See how Thierry Gueorgiou, Daniel Hubmann, Olav Lundanes and the other top runners solved the challenges in today’s World Ranking event in Portugal O-meeting. The race was a middle distance race in interesting terrain providing a lot of micro route choices.

- The best terrain I found in Portugal, Thierry Gueorgiou said after his impressive win. – It was a very nice middle distance course with many micro route choices. It was really important to not get lost in the green.

See also full report from POM 2012 Day 3 including a Webroute from leg 1-2 in the men’s course.

Thanks a lot to the organizers for providing maps with route choices from the race. Note that as this race was a WRE race, the use of GPS watches was not allowed. Thus there will be less GPS-routes to analyze from this race.

Men

• Map men without route
• Thierry Gueorgiou (1st M21SE)
• Daniel Hubmann (2th M21SE)
• Olav Lundanes (3th M21SE)
• Mathias Kyburz (4th M21SE)
• Oleksander Kratov (5th M21SE)

Women

• Map women without route
• Lina Strand (1st W21E)
• Simone Niggli (2nd W21E)
• Lena Eliasson (3th W21E)
• Saila Kinni (4th W21E)
• Céline Dodin (missing)

[Updated with full map] Thierry Gueorgiou did it again: Crushing the competition in Portugal O-meeting – running an incredible sub 34-minute time on the 6.4 km course. Daniel Hubmann was closest – nearly 1:30 behind. In the women’s class Lina Strand took the victory – after Simone Niggli lost the victory due to a 2-minute time loss in the last part of the course.

The start field was a World Cup race worthy – especially in the men’s class were Olav Lundanes, Matthias Kyburz, Oleksander Kratov. Philippe Adamski, Tue Lassen, Baptiste Rollier and Dmitiy Tsvetskov followed Gueorgiou.

- The best terrain I found in Portugal, Thierry Gueorgiou said after his impressive win. – It was a very nice middle distance course with many micro route choices. It was really important to not get lost in the green.

In the women’s class Lina Strand’s victory was with nearly half a minute – with Lena Eliasson in third just behind Niggli. From Eliasson down to number 4 there was a gap of more than 3:30.

Video interview: Thierry Gueorgiou and Lina Strand

[Note! Not optimal sound/video quality for the interview]

Maps

Thanks to the organizers for providing full maps:

• Map men
• Map women
• Maps with routes of top 5 men and women

Partial maps:

Webroute – what would you choose, Men 1-2?

This leg from 1-2 is typical of the type of challenges you meet in this type of terrain. You can choose to go all the way around to the left, but that is bound to be too long. Going straight is shortest – and probably also fastest if you can still hit the control at full speed. Going right and following the small path the first part of the leg you can keep high speed while still knowing where you are – but then you are “trapped” and need to cross over. Probably the best choice is a straight variant where you use the path in the green ahead of the control and the big cliffs just to the northwest of the control in securing a good hit.

Results men

Results women

• Full results (preliminary)
• Official results will be available at the POM page

Baptiste Rollier and Kristin Lövgren took home the second day of Portugal O-Meeting 2012 – a middle distance race. Rollier had two other Swiss runners joining him on the podium – yesterday’s winner Thierry Gueorgiou finished 6th. In the women’s class, Lena Eliasson and Sara Lucher were closest to the Swedish winner.

Tomorrow Portugal O-Meeting continues with the highlight of the 4 Day event – the middle distance counting for the World Ranking. Everybody still remembers how Thierry Guergiou took the highest WRE point value ever at the POM WRE in 2007 – it will be exciting to see what is possible tomorrow…

Portugal O-meeting (POM) is the international season opening – with most of the world elite on the startlist. 8 of the 10 highest ranked on the World Ranking in the mens class are on the startliste for POM 2012 – and several of the Top 10 ranked women are also ready for action in Portugal. The highlight of Portugal O-meeting is the World Ranking event on Monday February 20th – a middle distance race. All runners are expected to run at full speed on Monday – the other days there will be more variation as the athletes are in a training period.

Maps

Thanks a lot to the organizers for providing full maps. Here are maps from the men’s superelite and the women’s elite:

• Map men superelite with routechoice of winner Baptiste Rollier
• Map women’s course – and with route choice of Eva Jurenikova compared to Lena Eliasson in 2DRerun (Please add your route as well – you will find it here!)

