Comments on: Lundanes: – Looks like I am supporting the destruction of orienteering

By: Samo

Samo — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:33:02 +0000

Can someone explain this good idea about “to organize separate championships in alternate years” in all details. I don’t see the overall benefits (media, TV, sponsors, etc) and that is why I am strongly agree with the Norway explanation under point 8. http://www.orientering.no/SiteCollectionDocuments/Future%20woc%20program%20Norway%202011.pdf

Like other sports we must first build one strong product and sell it before we aim to produce two products.

Can someone say how big the IOF marketing and PR budget is? I think that one of our problems is that people who run orienteering are mainly technical people and just can’t sell the sport. They just don’t have the connections and proper skills. They also can’t cooperate with the people who have better marketing and selling skills than they had. Because they can’t do the progress they try to constantly change the product. It is the only thing that they can do. So we should talk more about what is unique in orienteering, what is worth to expose, what we must do better, do differently or try to develop, find new marketing and media ideas how to promote our sport so that our sport as we like it will have better look. But instead of that we like to talk about maps and technical specification hours and hours……. If you look how much effort IOF really put to run international media desk, try to sell TV rights, get sponsors it is really big shame that they talk so much about new WOC and possibilities to get more media interest and TV exposure.

By: JP

JP — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:39:33 +0000

As an active, being or having not been an elite or top orienteer, I think Mik hits the point when writing WOC shall be the championships and the flagship of what orienteering people do in their weekly competitions and what is the basic nature of orienteering i.e. individual navigation by one’s own skills. So the chase start not even to mention mass start shouldn’t have any place in WOC. Chase start is ok and interesting in some special cases like the final stage of O-ringen to solve and celebrate the total winners of the week. TV coverage and even less Olympic status must not dictate everything. Do not sacrifice the basic characteristics of orienteering for those.
Sprint and traditional orienteering being almost totally different species so it would be a good idea to organize separate championships in alternate years.

By: Barbara

Barbara — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:02:35 +0000

I totally agree, it was one of the best orienteering TV-broadcast I have seen so far.
I actually liked better the middle distance broadcast than the chasing start one. At the chasing start, showing the Gps routes was messy. Having to explain all the time how “butterflies” work took way too much time, and those who watched the broadcast needed to make quite some efforts to identify who was in the lead.
The middle distance had much better flow. It is cool to get to see comparisons of route choices and mistakes. At a mass start, the orienteering (navigation) part is much less exciting both for the runner and for the one who watches it on TV.

I would also like to support the current WOC programme. It is best as it is!

If the argument for change is that the new programme would be more TV-friendly, I don’t get it. To me the middle distance seems to be the most TV-friendly distance. As Jagge pointed above, at sprints everything is happening a bit too fast and broadcasts have often been messy, mass starts are messy too. I think that TV coverages from the traditional disciplines actually have the best chance to succeed.

By: jetam

jetam — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:22:19 +0000

haha – who said that?