The future for orienteering on TV - if the goal is to attract a wide audience - will probably involve 3D Terrain Models. This will make broadcasts more spectacular, and it will also be easier to describe differences between routechoices to non-orienteers with limited orienteering map reading ability. - The broadcast was a success, but we will never again show an orienteering map when broadcasting orienteering on TV, the producer of the hour-long NOC 2005 live-broadcast on Norwegian TV2 said when summing up the future for orienteering on Norwegian TV as he saw it last autumn (read story here). WoO-TV has, in cooperation with Greg Walker/Catching Features, made the first real 3D production from an orienteering race - with birds’ eye perspective, featuring Thierry Gueorgious route to victory at the World Cup round 2 this year.

From orienteering map to 3D Terrain Model

The first step to make productions with 3D Terrain Models of orienteering races, is to get a good 3D representation of the orienteering map. The orienteering game Catching Features fortunately does this conversion job automatically in a decent manner, directly from an OCAD file to a 3D Terrain model. An operator may use a number of settings to improve the conversion process, but even the default settings gives an acceptable 3D model.

The next step is to show selected routechoices using the 3D Terrain Model. The man behind Catching Features, Greg Walker, has done some very interesting work on using the Catching Features engine for this in cooperation with woO-TV / Jan Kocbach the last months. The first fruits of this work were shown at the Nordic Orienteering Championships (NOC) in Denmark this summer: A 3D representation of one of the decisive legs in the NOC relay was shown on Danish Television – the leg was shown in 3D as seen from the runners perspective.

Birds’ perspective

Showing route choices from above – using birds’ perspective – rather than from the runners perspective as in the Catching Features game mode - was the next goal of the project. Just in time for the second World Cup round this year at Hovden (Norway), Greg Walker managed to finalize and send over a new version of Catching Features with an extra recording mode with possibility to capture routechoices from any perspective. In addition, the routechoice is shown as a solid «running» line in the 3D Terrain Model, like you have probably seen in e.g. TV broadcasts from Tour de France.

Test case: Thierry Gueorgiou at World Cup round 2

Thanks to a very cooperating Thierry Gueorgiou – and also the organizers of the World Cup in Hovden, Kristiansand OK providing the OCAD-file of the map, we got an ideal test case for the first real 3D production from an orienteering race. Gueorgiou – currently the best orienteer in the world - explains his routechoice to victory at the World Cup race in Hovden this June. In the 12 minute woO-TV production «Thierry Gueorgiou: Routechoice to Victory», Gueorgious routechoice is shown using a combination of traditional orienteering map, 3D Terrain Model, and some head camera action. Focus has been on showing what is possible to achieve with the technology and software available now, rather than on a full analysis of all details about the World Cup race in Hovden. Time to work on this production has been limited, so the final production has room for a number of improvements. But please try to look beyond these (I know of many of them myself), and look forward at the possibilities.

About the «Routechoice to victory» production

As written above, I received the new Catching Features version just in time for the World Cup at Hovden. The organizers Kristiansand OK proved very helpful, and provided me with an OCAD file with the map just after the World Cup race. Below, the steps to make the production are briefly outlined,

• The World Cup map was run through the Catching Features OCAD->3D Terrain Model translator. This was my first time trying to convert a real orienteering map, and I was surprised about how well the translator worked. I choose an automatic mode, and got a 3D Terrain Model out after the computer had worked for an hour or so. Granted, the vegetation does not look very similar to Hovden, but the heights look good, and that was the most important thing for me for this first test. Later I would like to focus on getting the terrain as similar as possible to the actual terrain – or alternatively go the other way, and make the terrain more generalized to make it easier to see certain features. Another thing I would have liked, is to get the controls more visible in the 3D Terrain Model. This should be easy, but I just don’t know how yet…
  The World Cup course was set in Catching Features – a small and fast job to do. Next, the routechoice of Gueorgiou was drawn in Catching Features. A job a little more involved – taking maybe 20 minutes to perform. With some practice, I could have done it considerably faster. My hope for the future: Being able to import a routechoice from a GPS log – either from e.g. the Trac-Trac system or from Routegadget.