Taking a look at the routes of Jurenikova and Eliasson, one can observe that there were no big route choice challenges in this middle distance, but it looks like there were many micro route choices were you could earn many seconds by “making it easy for yourself” – i.e. being accurate with the direction and using the visible terrain features to keep the speed up. Unsecurity seems to cost quite a lot of time.

Results women

1 Kristin Lövgren OK Kolmårde 34:45
2 Lena Eliasson Domnarvets 35:50
3 Sara Lucher Swiss Orien 37:02
4 Annika Billstam OK Linné 38:16
5 Vroni Konig-Salmi Swiss Orien 38:51

Results men

1 Baptiste Rollier Swiss Orien 30:48
2 Daniel Hubmann Swiss Orien 32:20
3 Martin Hubmann Swiss Orien 32:46
4 Oleksander Kratov Orievents T 33:03
5 Severin Howald Swiss Orien 33:23
6 Thierry Guergiou 33:31

• Full results
• POM 2012 webpage

Simone Niggli is back – beating the current World Champion on long distance Annika Billstam with 15 small seconds. And Thierry Gueorgiou shows that the competitors will have to fight hard to beat him in 2012 as well.

Portugal O-meeting (POM) is the international season opening – with most of the world elite on the startlist. 8 of the 10 highest ranked on the World Ranking in the mens class are on the startliste for POM 2012 – and several of the Top 10 ranked women are also ready for action in Portugal. The highlight of Portugal O-meeting is the World Ranking event on Monday February 20th – a middle distance race. All runners are expected to run at full speed on Monday – the other days there will be more variation as the athletes are in a training period.

- I did a big mistake on the 3rd control were I lost a few minutes, lost my rhythm, and then I had to try to recover it, Thierry Gueorgiou said to the Portuguese Orienteering Blog. The winner in the women’s class, Simone Niggli, did not have a perfect race either: – It wasn’t a perfect race, I made a lot of big mistakes losing five minutes overall. But it’s a return to the competition after a long absence and it was very good to start again like this at the Portugal O’ Meeting.

Maps

Thanks a lot to the organizers for providing full maps. Here are maps from the men’s superelite and the women’s elite:

• Map men superelite
• Map women
• 2DRerun – GPS analysis – choose the runners you want to compare and click “Open routes in 2DRerun”
• Routechoices of the winners Thierry Gueorgiou and Simone Niggli

Webroute – what would you choose, Men 1-2?

Below you see the GPS tracks of some selected runners – note that the times partly reflect their varying running speed (e.g. Øystein Kvaal Østerbø taking it easy). Further analysis is necessary to see what is really the fastest. On this leg from 1-2 it looks like a left variant is the fastest – this is also the choice made by Thierry Gueorgiou.

Webroute – what would you choose, Men 10-11?

Below you see the GPS tracks of some selected runners (open in 2DRerun here) – note that the times partly reflect their varying running speed.

Results women

In the women’s race, Billstam lost nearly 2 minutes to the first split – slowly getting closer and closer towards the end of the race .

1 562 Simone Niggli 78 [5137] G1 Swiss Orient 1:04:04
2 501 Annika Billstam 76 [5081] G4 OK Linné 1:04:19
3 505 Rahel Friederich 86 [5137] G1 Swiss Orient 1:08:16
4 595 Trubkina Anastasia 90 [5158] Spb O-Team 1:08:46
5 510 Lina Strand 88 [5284] G1 Göteborg-Majorna 1:09:09
6 512 Vroni Konig-Salmi 69 [5137] G1 Swiss Orient 1:09:11
7 545 Emily Kemp 92 [5085] Ottawa OC 1:10:07
8 504 Eva Jurenikova [5302] G5 Domnarvets GoIF 1:10:40
9 558 Johanna Lindberg [5302] G5 Domnarvets GoIF 1:11:02
10 539 Helen Suzanne Palmer 81 [5125] Wing OK 1:11:10

