow. For mass start it would not take all night and it could start before it is not entirely dark.

Interval start, ten minute gaps before Kratov and TG, two minute intervals for the rest.

Or better yet, just let Kratov, TG, Sild, Bostrom, and Ridefelt duke it out: 5-man start field.

come on what about a night-sprint-mixed-relay! with wheelchairs! whatever, rogaining too! and you have to carry a mountainbike but you're not allowed to ride it!

That's called adventure racing.

Except it was wheelbarrow, not wheelchair.

Why not just have interested athletes send in petitions (past year's results, demonstrated training quality, injuries that were beyond their control, etc) and have a blue-ribbon Review Panel make an ordered list to pick the winners. Send the medals out in the mail. Sure would save everyone a lot of travel hassle and expense, and make it much easier to organize.

Or do it American Idol style and let the general public vote for the winners, since "everyone" already knows who the best orienteers are.

eddie, very good point, we already know! Only medals are missing.

So where and when the first Urban is going to happen?

@BorisGR: Even if he is getting older, shouldn't Nydalens' coach Anders Nordberg be allowed to extend that 5-person starting field? He used to conduct the Tio night train for many years before Boström and Kratov took over.

Tove just tweeted this.

https://twitter.com/ToveAlexanderss/status/6035430...

I wonder if this issue of different winning times is on the table for the WOC in the future committee?

I've been waiting 30+ years for a prominent woman/women to stand up on this issue.
What took so long?
Did I not hear somebody?

Agree with Eric. We fought (and lost) this battle at WOC93, and I don't think it was ever explicitly stated, but the reason as far as I could tell was that the old men in charge of the IOF wanted to make sure that the women's race was done before the excitement of the men's finish.

I feel like the lack of real long distance races for women is a common topic of conversation amongst the best, though maybe nobody in the right places is listening?

It's hard to believe this is even a question. Is there a single real reason for women having shorter winning times?

I've always wandered about that. Especially when in marathon and ultra running its the opposite, due to the set distances women run 10%-15% longer time-wise than men.

I'm tellin' ya, it's because the women's race is considered to be a secondary event. Even the lame excuses sound like something out of the 1960s. Scandalous.

happens in other sports too, and tennis with 5 vs 3 sets. I'm sure there are many more.

at a non-elite level it's probably to do with retention to a certain extent, there are less women competing at the top level than men and there is a desire to not push anyone away from the sport by making it more elitist.

At an elite level there aren't many reasons for not having similar winning times, only thing I can think of is increasing specialisation but we've gone that way anyway...

Dammit, you beat me to the tennis argument again. Last time it was the name of the sport though.

Double dammit, you just made me look at my first ever Twitter page.

Cross country running: Men=12km, Women=8km
Cross country skiing: Men=50km, Women=30km

Hammer, so we're comparing apples to apples, what are the respective winning times for those races for the men and the women. As far as I know no one is arguing (yet anyway) for equal length. Rather, equal winning time which will still leave the women's courses shorter than the men's.

Marathon Men = 26.2 miles
Marathon Women = 26.2 miles

XC Skiing times at Falun: Men's 50K ~2.5 hours, Women's 30K ~1.5 hours.
XC running: Men ~35 minutes, Women ~25 minutes.

How's them apples umm err oranges?! ;-)

I don't believe the question has been asked at IOF level for a long time (certainly not since I've been involved). It probably should be; the Athletes' Commission would be a good place to start.

Swimming is another one. The longest distance for men in the pool at the Olympics is 1500 m, while the longest for women is 800 m. And that's despite the gap between men and women swimmers being smaller in distance races than in sprints.

While I'm not familiar with the history of orienteering course lengths/times, I understand the current reason for the difference in other sports is history, combined with lame excuses as jjcote said. In the case of the marathon, mentioned above as an example of the same distance, the women's marathon was only introduced into the Olympics relatively recently (1984). If you look at triathlon, a newer endurance sport, there has never been a difference in the distances at which men and women compete.

Fair enough Hammer - I truly didn't know the answer. I knew they couldn't be the same winning times but that's more different than I imagined.

Think globally, act locally. We could set a good example by getting the winning times to match at our national level events (when not under WRE constraints).

That would mean a national federation not slavishly adopting the IOF Rules. Even though the IOF Rules are specifically written for the World Championships and other top events. I don't think that is going to happen. As Eric says above it needs a concerted push by a group of top elite Women orienteers and at IOF level.

Okay, I sent an email to the people on this site:

http://orienteering.org/foot-orienteering/athletes...

asking that they look into the winning times difference. I guess it wouldn't hurt if a few more people expressed their interest.

"Think globally, act locally."

We already did this as our M/W20 winning time for middle distance is 25-30min while JWOC is still 20–25min.
Strange that 20 years old superman's can't have a real middle distance winning time at JWOC.

real middle distance winning time at JWOC.

The specification for middle at JWOC is identical to the previous specification of short at JWOC.

That explains how today's youth manage to get into universities straight from high school when I could not :-)

Actually no, it's really just because I was a terrible student.

I suspect that Athletes' Commission is also responsible for JWOC or there are national JWOC Trainers to have a vote on this. Tomorrow is another day also for IOF.

Canadian, as a result of spectating at the Pan Am mountain bike races today (it was one ticket for both the men's and women's races), I found that is an event where the men and women at the Olympic level are expected to have a similar winning time of about 90 min. The men and women race on the same course, but the men do 6 laps and the women do 5 laps. The winning women's today was 1:27:13, while the winning men's time was 1:31:14, but, since the first two finishers in the women's race completely dominated the race (the gold and silver, but not their order, were effectively determined by halfway through the first lap), it's probably more representative of the field to look at the 3rd place times, which were 1:32:36 for the women and 1:33:02 for the men. Also, the women raced in the morning, when it was slightly cooler. The women's winner, by the way, was on her home course, passing the current world champion in the last K after sitting on her wheel almost the whole race.

That's just rude. I'd have punched her.

There's one discipline that has already moved on this: MTBO. But looking around, not every country has followed the IOF lead on this.

Think globally act locally, tRicky.

Nope, tRicky, they were smiling together afterwards. The silver medallist said afterwards her strategy was to get in front and try to break away, but she couldn't break away. The two of them had finished 1-2 in the opposite order in last year's Canadian championships on the same course and in last year's Commonwealth Games.

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:AN...

Smiling for the camera?

Reminds me of the mens' MTB in the last Commonwealth Games where the Aussie rider (McConnell) needed to break from the two Kiwis (K1 and K2) since they had strong sprint finishes but couldn't do so and they both ploughed past him near the end of the final lap after tailing him for so long. He definitely wasn't smiling at the finish. They also had a ten year age gap on him.