• In the «Course review» mode of the special version of Catching Features I received, it is possible to directly record AVI’s showing the routechoice, from any chosen camera angle. This worked very nicely «right out of the box» from a static camera angle. What took time was to generate a flyover following the line representing the routechoice at the correct speed. After some hours of practice (which will be a good investment for next time I want to play Catching Features), I managed to fly quite nicely at an appropriate speed. Generating the required video clips was then no big deal.
• The remaining parts of the production were more straightforward. I have previously written a (perl/imagemagick-based) program which generates routechoices on a traditional orienteering map, e.g. used in the production about Simone Niggli-Luder at World Cup round 1. This was again applied for this production. Also, I got some head camera action to show something from the terrain at Hovden. Quality is not the best, as I did not get a map with the course until around 22h00 – when it was nearly dark, and the controls where gone. However, I found part of it interesting enough to include a bit of it anyway. And finally, I got to make the interview with Gueorgiou the day after the World Cup race, Gueorgiou explaining his routechoice and strategies.
• Clipping it all together and synchronizing the different parts with another took some hours, but I have got some practice at this now, so it is not really difficult. Next I’d like to get the head camera and a GPS synced, so that that part could be made close to automatically. We’ll see when and how that is possible…
• Finally: Music is – in my opinion – important to get the viewer in the correct mood for this type of a production. Getting access to music which has no strings attached to it is always difficult – and I am not completely satisfied with the music here, as it does not fit completely to the production.

What about the future?

I hope it will be possible to continue to work with Greg Walker to further adapt Catching Features for this kind of use. I guess it will partly depend on the response this production gets, suggested improvements, and so on. At least I think this is a good way to go for orienteering to maybe get a bigger TV sport – to attract new groups of viewers…

View the production - and give your comments below!

Please take a look at the production by pressing “Play” below. All comments regarding this projects are very welcome! Especially constructive suggestions regarding how to make this another step better! You can also go directly to the video page.

woO-TV: A success story!

The online TV channels for orienteering content – woO-TV – have now been live for 4 months – and has been getting all the attention we hoped for! Videos/productions from 16 countries have been shown on the 4 woO-TV channels – Norway, France, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Finland, Latvia, Russia, Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, Italy, Slovenia, Poland and Germany. The woO-TV channel has been written about in a number of websites, and it also got good publicity through the Jukola video competition which was hosted at woO-TV. In addition, woO-TV has given increased focus on orienteering related video productions, showing the way for others, and motivating more people to make their own productions.
The total number of video views – not including the views embedded on websites – has been close to 50.000 on the woO-TV channels (Veoh has up until now not counted embedded views – only views on veoh.com – while many view woO-TV embedded in the World of O webpage. Veoh will change this counting shortly, so we will be able to provide better statistics). Based on other statistics, the number of embedded views are around another 30-50.000 – and thus the total number of video views at woO-TV is probably around the 100.000 mark.

More information about these statistics – and the most viewed productions – will be available at World of O in the next weeks.

Go to

• woO-TV Prime channel

The terrain from today’s JWOC long distance looks very challenging with very stony ground. As you can see from the winner Olav Lundanes’ route choice (excerpt from the first part of the course to the right), the trick was to avoid the stony areas as much as possible, and only visit them just around the controls if possible.

This map sample is taken from the official JWOC page. You find all of the course, including winners route choices here:

• Maps JWOC Long distance with route choices

Below: The tricky last part where Lundanes was really impressive - and increased his lead from seconds to minutes:

After silver on yesterdays sprint, Olav Lundanes won a magnificent gold medal on today’s long distance at the Junior World Championships in Dubbo, Australia. Lundanes goal for the JWOC this year was a medal on all distances - and with one gold and one silver after two of four distances, he is right on track. However, if you think this is easy for Lundanes - you should think again. - I was really nervous last evening and this morning. When I took a bite of the slice of bread for breakfast this morning, everything came up again. The speed was not the best in the forest, but I am extremely happy to manage this, was Lundanes comment after his victory.

The splits tell a completely different story: Lundanes’ speed at the last part of the course was fantastic - it seemed like he had a lot of energy left when the others slowed down. Lundanes won 7 of the 9 last legs - increasing his 13 seconds lead to nearly 4 minutes during the last part 15 minutes of running. Lundanes was really in his own class in this last part of the course. According to the Norwegian trainers, an energy bar and lots of stamina is what saved Lundanes today! Lundanes again - one hour after coming to the finish: - Now I have got something to eat, but I am still freezing..

Lundanes won the long distance in the JWOC two years ago - and took his second JWOC long distance gold medal today. Magne Dæhlie secured a double for Norway with his silver medal: - This is the best race I have made ever, and everything worked extremely well from the first step. In the end, I got tired, and I had not managed Olav no matter what, Dæhlie said after the race. Magne Dæhlie has used one year to come back to the orienteering junior elite after a severe injury last year - and admits that the silver medal is very inspiring.