Results men

1 101 Thierry Gueorgiou 79 [5326] G1 France O Team 1:08:06
2 112 Fabian Hertner 85 [5137] G1 Swiss Orient 1:11:16
3 136 Mattias Millinger 84 [5081] G4 OK Linné 1:13:14
4 122 Johan Runesson 90 [5284] G1 Göteborg-Majorna 1:13:30
5 114 Scott Fraser [5028] G1 Södertälje-Nykvar 1:13:33
6 107 Olav Lundanes 87 [5285] G1 Halden SK 1:15:20
7 103 Baptiste Rollier 82 [5137] G1 Swiss Orient 1:15:52
7 211 Ola Martner 87 [5284] G1 Göteborg-Majorna 1:15:52
9 227 Holger Hott 74 [5266] Kristiansand OK 1:16:05
10 177 Erik Axelsson 79 [5285] G1 Halden SK 1:16:07

• Full results
• POM 2012 webpage

Today’s Sunday Route Choice Puzzle is a from a Czech training camp last weekend where they ran a few interesting sprint courses which have since been published along with split times and an analysis of the route-choices by Czech Coach Radek Novotny.

Here only one of the legs is provided – but below I also provide links to the complete courses and analysis.
The puzzle is as usually first provided without routes – you may take a look at it and think about how you would solve it (if the image is too small, you may click on it to get it larger).

Webroute

Next you can draw your own route using the ‘Webroute’ below. Think through how you would attack it, and draw the route you would have made. Some comments about why you would choose a certain choice are always nice for the other readers.

Then you can take a look at the routes of the runners analysis provided by Radek Novotny. As you can see, running the direct/right variant is the fastest here.

Here are full courses and analysis (in Czech). A lot of interesting legs here – definitely worth taking a look at if you are interested in some theoretical sprint training.

• Sprint course 1 with analysis
• Sprint course 2 with analysis

World of O turns 17 today! The Internet is 20 years old, Google is 14 years old, Facebook is 7 years old. Thus 17 years is quite an age in the Internet world. 17 years ago World of O among other things offered “a slideshow through all o-pages” – that wouldn’t be too easy today..

From the first small trials until today: World of O has all the time been driven by my personal interest to know about what happens in the orienteering world. And that is the way I plan to continue it – explore new ideas and have fun along the way!

“Mother” of World of O

World of O started as a collection of links. The first orienteering webpage I built up – the “mother” of World of O – was live in 1994 on the server brems.ii.uib.no.

What is now known as World of O was live from January 24th 1995. The original version of World of O was a linkdatabase, orienteering map database and email address database which was updated “by hand”. In 1996 some forms were added to make it possible for people to add links and email addresses by themselves. This is the announcement of the revised version of World of O from the good old orienteering mailinglist in May 1996 – this is when it went from updating by hand to “automatic updating” and World of O started growing fast:

Hi.
The last few days I have been updating my orienteering pages a lot. People can now easily add their results, invitations, orienteering-pages and email-addresses to the pages using forms. The submitted information is sorted in various ways, and is also searchable. Please submit your orienteering pages, results, invitations, etc. to the page. Everything isn’t thorougly tested yet, but I think most of it should work by now. The page can still be accessed by the old URL
http://www.fi.uib.no/~jankoc/orientering/orientering.html,
But the real location of it is:

Fancy version: http://www.fi.uib.no/~jankoc/worldo/worldo.html
“Plain” version: http://www.fi.uib.no/~jankoc/worldo/worldoo.html

Jan.

The worlds most linked-to and visited orienteering web-page

In the second half of the 90’s “World of O” was probably the worlds most linked-to and visited orienteering web-page. In 1995, it had approximately 5000 visitors, summing up to 25.000 visitors in 1996, and 80.000 visitors in 1997. The domain worldofo.com was purchased in 1997.

I will not repeat all of the history here – but you can see some snapshots through the history of World of O from 1995 until today here.

A long road with a lot of joy! I hope you have enjoyed the travel – and will continue it with me!

• Why not wish World of O Happy Birthday over at the World of O Facebook page?
• Some snapshots through the history of World of O
• A working version of World of O from around 1995-1997 (Note! Most links are dead!)
• A working version of World of O from around as it was between 1998-2005 (Note! Most links are dead!)

- We are getting close to finishing the update of the IOF standard for information exchange, Mats Troeng – the man behind great orienteering software like QuickRoute, Doma and WinSplits – writes in an email. Now Troeng and the IOF want to have feedback from orienteers on the new standard by February 29th. If you have any opinions, please give your feedback.

