 HeadHoncho
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Posted: 24 August 2009, 9:46 AM
"In my experience, butterflies add a significant distance to a course"
In the mens final, the butterfly loops took (Hubmann) 12 min out of a race total of 96. 12.5% is not significant. By comparison the women with their phi-loop had 16 min out of 77. (at least Kauppi and Niggli had them in different order but being of same ability...)
There are no rules re loops. Organisational load doesnt come into it for WOC. In NZ, we dont really need them with a start interval of 6 min (except for the practice of running courses with them).
Long legs are another tactic to break up packs. But not when it is from control 1-2. That encourages, not negates, packs forming. I can see why they set the courses the way they did, and it wasn't an easy area to set on, but they still did a poor job imo.
There was possibly problems re access, but an obvious way to improve the mens course would be to start the course at the far end (maybe around c2), spend 20-25 min in the depression terrain, give them a kick-arse long leg to a pivot point around c14, have bigger loops utilising the terrain to the N and S, then finish the way they did.
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Alistair
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Posted: 24 August 2009, 3:35 PM
Congratulations Chris! 10 minutes behind the winner with that winning time definitely rates above all my long race results.
The loops should've been longer as HH says. Having a route-choice in the loop can be really good, as most top orienteers cope with these small control-pickong loops the same nowadays, and can execute them at roughly the same speed. A 3-loop or phi-loop could also be good, or a second set of loops later in the course, but the problem with these ideas is that there ends up being too many controls on the course.
Would be interesting to learn Hubmann's opinion on Mamleev's run. If he was just sitting or actually doing some of the work.
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Keith
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Posted: 24 August 2009, 8:54 PM
Well on ultimate orienteering you can see Mamleev's comments as:
Then we were together almost all the time. There were some controls where we had other route choices, but in such open forests you see each other very well . Dangerously honest, the Italian added: during the last controls I was just so tired I reliefed on Daniels technique. I am very thankfull for his help!
Since running in europe, i've changed my opinion quite a lot on "following". If someone goes past you and you know they are good you're going to try and stick with them. Why whouldn't you? what are you going to do, stop and wait until they run off?
You move together, it seems to benefit both people, though sometimes it you lose time because of pack running. I would say it's an orienteering skill pack running. It's one the swedes do specific training sessions for. And one that going from the JWOC relay most non scandi juniors are deficient in.
I have no qualms about what this italian/russian athelete did. He's a world class orienteer (ranked 19th), he must be fast and he must've qualified well. Still I think the IOF could look into avoiding such things: bigger start interval, better gaffling/ buterflies etc. For good buterflies I thought this years Nordic long looked pretty well done. But then that would be much harder to do in continental terraine.
Ah and mick good article but youre forgetting katies 10th in 91
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kl.
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Posted: 24 August 2009, 11:38 PM
Hello!
I as a Finn and a "member" in Mats Haldin's "Fan club" is not angry at Mamleev (he could not do much else).
It is IOF and the coursesetter who "we" would have wanted to protest against.
But you can not protest against that the coursesetter is "stupid". So the only way to show that IOF and coursesetter had done a bad job, was to protest against Mamleev's race.
The jury rejected Finland's protest by a vote of 3-2.
The jury looked only at the split-times and refused to look at the GPS track.
In the jury decision, it appears that the protest was rejected "because it could not be 100% proved that Mamleev had been only following" (my translation from Finnish, the original text in English, I have not seen)
So IOF should either allow following or do their job properly. As Keith (here before me) wrote, Nordic long was proof that it is possible to do good long courses.
The 2-minute start interval at this year's WOC was not because of television broadcasts, because there was no coverage on TV from long in FIN,SWE or Norway (either live or as a summary).And the organizers knew of that, at least half a year in advance.
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Alistair
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Posted: 25 August 2009, 1:24 AM
(If I remember correctly...) The main resaon that the 2 minuter start interval was introduced was to reduce the time window for media coverage of the long race (I think this was in Finland in 2001).
The strange thing that we see now however is the separation of the men's and women's races so that they are held almost consequetively rather than concurrently making it an almost longer day for the media than before...
Keith - having lived here in Sweden for far too long (14.5 years) I can say that Swedes do not train to run in packs. They do however do a lot of relay training which is quite a different thing; something which NZer's need to get better at. But that'll never happen while the NZ relay scene is in it's current state - in a recent article on O'Squad http://osquad.blogspot.com/2009/08/tribal-sports.html Tom & Tane discussed this point - they couldn't be more right.
Did Mamleev cheat? Probably, he practically admitted so concerning the last loop of the race. Does he deserve the bronze medal - he would've definitely deserved it 5-10 years ago when he was really good. I haven't seen (correct me if I'm wrong) any result in the last couple of years from him which have indicated Woc-medal form, but maybe he was peaking. Should he be disqualified - that's the tough one, and the IOF haven't disqualified anyone for following yet - and it's a big step for them when they do... There's always a few cases at Woc of following and this isn't the first case of a medal being won by someone who ran with the winner (at least Berger in 1999).
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mick finn
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Posted: 25 August 2009, 1:27 AM
Oops, long night, fixed that Keith thanks..
There really needs to be an invisible cameraman out there following these guys and keeping an eye on them. I suspect they stop for a bit of a picnic every now and then. Possibly a drop of the finest champagne too - I believe there should be camelbak testing as well as sex testing at all events. On the latter Trinny and Susannah have volunteered to do both A and B tests (corresponding to left and right sides I guess). While there are several primary scchools about to be closed whose students are keen to test the sports drinks and the chocolate bars.
And we all know the gps tracking is just a random blip generator attached to a sine curve. How dumb do they think we are? And paying for it. Ha.
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Alistair
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Posted: 25 August 2009, 1:27 AM
Kl.>> To be honest I didn't think Haldin was in medal form either - that 4th place must be his best race in years. His peaking certainly worked!
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Alistair
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Posted: 25 August 2009, 1:30 AM
You paid for that Mick?! 10mins of checking WoO made me realise to leave the plastic in my wallet last week.
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mick finn
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Posted: 25 August 2009, 1:41 AM
No mate, I struggle (well my computer does actually) to follow the free service, except when its in Scandinavia or Japan.
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