Discussion: WOC 2019 Viewing

I haven't seen any notice about how to watch the WOC races online, and I can't find anything on the WOC website or World of O.

Does anyone know if they're going to make the races available to watch?

It seems that gps dots will be available on the IOF website (https://orienteering.sport/event/world-orienteerin...) and perhaps some video as well.

kissy, get yourself a VPN and watch the Norwegian coverage on NRK!

The link bhall posted says that live web TV should be available for all races through IOF.

Thanks everyone!

Anybody else having trouble connecting to orienteering.sport? On Chrome, I'm getting an error message about "not secure, unsupported protocol"...

Works fine on Chrome for me.

has anyone managed to create an INplayer account? It keeps rejecting the password, even the replacement password that they have emailed to me.

I'm sure in past years we were able to buy access to WOC coverage without having to create yet another on-line login identity, without any issues....

Everything you would need to know: http://news.worldofo.com/2019/08/12/woc-2019-all-y...

I must be confused. Why does the worldofo article say:

Note that this is the first forest-only World Orienteering Championships

Jan is young but he isn't *that* young.

There's new qualification rules for the middle this year:
https://orienteering.sport/how-to-qualify-for-woc-...

I wrote a php script that will display the qualified runners once they start finishing:
http://cnocmaps.com/didIQualify.php?eventId=16194

I have no idea what might happen if there is a high load!

(If you want to look at old competitions:
http://cnocmaps.com/didIQualify.php )

"Note that this is the first forest-only World Orienteering Championships"

Besides being obviously wrong, note how this takes us back to the early 90's in terms of "progress" for the bi-annual WOC forest events.

It's like describing some food as "New! GMO-free!".

You could argue that the most recent "forest-only WOC" was Japan in 2005. It had sprint distance, but it was in the forest. The first WOC sprint in 2001 was also in the forest. So there have been a few forest only WOCs already this century.

Woc live has capacity issues!

Well, maybe Trac-Trac does because it won't load. WOC Live seems ok otherwise, but I'm only trying to look at the live results and the first runners won't have reached the intermediate time controls yet. Haven't bothered with the 'live' connection because it's sound only.

Simmo - live connection has a camera on the finish line - bit early yet tho.

Bridget will need to hold off Hausken-Nordberg.

It looks like tractrac didnt boost their server enough.

In a qualification, having someone like that starting behind you is probably an advantage.

Trac-Trac is up now.

Hasn't made it across the Nullarbor to Sydney yet.

Looks like a decent run by Bridget - I think she's got a better-than-even chance of qualifying with that.

Hopefully stops in CBR on the way to Sydney.

GSwede making a mistake at 5! Nuts, looks like he was running well. Hopefully he figures it out quickly.

Men 3 starting to shape up as a pretty tough heat; Simon will need to run well.

I just started to view about 20 minutes ago and GPS won't open. Anyone having similar issues?

And he has - only 5 seconds off the lead at pre-warning. Should qualify easily with that.

Hammer - I've just got as far as getting the event GPS page to load, but haven't yet got any individual course to work.

eventually they seem to show up after some reloading. more likely with chrome than safari for me.

Gradually getting TracTrac to load - just waiting for the two key elements of the map and the athlete positions now....

The demand will be a lot higher on the other days (particularly with spikes in demand on relay day if they only release each leg as the leaders head out). Shouldn't be a surprise so here's hoping they have it under control for delivering a decent service for the finals.....

Tractracs gone for me again. I think they haven’t fixed the load. It’s more people get sick of trying and go away. Then it loads and then everyone comes back and it doesn’t work.

Think Patrick's going to miss out. Women 3 is very spread out, so the opportunity is definitely there for Belinda if she runs well.

Belinda through the first split in 7th. Not a bad position to be in if she can hold it, although there's some serious talent at the back end of that heat.

And Krystal also now through the intermediate. The tail end of Women 2 isn't as strong as the other heats so her current position should be enough if she can hold it to the finish.