- A preliminary draft of the new standard has been published, and is open for review, Troeng continues. – It is not a final version – it is now undergoing a review and we need your input to finalize it.

Draft version published

A draft version of the new data standard, including documentation, has been published as a XML schema file (XSD file) to be found here.

The draft includes many of the suggestions given at the project’s website. Some characteristics:

• The schema file has been designed with code-generation simplicity in mind, for example no use of elements and few restrictions about what elements are required in the schema. Also, the amount of required information about a person might differ in various situations – a competitor’s birth date is required, while a course setter’s is not. This implies that we can’t use a generic
  element for validation in both cases.
• Focus on data exchange in favour of presentation, even though XSLT transformations in many cases may be used to create reports.

Some commented example files have also been published. See examples here. A key to wide usage of the standard is to provide real-world examples, and it is hope that more example files can be added later on.

Feedback by February 29th

Troeng would be happy to receive feedback on this draft February 29th 2012 at latest. A final standard should hopefully be published soon after this deadline. Comments should be entered in the “Issues” forum at the Google Code site. Based on feedback, updated drafts are planned released approximately every two weeks until the deadline.

At yesterday’s joint meeting of the IOF Council and Commissions, the IOF Council announced that the WOC in the future project is dead. – 80% of the federations are happy with the current status, it was said in the meeting according to sources present in the meeting.

This is one step further than the message given on the IOF webpage on Friday from which it was not clear whether the WOC in the Future project would continue to explore further changes in today’s WOC program. In the Friday article it was stated that “at this point of time it is more important not to split the IOF family than to make the changes” and that this “is why we have decided to continue with the current programme” with regards to the upcoming General Assembly in Lausanne.

No further action from the IOF Council

In the joint meeting of the IOF Council and Commissions on Saturday, it was made clear that there will be no further action from the IOF Council related to the WOC in the Future project.

- The decision [to stop the project] was made not to bring conflict between federations. The federations must initiate something if they want change.

Three things in the IOF Council’s suggested program were focused on as problematic in the feedback from many of the federations: The removal of the individual start middle distance, the addition of the mixed relay and the new suggested qualification rules (especially for the long distance among the smaller nations).

You can see the response from the 19 federations in this PDF document – see also a summary of some of the nation’s responses in this World of O article (the federations which posted their response ahead of Friday).

Full win for the elite athletes

Eva Jurenikova – part of the Czech silver medal team from the relay at the World Championships in France last year – took the initiative to get the IOF to understand how the top runners feel about the suggested WOC program last autumn.

– The great majority of us runners are not happy with the proposal for the new WOC-program. This is why we decided to show our discontent and organized a petition during the World Cup weekend in Liberec, Jurenikova explained to World of O at that time.

Thus the IOF Council’s decision must be looked upon as a full win for the elite athletes – who have been working to forward their opinions to their respective federations.

No word on split WOC into sprint and forest WOC

When looking at the responses from the federations (PDF document), 12 of 19 federations wanted the IOF to evaluate the idea to split the WOC into a sprint WOC and a forest WOC to be organized in alternating year. This is quite a big number, considering that there was no mention of the split WOC alternative in the proposal the federations were asked to comment on. Of the 19 federations, 6 federations did not mention this (Belgium, Netherlands, South Africa, Ireland, France and Switzerland) while one nation was against the split WOC idea (Italy).

The IOF Council did not mention the split WOC alternative suggested by the NORD countries at all in their summary. It is an open question whether the NORD countries or any other federations want to pursue this idea further at the General Assembly in Lausanne in July this year. Any final decision for a modified WOC program does however not seem like a probable outcome for the General Assembly in Lausanne as the situation stands now – a request for a thorough  evaluation of the split WOC proposal might be a possible outcome though.

The future of the World Orienteering Championships (WOC) is getting more open after the IOF member federations’ feedback to the suggested WOC program have started being published. Of the responses posted so far, there is not exactly big support behind the WOC program suggested by the IOF.

