Discussion: North American Champs Format

North Eastern Ohio Orienteering Club is planning to hold one day classic event and one middle course (approximate winning time 30 min). We've got two e-mails from Canada objecting that format on the reason that the long travel isn't worth 30 minute run.
What is your opinion?

I think it is about time that the NAOC is going with one day classic and one day short (or is that one day long and one day middle?) and I commend NEOOC for doing this. However, we have heard that the classic winning time is to be 60-70 minutes. This is a little short if one day is going to be 30 minutes. It should be in the 85-90 minute range for M21 (I suspect 60-70 is about right for some other categories). I believe this is the real concern of those that have written. Another concern by some Canadians was that the original wording on the web page that stated that one day was 'sprint' and not 'short' (or middle). That has been corrected.

So my vote is to go with the long and middle format - like the rest of the World is doing - but use the IOF target winning times for each event in M and F21.

Looking forward to the event!

I would like to second Mike's suggested terms "Short and "Classic"(IOF's "Middle" is weak and inaccurate), and agree that "Sprint" is a different animal. I also agreee with Mike's proposed longer winning time(s)for the Classic distance.

HOWEVER, I think it is very misleading to assert that this format is "like the rest of the World is doing". Yes, the M/F 21's and some junior classes are going this route, but that is a small portion of "the world" that attends the NAOC and other international all-age-group events. My sense is that the other age groups strongly prefer the standard format courses, and the customers should get what they want. Are there compelling reasons why both formats cannot be done at the same event, with Short + Classic courses for M/F 21 and 2 day standard courses for the rest? I would suggest holding off on putting North Am. juniors into the specialized Short/ Classic format until the numbers and competitive standards are higher.

My statement about the rest of World was in elite categories. So I agree with Eric. This format for weekend events was suggested by Elis Eberlein?? in O-NA many years ago now. Several people in Canada told me that "we can't do that...can't have one group racing this and another racing that". Why not?
The majority of M/F 21A participants want to race the 'real' IOF winning times. The majority of 'age-groupers' prefer the traditional 2xclassic. Like Eric says give them what they want...

So my 'modified suggestion' is:
Age-groupers: 2 x classic
Elite (M/F 21A): 1 day short, 1 day long
(and throw in an elite sprint if you have the volunteer power).
Regarding juniors. YOu can always have 17-20 categories race the 21A short course on Day#1.

We should bill by the hour.

I personally will be very bummed and frustrated if the elite classes are running short/classic and I'm stuck with 2 day classic in my age-class. I really like running different formats and being tested in more than one style is appropriate for a championship. Why should the elites get all the fun?
Unfortunately,you're probably right that I am in a minority. And given my finances this year, I'm not sure I'll make it to this meet.

Here is some more information to think about:
the championships were decided on a merit of combined times (Day1 + Day2). Having shorter course on day one we put more weight on day 2.

I propose to use SVO-2003 formula were day 1 result is multiplied by a factor of 2 and added to Day 2 result in order to determine NA Champions

Greg

The 2002 WCOC Fall A-Meet followed the format suggested by Hammer: Elites - short (30' win target), long (90'). All others were regular classic target times. All classes came close to the target times.

In April, we will hold the IC Champs. This time Day 1 will be all short in the morning (30') and longish on Day 2, both events sanctioned. For a fun diversion, the Team will put on a Sprint Relay Day 1 afternoon as a fund raiser. Not sure of their targets but we suggested 12-15'.

Our formula so far has been straight summation, but I agree with Greg that 2x Day 1 might even up the imbalance in a short/long event as SVO did last spring. We'll have to consider that.

I will yield to anybody's statistical analysis, but I think weighting the courses equally might be closer to "fair" when the short/ middle event is designed to be very technically challenging, as I think it should be. The spread of results in Sprint O and Short O is greater than simply proportional to the distance of Classic events, and this spread increases further with technical difficulty, witness the recent Team Trial event. If Short O is set in average (not specially selected) terrain the spread will be less. I'm guessing the NAOC terrain was not specially selected Short O terrain, so there the spread might might warrant up to a factor of 2 max.

Regardless of the conversion factor, I think this idea of summing the results of courses with dramatically different lengths and character should first be questioned. I believe any summation system encourages a conservative strategy in the shorter event, even more so when it occurs on Day 1. With the Short and Sprint courses, the essence of the event is in the go-for-broke risk taking excitement. These events are more about winning, than simply doing well. All formats have their place, but I think this Classic/ Short combination is awkward, at least for a major championship event. By the way, I don't think a time-converted-to-points scoring system would address the dilemma.


If anybody cares, this situation seems analagous to match play vs stroke play formats in golf. In golf these formats are sometimes combined, with stroke play (conservative format) used to seed the matchups for match play (more risky style). This could be viewed as comparable to setting up a chase start in orienteering. In O we wouldn't think of using a chase start event to set up a classic event.


Therefore, I would advocate separate one day championships for the North American Champs (M/F21 and (?)juniors). The would not apply to the US Champs, since you end up with two US Short course Championships.