Looks like Bridget, Krystal and Simon are all but through. Matt Doyle is through the 1st intermediate, in a position which looks fairly borderline. Belinda lost time late and will miss out.

Think Matt is probably heading for 16th, unless Riccardo Scalet (51 seconds ahead at the intermediate) loses time late. (Scrub that - someone else has got in ahead of him who I wasn't expecting).

Of other non-European countries: Lizzie Ingham and Emily Kemp are through, and Asne Troemborg will (I think) also go through as the best-placed American. Anton Salmenkyla will also qualify via that route along with Jan Erik Naess, while Tim Robertson made the top 15. Haven't looked at the Asian countries as yet, though none got any automatic qualifiers.

For what it is worth TracTrac worked with Chrome for me but not with Safari.

Trac Trac was no good for me today. The other live services worked fine.
I say this every year, but the first event of WOC always has live coverage issues. There is no excuse really. This live coverage issue has been going on for at least 15 years, and capacity demands should be well known from previous years.

Hopefully TracTrac issues are fixed in time for the long distance.

So TracTrac presumably is Norwegian or Swedish, Seuranta is Finnish. The Finns win hands down in my view.

Tractrac is Danish, set up by Chris Terkelsen.

I think TracTrac is from Denmark, Livelox from Sweden, Loggator from Norway, GPS Seuranta from Finland. All of them work unless they don't - and that's not much to do where site originates.

For those curious to know how the new qualification rules worked out before official results are available, my almost literal back-of-an-envelope tally (may contain errors both in tallies and understanding of rules...)

Women
4 through to final: Finland, Russia
3: Norway, Czechia, Sweden, Switz, GB, Denmark, Latvia
2: Estonia, Australia, France
1 by old rules: NZ, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Lithuania, Austria, Canada, Bulgaria
Additional 1 by new rules: Italy, Belarus, Hungary (!), Moldova, Belgium, Ireland, US, Japan, Turkey, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, China, N Macedonia

Brasil, Korea, HK & Colombia only nations to miss, unless I didn't notice any of the tail above being double the heat winner's time

Men
4: Switz
3: Sweden, Russia, Finland, Czechia, Latvia, France
2: Norway (!!), Ukraine, Austria, GB, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Hungary
1 by old rules: Lithuania, Belarus, Australia, Estonia, Poland, NZ, Ireland
Additional places: Germany, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Japan, Belgium, US, Croatia, Netherlands (not Mark Heikoop!), Canada, Israel, Moldova, Turkey, Portugal, Slovenia, China

S Africa (just! if I had rules right for them versus China), both Koreas, Romania, Colombia, Brasil, HK, Argentina and Cyprus miss out

Looking at those line-ups I'll give the concept a pass mark, with a number of countries that you'd expect all their runners to be just on either side of the cut off have been saved from missing out completely, and other countries whose best runners used to consistently be up there in the 16th-low twenties range but very rarely qualified now represented in the final.

But looking at the bottom of the list, I wonder if it's too soon to be adding 15 - not sure if some of those last few runners will add much 'value' to the final. Also some of these countries had a single rep in the race, in that situation if you thought you could cruise around without being in danger of being at the very bottom of the list, wouldn't you? (although SA and Romania's man missing out shows that there's good competition for the last few men's spots at least) ...But both of those factors would be reduced by greater depth - even if all the countries that turn up to the occasional WOC but not this one were present, that would be enough to make a difference IMO

There was quite a lot of discussion about where to draw the cutoff; 100% is probably looser than I would have done it myself.

(Suddenly remembers that it's probably about time he got the national points set up to work out the long distance quotas from this year's results).

@slow - ha ha, I like your little nudge at Mark. But OTOH, he's a true "never give up" spirit!

This shows all the people qualified, although it doesn't take into account the +100% rule. I'm pretty sure that doesn't matter though.
http://cnocmaps.com/didIQualify.php?eventId=16194

Cool, thanks for that Ruairi.

