Comments on: NORD: – WOC should be split into urban and forest WOC

By: Eoin Rothery

Eoin Rothery — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:42:15 +0000

Good idea to alternate Forest and Urban WOC. Two points re Urban WOC – there should be a longer distance race; there is absolutely no reason to have all the races sprint distance.
Secondly: the Sprint itself should be a stand alone sprint; there is no need for a qualification race. Given the short start intervals all countries could have 3 (or more) competitors.

By: splitWOCpreferred

splitWOCpreferred — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 11:21:40 +0000

I’m glad that the alternating urban-forest WOC might be back on the table. Each of the WOCs could/should have five races. A short race (15 min urban, 30 min forest), a long race (45 min urban, 90 min forest), separate mens and womens relays (3×15 urban, 3×45 forest) and quali races for each of the individual short and long races (but perhaps some athletes get direct qualification based on previous performance or using the existing qual rules for WOC). The growth of urban racing in the UK with longer city races demonstrates that a ‘longer’ urban race is likely better than knock-out. Also, having the same format in each of urban and forest (just with different winning times) would be easier to explain to the public. What are the chances that IOF will ‘listen’ to NORD?

By: o-zeugs

o-zeugs — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 22:17:48 +0000

What hits me most, is that the NORD seriously proposes to introduce “knock-out sprint discipline based upon the experience of the World Cup (NORT)”. What exactly was the experience back then? :-P

By: Neil

Neil — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 21:41:31 +0000

“Why not…?”
One good reason: they are different disciplines and may be held in very different terrain.

Another: would you really want to force the likes of Jani Lakanen (from last year) to get a place in the middle and to run just well enough so as he can book himself a place that he cares about in the Long.

The old system wasn’t broken.

And as for mass start races. Currently, world champions are held in awe. It would be good to keep it that way.