You can also do a points system, where you get a certain number of points for winning the day, fewer for second place, fewer still for third, etc., with ties broken by total time. I won't venture to say how many points each place should get. (Or a system that awards points proportionally to time relative to the winner each day.)

Clare: easy solution for you -- run F21. :-)

It seems perfectly reasonable to me to crown North American Champions at Middle and Classic (or long or whatever) distances separately. If we need to determine who had the best weekend overall, what's wrong with the points in the USOF ranking system?

I like the WCOC format, with Blue & Red doing ~25-30 min, then ~75-90min, and other courses doing two 'classic' days.

That seems to be what most of the competitors on those courses like, and WCOC's event went over well.

To declare a North American champion, I'd suggest, for simplicity, to just sum the times from Day 1 & 2 in each category and declare an overall champion.

_Maybe_ you could add a ribbon or something to the M-Open (21) and F-Open (21) Short (IOF Middle) champion, and Classic (IOF Long) champions.

I vote for IOF Middle and IOF Long course formats with separate awards (NA Middle O Champ and NA Long O Champ). And I like the fact that more people want normal middle-long mix :)

Eric - Thanks, good points. Yes the terrain will be technical, actually for both days (what else do we have?) and the course setters have done a very nice job putting challenging, fun courses together. It will be a sweet time. Once again I'm sorry to miss the best event of the year!!!

George

I agree with most of what's been said above. IOF Middle (30 min) + IOF Long (90 min) is desirable. The red flag raised is that the website lists Sunday's race as being "Classic Distance (winning time ~60 min.)". People don't necessarily want to travel for 30/60 minutes, but would travel for 30/90 minutes.

Two separate awards would be good, i.e., NAOC Middle and NAOC Long. In the past, I've had all sorts of opinions regarding weighting long and short. My opinion today is that given the extra intensity/technical difficulty of middle vs. long, one would expect relative margins to be larger in middle than in long (does the name Georgiou ring any bells!). Absolute time differences might thus be comparable, meaning adding the times straight up would be Ok. That is certainly simplest solution.

We may be causing some confusion between the NAOC that bmay mentions and the IC Champs I have referred to.

ICs: Day 1 morning (30 min), Day 2 Longish - that is about 75 min. We're working the courses but snow limits our fieldwork at this time.

Separate one-day champs make the most sense for the M21A and F21A middle and long course races (and that is the simplest solution of all). Officials don't weight the 1500m and 10K in track and field and give the gold medal to the fastest "weighted time" AND they don't weight the long, middle and short distance times at WOC. Each race is a different race. Each race has a different pre-race and race strategy. It also permits specificity (using BMay's quote "does the name Georgiou ring any bells?").

Isn't Georgiou where the Navigator Cup is held?

Ok, my apologies to Mr. Gueorgiou (my spell-checker didn't catch that one :-). And, in case Thierry's is not a household name ... he's the guy that blew apart the WOC middle-distance final this year, winning with a margin of 2:37! In comparison, Buehrer's margin in the long-distance was "only" 2:15.

I agree that a short/middle champion AND a long/classic champion (not saying it can't be the same person) should be awarded. There is nothing wrong with doing the same as the rest of world...;-)

I strongly agree with one race/day, one championship, in principle, regardless of format. If you want to do that twice, once on Saturday, then again on Sunday with a different style race, fine.

If this were done, I'd go as far to say that it would be nice to allow runners to enter a different class for each championship, that way Clare could run here age in the longer race and elite in the shorter race (or verse visa), if she wanted to. (I realise this flexibility could be a hassle for the registrar, but there is registration software that makes this not such a big deal).

(One of the more enjoyable weekends last year was the CNYO short/long, and the above 2 paragraphs are pretty much what they did).

I'm tempted to start another thread out of the scope of this one of moving the US champs (the one that is presently sponsored) to a single day format with something less intense on day 2, like a relay, farsta, or other mass start race, but I seem to remember intense opposition to this idea in the past.

I just want to add my voice to the discussion. I agree with hammer and Brian. A true long with ~ 90min winning time and a middle with ~30-35 min winning time. I think there should be separate awards for the different races.

Hello, guys, thank you for your participation in the discussion. Unfortunately, the decision was made by the USOF course consultant to hold two days classic event. See you there.

USOF makes me sad.

As a member of the course consulting committee, I would like to point out that (as far as I know), the course consultant does not have the power to make that decision.

Only a meet director have the power to decide about event format. USOF sanctioning committee have the power to approve this format as A meet and/or USA Championship. Since it is designated as North American Champs we don't need sanctioning committee to approve it as USA Champs only as A meet. I think legally you already approved for A meet and can have Middle and Long formats. Just make sure to publish this decision beforehand givin people enough time to decide for themselves.

My understanding of this process is slightly different. The sanctioning committee approves the A meet, and the USOF BoD approves the championship bid.

The latter occurred Nov 1, '03 (the BoD minutes are at http://home.comcast.net/~rshannonhouse/110103BOD.h...).

If you look for "North American Championships Bid" on that page, then click on "bid details", you see that the BoD approved a day 1 "classic", day 2 "unspecified".

So it seems to me at least that the BoD approved "late binding" (to use geek-speak) of the race format for day 2. So I don't see why you can't do something other than a classic on day 2, but it might be polite to run it by the BoD at the March meeting, I dunno.