Update 20.01.2012 15:00: The IOF Council just decided that it will not propose changes to the current World Championships programme at the upcoming General Assembly in Lausanne. “There is a significant difference of opinion between our bigger and smaller federations. At this point of time it is more important not to split the IOF family than to make the changes that received support in Trondheim in 2010”, IOF President Åke Jacobson said, and continued: “That is why we have decided to continue with the current programme.” Read more here.

Of the 8 federations who have posted their response online so far, only one (Ireland) is happy with the overall structure of the WOC program suggested by the IOF. All of the other 7 federations are strongly in favor of keeping the individual start middle distance race. There is also no big support for the mixed relay – although there seems to be support for a sprint relay. There is also strong support from most federations for developing the idea of splitting the WOC into a Forest WOC and Sprint WOC organized alternating every second year.

The best solution

- The best future WOC concept so far

- The best future WOC concept so far, Carl Waaler Kaas, comments the suggestions by the NORD countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark) to split the WOC into Forest WOC and Sprint WOC. - By the arguments used, splitting WOC seems like the best solution to me, Waaler Kaas continues.

Based on informal conversations with some of the other members of the “World Champions group” who were behind the petition against the suggested WOC program in September last year, this type of splitting of the WOC is an alternative many elite orienteers think is an interesting alternative which they want to get evaluated further.

Current status

The current status in defining a new program for future WOCs is that the IOF Council prepared a proposal for a new WOC program in October/November 2011 based on the work of the WOC in the future work group and feedback from the member federations (see the letter sent to the federations for feedback here). The federations were asked to consult all interested parties in their country, and provide feedback to the IOF by January 15th 2012 (last Sunday). When the IOF Council has received and discussed the feedback, the final proposal for a new WOC programme will be prepared and presented for the IOF General Assembly 2012 to be held in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The story about the future WOC program is getting long: see e.g. a background article from August 2010 here, news from the WOC in the Future work group in January 2011 here and here, WOC in the Future work group discussions in February 2011 here, the final recommendations of the WOC in the Future work group from March 2011 here, the IOF Council’s suggested program from September 2011 here, the protest of the Elite orienteers against IOF’s suggested program in September 2011 here, Sweden’s suggestion of splitting WOC into alternating Forest and Sprint WOCs in November 2011 here, or IOF’s summary of the process here.

Responses from Federations

Update 20.01.2012 15:00: Responses from all 19 federations who have answered are now published at the IOF website.

So far the following countries have posted their responses to IOF on the Internet (will be updated – please notify me if you know about responses from other federations):

• The NORD countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark) – have agreed on a common statement.
  • Summarized: Split WOC into Forest WOC and Sprint WOC organized alternating every second year. Forest WOC: Interval start long + middle. Mass start middle (opens up for chasing start with prologue as an alternative). Traditional Relay. Sprint WOC: Sprint as today, KnockOut sprint, Sprint relay (2 runners of same gender with 2 legs each on each team).
  • Compared to the IOF suggestion: Split WOC instead of the same WOC every year. Wants to keep the individual start middle distance and not remove it like the IOF suggestion. Do not introduce mixed relay like the IOF suggestion – but instead same gender sprint relay.
• British Orienteering
  • Summarized: Keep all current WOC disciplines, including the Relay and the interval-start Middle. Addition of separate Men’s and Women’s Sprint Relays to the WOC program. Adjustment to the proposed schedule for the WOC competition week, so that athletes are not forced to choose between events in their preferred discipline. Further development of the Nordic proposal for alternating Sprint and Forest WOCs
  • Compared to the IOF suggestion: Wants to keep the individual start middle distance and not remove it like the IOF suggestion. Do not introduce mixed relay like the IOF suggestion – but instead same gender sprint relay.
• Czech Republic
  • Summarized: Strongly disagree with the transformation of middle distance into a chasing-start race. Need specification of allocation of places for the long final. Don’t introduce any hasty changes to the current program. Would also recommend the biennal “forest WOC” and biennal “sprint WOC” to be considered.
  • Compared to the IOF suggestion: Wants to keep the individual start middle distance instead of removing it like the IOF suggests. No comments regarding mixed relay.
• France
  • No full reponse has been posted – only a short statement saying that the French Federation follows the advice of the elite runners and coaches against the “reform” proposed by the IOF. An important rationale being that they want to keep the individual middle distance discipline.
• Ireland
  • Summarized: The new Middle distance race format was most favoured, whilst the long distance qualification criteria caused the most concern. The high percentage of sprint/middle orienteering in the world champs programme may have a long term effect on more ‘classic’ orienteering. Overtime, a new elite type of orienteer who is focused more on shorter, urban sprint orienteering may eventually develop.
  • Compared to the IOF suggestion: Generally happy with the suggested program, except for strong concern regarding the qualification for the long distance.
• Switzerland
  • No full response has been posted, but a summary has been posted on a private webpage o-zeugs.blogspot.com (thus this information should not be treated as official information). According to the summary, Switzerland do not want an extra final added to the WOC program. The program of today’s WOC should not be changed. WOC should be organized only every second year instead of every year as today.
  • Compared to the IOF suggestion: Keep the individual middle distance. No mixed relay.