Double Double by Ulvestad and Hallan Steiwer
The Norwegian junior women secured a double double by Siri Ulvestad and Kine Hallan Steiwer. While Lundanes was more than 3 minutes ahead of Dæhlie - with nearly 5 minutes down to the best non-Norwegian, it was tighter in the womens class. - I understood while running that this was a good race, but I did not think it would be good enough for victory. I did not feel that the run was that good, said Siri Ulvestad after the race. - But I only had some small mistakes on the controls.

The question now: Are any of the juniors good enough for the Norwegian WOC team? The Norwegians have not impressed a lot internationally this year, and there might be an opening for some of the juniors, even if the Norwegian WOC selection races are held the coming weekend, when the juniors are still down under…

Pre-JWOC Interviews with the Norwegians
Below you find some pre-JWOC interviews with the double double winners (in Norwegian, partly woO-TV - partly NOF-TV):

Siri Ulvestad (gold):

Kine Hallan Steiwer (silver):

Olav Lundanes (gold) - from Spring Cup:

Magne Dæhlie (silver):

Source: Press Release from the Norwegian O-Federation. Picture: Official JWOC Page

Below you see pictures of the four best men and two best women in todays JWOC Sprint in the Dubbo Zoo. Congratulations to all these fine runners! Pictures: Rob Preston.

From the top left: Sarka SVOBODNA (Silver, women - the left runner in the picture), Eva SVENSSON (Gold, women), Ivan SIRAKOV (Bronze, men), Vojtech KRAL (Gold, men), Martin Hubmann (4th place men) and Olav Lundanes (Silver, men).

• More pictures of many of the runners - compare to the start list to find your favorite.

See also the pictures from the medal ceremony:

All pictures: Rob Preston. Thank you to Rob Preston for letting World of O use these pictures. Rob is also working on getting some video footage for you to see on woO-TV…

The start list for the JWOC sprint is available at the JWOC homepage - and we can also show some pictures from the model event earlier today.

In the mens class, the three favorites named in the previous posting - Søren Bobach, Mikael Kristensson and Olav Lundanes start at 11:05, 11:18 and 11:25. The first starter is John Goodwin (USA) at 9:30 - and the mens Sprint is closed with Daniel Martin De Los Rios (ESP) at 11:37 (all times are local times - subtract 8 hours to get CET, i.e. last start at 03:37 CET).

In the womens class, Aniana Senn (SUI) is the first starter at 09:30 - and Norways Kine Hallan Steiwer is the last to get out into the forest at 10:59. Hallan Steiwer is actually among the favourites, so in the womens class nothing is decided before everyone has finished the race. Siri Ulvestad at 10:47 and Eva Svensson at 10:20 are two of the favorites.

• Start list JWOC Sprint

Pictures from Model Event
Thanks to Christoph Rüedlinger, we can provide some pictures from todays Model Event, to give you some feeling of the athmosphere in the forests down under. According to the reports, everybody is having a good time, and the cold weather (8 degrees C and some rain tomorrow during the finals) does not seem to hide the smiles…

The night between the coming Saturday and Sunday - at 01:30 CET (09:30 in the morning local Dubbo time) the sprint distance starts the Junior World Orienteering Championships in Dubbo, Australia. Two and a half hours later, at 04:00 CET, the two first Junior World Champions in the 2007 Championships will be known.

The terrain is a new and somewhat unfamiliar experience for most of the runners (see pictures above from the middle distance training terrain - all photos by Christoph Rüedlinger) - and it will be interesting to see if this gives some special surprises on the result lists. However - a JWOC is always much more open and full of surprises than a WOC - so be sure we will see some surprises on the podium the following week…

Getting familiar down under
Most of the competing juniors have been in Australia for a week - many on an official training camp - getting used to the terrain, the Kangaroos, and the local specialties. But after a week of fun and getting used to things, the serious part of the program starts Sunday morning. As the Danish trainer said: “No summer camp anymore - from now it is a World Championship!” (Photo on the right: Danish Junior Team in Australia. Source: Danish Junior Team blog).

