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Is Orienteering boring?

Show Profile  onemanfanclub Posted: 21 November 2006, 2:51 PM  
...and back on topic, James was a little disappointed in the Waitangi turnout - I'd have to say I was pleasantly surprised at the number of orienteers who were prepared to come and do some great courses on great maps and watch some great races without the chance of going home with their own "3rd place in M53-with-one-leg-shorter-than-the-other-A-short-grade" certificate. Most positively it wasn't just the usual backers of new ideas and supporters of high-performers, either. Hopefully everyone there came away with the impression that there's more than one way to run an event...

Show Profile  Keith Posted: 21 November 2006, 6:17 PM  
I agree with Neil the results not coming out quick on the net is bad, can you please email the SI champs results to me Tane. Mind you the ABs vs French game was broadcast only in Welsh in the UK!!

Score events are boring

Show Profile  rob.g Posted: 22 November 2006, 1:09 AM  
The Auckland ones were not boring because we mass started everyone together usually with 4 or 5 different directions to take at the start to split people and it was amazing how well groups seperated. For prizes we had a mountainbike which was won at the last of 4 or 5 events, and each event you went to gave another chance of winning. NWOC used to spend money, $1000 or so, to get prizes at cheap rates from kind retailers, so maybe $3000 worth. We had category prizes, including newcomer, but most were spot prizes. We also had a saugage sizzle and confectionary, and had prizegiving within 20 minutes of everyone finishing. They were very social, and as you have heard above they made a big difference to some good orienteers.
The main reason for instigating them was to ease workload on course setters, as there is only 1 map to get ready and 1 set of descriptions, but setting well was very important. Score events can be very boring but these were not.

Show Profile  Greg Posted: 22 November 2006, 2:58 AM  
I was surprised at the speed of the SI results. If you are so interested in the results you should have been there.

To summarise what I've taken out of this thread

*Most old people are boring
*Most South Islanders and boring
*Most Aucklanders are socially retarded except at the score series events
*Tane is still angry after SI champs
*Most of the time Mark is funny

and

WAITANGI 4 DAY 2007 - is going to be an awesome event so you had all better be there (entry possibilities available soon)


Show Profile  Jenni Posted: 22 November 2006, 3:15 AM  
I too was surprised at how fast the results were emailed to competitors, before we got home anyway and it was a three-four hour drive home for the organizers. It would of course, also be good if they were linked from a website but I can understand the organizers might want to have dried themselves out a bit first.

Carsten has updated the tables for seniors anyway on the superseries webpage if not the leaderboard on the side (needs tidying but it's there). He would have got this done earlier but he was working on the Endurance Sport article. This isn't part of the high performance officer job description. I can see that it is in NZ high performance orienteering's interests to have publicity like this in a magazine read by more than just orienteers. But isn't there someone else who would like to write articles for Endurance Sport every one-two months - someone doing journalism maybe, Fraser...? Tane, seeing he likes to write essays? Anyone else. For Carsten, not having English as his first language makes it more work than it would be for someone else. I try and proofread them but it's a struggle to get enough time after work and when the deadline's are tight it doens't happen.

This is on topic as these articles would be a good way to market our product but I'm afraid that we're not doing a particularly good job at the moment.

This message was edited by Jenni on 22 November 2006, 10:17 AM

Show Profile  SJ Posted: 22 November 2006, 3:31 AM  
Rob - those score events were awesome!

•They are easy to set and control
•They only take a short time for everyone to do their course, so the run doesn't eat up your whole Sunday
•Everyone hangs around afterwards for a chat
•There is food, drinks, good spot prizes
•They're really good for improving your orienteering!

Can't wait to run the next series

Show Profile  mark Posted: 22 November 2006, 4:05 AM  
The Waikaia results were fast, cause Gav wrote a computer program to process them. Unfortunately he doesn't have access to the Dud website, so he couldn't put them up.

A facility on the nzorienteering site where major event organisers can enter a password and post results would be good.

Show Profile  mark Posted: 22 November 2006, 4:10 AM  
Neil, you coozer.

One mountain run putting their results up fast doesn't mean a lot.
I've done plenty of non-orienteering events where the results took forever.

Show Profile  Neil K Posted: 22 November 2006, 5:18 AM  
Your right Mark. One mountain run doesn't mean much to me. Neither does the details of preparing results for one SI orienteering event. But I wasn't attacking anyone, just helping to point out that to make orienteering a bit less boring we need to look at the complete event package. For example Beer.

Show Profile  SimonB Posted: 22 November 2006, 7:05 AM  
how bout a paddling pool full of beer, and we can call it the beer pool, and once its empty of beer, little kids can paddle in it!

Show Profile  AndrewT Posted: 22 November 2006, 11:09 AM  
Orienteering must be boring.

Old people do it.

Show Profile  Jamie Posted: 22 November 2006, 2:20 PM  
Haven't seen you out there for a while you Nana.

Bit of a lack of new ideas in this thread, just a whole lot of crap.

Show Profile  Ellmo1769 Posted: 22 November 2006, 2:31 PM  
Clearly Simon J just volunteered to "run" the next score series. Clearly he is thinking of having girls at the controls hence the name Score event. Can't wait Simon.

Show Profile  stu barr Posted: 23 November 2006, 5:53 AM  
i don't think clubs should think about the declining numbers (people not coming back) they should think mainly of how to generate new interest. we all know that people who love the sport love it unconditionally. the hardcore orienteers will keep returning no matter wether it’s the same maps or not. it’s the other people you need to be concerned with.

look at shaun and phil’s events for example. they’re not based around a bunch of technical nonsense like complaints about running on the same maps, same sights, etc. they are based on being attractive to the participant. you can’t look at what makes orienteering boring for the people who have been doing it for years and decades; but for the people who have never done it before.

so you have events like the summer series and score events which generate new blood, excitement and interest. yet the question keeps being asked why you can’t get people to long events out of the city which cater for the traditionalist orienteer. any organism that wants to survive must remain flexible to it’s environment. if the demand has altered and orienteering tries to keep beating the same path then it will starve and diminish, possibly to become the next species Nic Gorman can miss due to extinction.

i think people fear that if new forms are created, nurtured and even glorified, they will lead to the demise of their beloved traditional formats. i don’t believe this is true. by interesting people in various forms of what is essentially the same thing you will create interest across the board and therefore generate participation in all areas.

the key to fixing any problem is to first be completely honest about what is actually wrong.

Show Profile  Michael Posted: 24 November 2006, 4:02 AM  
On the nail Stu. Why should park-orienteers have to "progress to the forest"? Isn't it good that they like orienteering in parks, and that its less work for us to provide it?


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