Updated after original article published:

• Estonia (see comment below)
• Against new disciplines first-to-finish and mixed sprint relay until it is proved that it is better with respect tot he goals of the IOF. Must be better explained why. The idea of “forest WOC” and “sprint WOC” alternating is worth considering.
• Compared to the IOF suggestion: Keep the individual middle distance. No mixed relay.
• Orienteering USA (received by e-mail)
  • Summarized: In general they like IOF’s most recent proposal. Concerns about how regional spaces for the Long Final are to be determined. If an alternating year schedule of sprint-WOC then forest-WOC were proposed, Orienteering USA would also be happy with such a proposal.
  • Compared to the IOF suggestion: Generally happy with the suggested program, except for concern regarding the qualification for the long distance.

What now?

With the responses coming from the member federations so far, it looks improbable that the final proposal for a new WOC programme that the IOF Council will prepare will have the same main characteristics as the one presented in October/November last year. There will of course be responses from other federations as well, but it must be difficult to ignore the responses of the strong federations cited above who took 24 of the 24 medals at the World Championships in France last year (Note that the Swiss took 3 of these 24 medals – their position has not been fully confirmed as of now). Of these federations,

• None are in favor of removing the individual start middle distance
• None are in favor of the mixed relay
• There is strong interest among these “medal countries” to look into changes of the WOC structure we have today with a WOC every year with the same WOC program

Changing the WOC structure from an annual event with the same program every year is a big choice to make – which requires a thorough analysis of all possible consequences. Time might be running out for making a qualified choice of this type already in Lausanne in July this year…

Update 20.01.2012 15:00: The IOF Council came to the same conclusion: It makes no sense to make a choice in Lausanne in July this year based on the feedback from the federations. But as Jørn Sundby comments on Twitter: – Then remains the question if NORD-countries will try to get enough country support for their propsal to the Congress.

WOC in the Future might still be an item on the agenda in Lausanne…

Today’s Sunday Route Choice Puzzle is a follow-up to Route to Christmas were more sprint legs were requested. The sprint race “Effretiker OL” was organized in Switzerland today – and as the Swiss federation now has bought GPS-units, there is GPS-tracking available with several top runners.

The course has a special spreading method in the course: Instead of a butterfly or phi-loop, runners are to choose 5 out of 7 controls within the ring between control number 2 and 3. What would be your choice?

The puzzle is as usually first provided without routes – you may take a look at it and think about how you would solve it (if the image is too small, you may click on it to get it larger). Note that the control to the northwest of the 2nd control is at the house corner.

Webroute

Next you can draw your own route using the ‘Webroute’ below. Think through how you would attack it, and draw the route you would have made. Some comments about why you would choose a certain choice are always nice for the other readers.

Then you can take a look at how the runners solved the “puzzle” – below the tracked runners are sorted in order based on the GPS tracking times. As you can see, the main problem for several runners who lost time (especially Fabian Hertner) was that they had not checked the control description of the control northwest of the 2nd control.

Did you choose a good order? What do you think of this kind of spreading method?

Wrong choice to first control

From this race, it is also interesting to see how Fabian Hertner is much faster than the other tracked runners to the first control by taking a northern route choice. Everybody is probably too busy reading which 5 of 7 controls to choose after the second control….

Complete map in Omaps.worldofo.com

You find the complete map and GPS-tracking in omaps.worldofo.com at this location or in 2DRerun here.