World of O News
The World of O Ranking formula has been used to analyze the results from WOC 2007 – and not surprisingly Finland comes out on top before Switzerland and Sweden. Russia and Norway follow on the next two places. It is a bit surprising to find France only in 6th place, even if the French could travel home with Thierry Gueorgiou’s two Gold medals – but the better Team results of Russia and Norway give more points in the formulas.
Going further down the list, we find that countries who have most runners reaching a WOC final are strongly rewarded, and that for example the Netherlands lands all the way down at the 26th place even with Jonn Are Myhren’s 6th place over the Middle distance.
Thus, I guess there are still things which may be changed with the World of O Ranking to get an outcome which is more in line with how we feel about different results – but this seems to be a good starting point for a discussion – and also a good way to get an overview over WOC results in a systematic way, along with the pictures I know you want to see.
Some potential “problems” I see now:
- Only the best 6 relay positions get points in todays formula, and points are divided by 4 compared to an individual race. Should maybe divide by three instead, and let teams further down get points as well, but along a much steeper curve than for an individual event?
- Points maybe seem to be falling off too slowly. E.g. a 6th place in a WOC final is less worth than two 22nd spots the way it is formulated now.
Any comments about the ranking formula are very welcome – please post them here, where also the ranking is explained.
Links
- The World of O Ranking formula applied to WOC 2007 results with all pictures and results sorted by country.
- See also description of the World of O Ranking formula and the World of O Ranking list.