JWOC Program
The JWOC distance consists of 4 distances in 6 days, giving 5 competitions as there is a qualifier for the middle distance. The complete program (times given in CET and local time):

Sprint distance

The sprint distance is in Western Plains Zoo (Dubbo) - study the satellite picture above in detail at Google Maps. As you can see, this will be mainly a forest sprint, but with numerous out of bound areas. The organizers state that “The sprint event will be held at the Western Plains Zoo. It is a flat-forested area with sections of open parkland. It has an irregular road and track network with some buildings and fences along with numerous out of bounds areas. It is a public area with pedestrians, bicycles and cars and will be operating as normal during the event”.

And who will take home the victories in the sprint distance? Looking at the previous years competition usually gives a hint of possible favourites - so let’s take a look:

1	Weltzien Hultgren Ingunn	Norway	0:10:46.8
2	Allston Hanny	Australia	0:10:50.1
3	Svensson Eva	Sweden	0:11:25.3
4	Vaculikova Jana	Czech Republic	0:11:32.5
5	Terekhova Ekaterina	Russia	0:11:41.0
6	Stand - Horn Welle Fanny	Norway	0:11:42.0

In the women’s category, both Ingunn Weltzien and Hanny Allston are seniors now - so the Swede Eva Svensson is the best runner from last years sprint participating in Australia. Eva Svensson also got a second place in this years Nordic Open Champs (NOC) Sprint, and should therefore be counted as one of the big favourites. Also among the favorites is the Norwegian NOC Sprint winner Siri Ulvestad. Jana Vaculikova and Fanny Welle Strand-Horn are not on the starting list this year - but 5th placed russioan from JWOC 2006, Ekaterina Terekhova is present in Australia. This is very open in the womens category!

1	Kristensson Mikael	Sweden	0:11:44.8
2	Karisson Patrik	Sweden	0:11:53.5
3	Glebov Ruslan	Ukraine	0:11:55.9
4	Jochen Verdeyen	Belgium	0:11:59.7
5	Rizhkov Sergei	Belarus	0:12:02.4
6	Parton Matthew	Australia	0:12:08.4

In the mens class, the 2006 JWOC sprint champion Mikael Kristensson must be counted as the biggest favorite. However, several runners will fight hard against Mikael for the Gold medal - most notably Danish Søren Bobach (Gold medal NOC Sprint) and Norwegian Olav Lundanes (Silver medal NOC Sprint) - both nominated for Junior of the year 2006 along with Mikael Kristensson. In the Junior of the year 2006 poll, Bobach was the best of these three - will he manage at the JWOC sprint as well?

Update 7/7 10:00 CET: Søren Bobach just states on the Danish Junior Team blog that he has twisted his ankle quite hard. He still thinks he can run the sprint though - based on an examination by the Swiss doctor, but is not 100% sure.

Guess the winners!
I am surprised if I have named the winners in both the mens and womens category in the sprint distance here. Add a comment below with your winner tips: No money but a lot of honor to the one who manages to guess the medal winners in both the mens and womens category! Even guessing the correct two winners won’t be an easy task. My guess goes for Søren Bobach and Siri Ulvestad!

Long, Middle and Relay disciplines
The location for the other disciplines is Southwest of Dubbo - near Mountain Creek (see satellite picture in Google Maps here). From the terrain description, it is evident that it is quite special terrain the runners will meet at the long distance at Monday:

The area is dominated by complex granite outcrops. Many of the higher hills support spectacular granite formations with grand views of the countryside. The terrain varies from flat and undulating to very steep. Generally broader hillsides with many gullies and saddles predominate throughout the area, although some complex contour details occur in some sections. The forest is made up of native trees, mainly Eucalypts, Cypress Pine and Wattle with runnability mostly fast to very fast through open forest.
The understorey in some sections of the forest restricts visibility and runnability greatly through a concentration of scrubby ushes, young Cypress Pine, fallen timber and rocky ground. The extensive rocky ground is a major feature of the area and reduces runnability in the sections away from the rock, especially along the many broad valleys. Granite rock is strewn throughout the area and presents many boulders (some towering over 6 metres), rockfaces, bare surface rock and rocky ground. Many clearings occur throughout the area. The region is currently experiencing drought and so water is rare. Most watercourses, pools and creeks are dry, with some small erosion gullies occurring.

Map sample: Typical terrain the juniors will meet in Australia.

At the trainings the week before the competitions, runners have been surprised by areas with extremely stony grounds - whereas other areas have had very good runnability. The ability to change speed when required, and to get fast through stony areas, will be important in these competitions! Who will manage best?

We will come back with more favorites for the other disciplines after the sprint distance.