 Greg
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Posted: 7 October 2005, 5:47 AM
What ever! What other sports do the managers/officals ask all participates about what they think = NONE, thats the whole reason they are there, to make decisions, not ask everyone what everyone wants. This is why there are so many people disgruntaled about so many things in NZ oing, because they have been asked or think they can have input and when a decision is made against their favour they throw up their arms. If everything was just left to the decision makers right from the get go no one would know any better! Then everyone just gets on with it.
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Tane Cambridge
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Posted: 7 October 2005, 7:25 AM
By the way, the comment about "Why does NZ always have to copy Aus?" was a general comment based across all sports.
In NZ we always tend to focus on Austraila. 'if something works for Australia then it will work in NZ'. This is very naive statement to make, to be better than anyone else you need to look at the big picture and then change the game plan to best suit NZ. For example the All Blacks, the greatest All Black teams (of all time) have beaten everybody by changing the the whole style of the game.
At the moment if you are to look a anybodies Orienteering model I think (going back to cool runnings) that the Swiss are the ones to have a look at. A World champion across all 4 disciplines, and currently others ranked 2nd in both mens and womens grades, plus winners and high placings at JWOC.....although this could be because they eat hills for breakfast!!! (and jwoc was in Switzerland too)
Definately, by all means look at how Austrailia do it, but make it better and better suited to NZ
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Dave Barr
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Posted: 7 October 2005, 8:30 AM
This message was edited by Dave Barr on 14 March 2006, 8:30 AM
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mick finn
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Posted: 7 October 2005, 8:56 AM
Plug for NZ!
I was under the impression that NZ didn't copy Aus that much, for example, not having a bricks and mortar sports institute like the AIS. One of the attractions of NZ (to an ex-Aussie) is the try-anything attitude that has led to gazillions and brazillions of world class athletes - just look at the legacy of Lydiard in most endurance sports as another example. And some of the useful things in Aus like national o-league or junior elites are adopted from other countries anyways, in the spirit of experimentation.
PS from a marketing point of view M/W17-20E is a great grade; I imagine that more and more opportunities like the Southern Cross challenge against Aus and international comps are even more beneficial to raising the standard, and if more support can be gained from the elite tag and its better competition then why not? The huge crowds of mostly non-runners supporting the Mtn Running Champs (est. over 13,000) showed that the public will turn out in droves for the best in the world, (with the help of a central location).
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Kate
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Posted: 8 October 2005, 4:48 AM
one negative i can see to a broader age grade would be if what happens in rep soccer (for girls any way) happened to orienteering. For girls there are the U12, U14,U16 age grades of local area reps then the smae grades for regiojnal reps. Once you turn 17 the next step is the open wellington womens rep team, with nothing to cater for those who want to play at a high level other than at clubs. If grading changes are made, then those who aren't at the top must be considered and provided for, or else orienteering will have a significant drop off in numbers, as womens soccer does.
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blairtrewin
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Posted: 8 October 2005, 11:19 AM
The new structure in Australia is that 17-20E and 17-20A replace 18A and 20A. Certainly the Junior National League and making life easier for the JWOC selectors have something to do with it, but another element in the decision was trying to provide another 'respectable' option for those people who aren't fit enough to handle 18A/20A courses - in the 2004 Australian Champs a lot of the M18As, especially, were clearly way out of their depth physically. (The winning time wasn't too bad, about 64 compared to a recommended 60, but there were many people over 2 hours). What happened this year was that a lot of people who shouldn't have been running M17-20E still did (the girls generally had more sense) and there were some very long times in M17-20E, but I think that will sort itself out over time. It would be fair to say that most of the people in 17-20A are the ones who, if they stay in the sport, will end up running 21AS, and we want to keep as many of them as we can.
We used to have the system where you had to run 20A at Easter to be considered for JWOC, and the end result was that 18A at Easter became farcically weak (there was one year when M18A had only three entries). This also meant that the 18A national rankings became worthless because they were heavily based on unrepresentative results from Easter.
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onemanfanclub
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Posted: 9 October 2005, 5:34 AM
There's been a lot of talk here about how converting 18A and 20A to 20A and 20E will or won't help those on the fast track to elite level, and a few people have commented along the lines of "why don't people just run up as they are entitled to do?" Fair enough IF the definite-future-elites were the only juniors we're interested in here. BUt there's another group, that with the healthy secondary school scene we're producing more of, that this proposal would help in another way, and maybe we'd retain a whole lot more of them.
Blair gets at this above, but just to reinforce it let me share the experience of an orienteer who (you might struggle to believe this) was once upon a time a junior... Starting orienteering partway through secondary school, I was just starting to get enthusiastic and good enough to do red courses (I'll use the current terminology so all the young bucks know what I'm talking about) when I was about to hit 18. Ran M18A a couple of times, got around the course ok but well off the pace. Then suddenly I was too old for that so had the choice of M20A which I could see I wasn't up to yet, or dropping down to m21B, then later M21AS when it arrived. Which is how I remained an average plodding orienteer and have only recently started to try to lift the game a bit. If I'd been into any other sport I probably would've ended up concentrating on that instead. Now, imagine, if instead I'd had the opportunity to hang round in "M18A" for a couple more years, I might have had the time to gradually improve to a level that when I hit 21 I could have stepped up to M21A ...eventually maybe even further??
I think there are a lot of kids coming out of secondary school teams who aren't in that top rank of juniors that this scenario could apply to. By not forcing them to step up a course length until they're ready to do so, we might do a better job of retaining them, and because they'll mostly be a damn sight fitter than I ever was, is it not too impossible we'd open up a "slow path" to elite level, along with increasing competition-intensity for those on the "fast path".
Now, pull my blanket a bit further up my rocking chair and leave me alone for my afternoon nap...
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PaulS
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Posted: 9 October 2005, 9:46 AM
So is what is being proposed:
M17-20E on course 2
M17-20A on course 3?
I can live with that.
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Jamie
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Posted: 9 October 2005, 10:24 AM
Good on you Nic.
Thats a damn fine argument
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Martin
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Posted: 9 October 2005, 12:38 PM
that's one option paul
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thomasr
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Posted: 9 October 2005, 1:01 PM
i think that we should not be holding back our best in favour of trying to retain a few people in the top grade. There will still be a m17 -20a and an m17-20b even. I think that the most important thing at the moment is to get a "star" for nz orienteering. After all sparc say that one of their considerations for funding is that the sport has athletes capable of achieving results that "will stop people in the street".
i think it should be m17 -20e on course 2
w17 -20e on course 3
m17 -20a on course 3
w17 -20a on course 4
it will also make it easier to report to people who dont understand orienteering if we have a junior elite and an elite grade, its a bit less complicated than m18 and m20. We want our sport to be easy to understand!
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Tane Cambridge
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Posted: 10 October 2005, 6:58 AM
good to see some people have gone away and given it some thought.
I like the idea that Paul stated
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addison
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Posted: 10 October 2005, 7:11 AM
I dont like the idea Paul stated.
There is not much difference between course 2 and 3. Therefore the grades are almost the same, and runners that are not up to the level that we want in the "new" grade will end up running it because its only 1 course higher than what they would otherwise run. What I reckon needs to happen is basically a top grade gets formed on a combination of course 2&3 (so has some variance in length), and basically a 20AS be formed on course 4 or 5 or something.
Peace
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Martin
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Posted: 10 October 2005, 7:17 AM
I think most people would agree that if the 17-20E is to go ahead, there also needs to be a shorter-red-course-option for the same age group. eg 17-20a, be it on course 3,4 or whatever.
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addison
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Posted: 11 October 2005, 12:44 AM
Duh.
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