It's also worth noting that the BOD had concerns about this event and insisted on assigning an "event controller". The course consultant in this case is also in this position and does have additional authority over the event than would be typical. I will talk to the consultant and see what the situation is.

Randy is right - my mistake. Director decides on the format, sanctioning committee approves for A meet, and BoD approves for NA or USA Champs.

Technically meet director can assign classic format (longer Middle?) to Saturday and Long to Sunday according to BoD meeting info above.

Unfortunately it sounds like the USOF is much like COF in that it is so difficult to make any progress. If there is any way possible I think one day middle, one day long is preferred. I will be very disappointed if it ends up a 2 day combined time classic event.

I ditto theshadow's view - I too would be disappointed (especially since my training the last 6 weeks has had the middle/long in mind). Why are we the only two countries in the World not using International M/F 21A (elite) winning time standards in our Championship events? If we use IOF standards for mapping, control descriptions, control size, etc why aren't we automatically doing the same the course winning times? I doubt that non-international distances would be accepted in other sport's National Champs.

I don't think the "standards" are anywhere near as standard in orienteering as they are in other sports. Seems to me that they change quite a bit, and I'm not sure that every other country is doing things the same way. For one thing, our geographical circumstances mean that two-day weekend meets make sense for us, but that's not the case in all countries. Many countries just have a one-day championship, right? And to be honest, I think that we'd have to be setting considerably longer courses for the classic distance to meet international custom, since it would make sense to have the winning times for the best of us be the same as the time that the same person would run at a race in Europe. Or to put it another way, the course would have to be long enough for a top European to turn in the specified winning time (if s/he were to show up).

Seems like it's a bit of overreaction to be "disappointed" in a meet that uses the format that we're most familiar with in these parts. Whatever the format, it's orienteering, and I'll enjoy it.

I think the point is not that people don't enjoy two-day meets, but that they would prefer not to have championships determined like that.

Australia is very similar in terms of 'tyranny of distance' to the US. And yes, two-day weekend meets are common there (as in Europe). It's just that they're usually two separate individual-day meets. For historical reasons Australia does have a combined-time four-day (one of the two major meets of the year, days are sprint-middle-long-relay length, summed up unweighted - actually, the shorter length course on day 4 is the one that seems to have the biggest spreads in the results, probably due to fitness differences), but all championships are one-day and are combined with some other single-day format meet to make a weekend. (For example, the Australian long championships and relay championships are always held together on one weekend, and the middle championships are often held on Saturday before a long race Sunday). I think this is the format being implicitly proposed for future North American championship meets, and it seems to work fine in Australia.

Well put Will! JJ, I am not disappointed about orienteering (I agree that any time orienteering is better than a day at work) but I AM disappointed that just when it seems we are taking positive steps towards having events that are similar in nature to WOC and the national champs of most countries that we revert back to a format that is neither middle distance or long and is a combined time rather than single day. I think the GLOF was a really fun weekend partly because of the variety of events. It showed that you can have a great weekend without necessarily doing a 2 day x 60 min classic.

I am Stanislav’s partner in course design for the NA Champs. I’m glad that we have finally decided on the format. Now we can get to work on the courses. We did not anticipate this much controversy. I would hope to see USOF take this matter under advisement and set the formats for the various championships based on IOF guidelines. As course designers, we should be having fun designing courses, not enduring the pressure of various groups arguing over the length of courses, even to the point of passing on the event. I have enjoyed formats from “middle” to rogaine. I look forward to trying a sprint event sometime.

So what we have finaly?

Classic+Classic
or
Middle, Long
or
Middle+Classic

Classic + Classic

Day 1 will be toward the long end of Classic.
Day 2 will be 10 to 15% shorter than Day 1.

This will work well with the land available.

I did talk to the event consultant. His decision was based primarily on precedent and a belief that 2-day classic is what was expected by. He had no idea that this might create controversy. He did have some concerns about whether the terrain lent itself to a good middle distance course, but he is willing to consider format changes if they truly have support.

It looks like the course designers are finalized at this point in a decision to do 2-day classic with slightly shorter courses on day 2. I wish you well with your meet plans!

I suggest that USOF and COF work now on defining the expected format for future NA Champs so we don't go through this again in 2years.

Clare Durand
USOF VP competition

My feeling is that that M/F 21A crowd would generally prefer middle and long while other categories would prefer 2xclassic. It would be awesome if middle and long could still be arranged for M/F 21A categories. Regardless it will be great to race in Cleveland again. I ran my first NAOC there in 1980 (M-14) - we are hill training in preparation!

By the way, the Golden Horseshoe Orienteering Club (GHO) has bid on the 2006 North American Champs as part of our GLOF 3-day. If our bid is successful we plan to use the same format we did at last year's GLOF. Classic for the 'age groupers' and short, middle, and long for the 'elite'. It would be held on a new map bordering last year's GLOF map to the north. It will be held on Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.

USGS maps were once expected, too.

Because May 31 is Memorial Day it would be a great opportunity for a money raising training/sprint/whatever event. Any takers?