Interesting qualification rule. Must be a lot of frustrated athletes right now seeing people they've beaten in qualification moving on to the final.

Yes, have to agree with that, would be incredibly frustrating to beat someone and they get a place in the final ahead of you.
In my opinion, WOC finals aren't the place for us to be increasing participation, or making it more global. Countries have the chance to earn a spot in the final, and at the moment even run the Long final, so I don't think this rule is needed.
You want to earn that spot in the final.

Exactly. To say that you came top 50 in the world champs as beneficiary of an odd scheme aimed to have more diversity in the final...

Another IOF decision to scratch your head over.

Given that each country can only enter 3 runners, saying you came (for example) top 50th never really meant that much anyway - it is not as though it means you are 50th best in the world - not even close. Unless you are from one of the top few countries just getting a start at WOC means you have already benefited from "schemes aimed to have more diversity".

So really this is just one more arbitrary rule to add to the many that ensure as many countries as possible are represented at WOC.

Once you get past the top 10 (20 at the very most) the results list has very little to do with 'the best in the world'

There are two things to analyze with this rule in the future.
1. Could WOC final spot rise interest for orienteering in these countries? I assume IOF will need to get some sort of fedback from these countries. I dont know what should be measured here. Maybe number of registered orienteers in the country.
2. Does WOC final spot bring more viewers from these countries, any media coverage on national sport media or similar.

In most media word "final" is viewed as an important achievement for any athlete. Maybe orienteering around the world can gain better support. Federations should be open to speak in which way this rule can be benefitial to them. I hope the goal is not just "more countries in the final" to please someone somewhere.

But diversity of participating countries in a qualification at WOC (which has been discussed to great length) and forced diversity of runners qualified for a final are two different things.

I didn't write "50th best in the world". There are of course hundreds of scandinavian runners sitting at home with the ability to be in that final. Having a 50th place finish at WOC is still however some sort of merit. Should the results of those running in the finals from this new scheme not have an asterisk?

Are runners on the cusp of qualifying now secretly hoping their teamates in others heats run poorly?

Olympics are the same - remember Eddie the Eagle!

The Olympics allows national committees to send two athletes (1F, 1M) regardless of world ranking or qualification times - but they don't get a free place in the 5,000m final when they get lapped in the heat.

IOF page not updated yet after vigorous refreshing, but trac trac has women's link:

https://tractrac.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/vie...

Very impressive time posted by Kasper Fosser - surely podium at least, and perhaps more than that.

Ali's travelling OK in the women's at the moment. As for the Australian men, looks like Henry and Brodie are on track to finish in the high 30s and high 40s respectively. Toby Scott might crack top 30 for NZ.

I get TracTrac to load and display map and course (on chrome) but don't see any tracks.

Is that just me or does anyone have the same problem?

Same for me.

Trac trac is worthless. Why can't they just use seuranta?

Per WOC live blog: "11:56 Some GPS followers have problems with loading the GPS tracks. Try another network/internet connection or make sure the ports 18891 – 18894 are open in order to receive tracking data."

If you're providing a service to the public you can't really expect them to know what ports 18891-18894 are.

Right. What a joke.

Yea, I'll issue a ticket to our IT department to open the ports... nevermind, back to work!

No issues for me all day on Chrome/Windows10.

Just my 2ct: using the womens link above, I have working tracking. I do note that MrWonderful provided a slightly different link to what IOF posted, don't know if that makes any difference.

Nice race by Ali! First finisher!

Looks like she's going to be spending a decent amount of time on the leader's couch (assuming they've got one).

Doesn't work for me on Chrome or Firefox...

Trac Trac working fine for me on Chrome
- a couple of times some functionality disappears (eg couldn't move map) but a quick refresh solved that.

Been working fine for me (Chrome/MacOS). Been using a VPN to watch the Norwegian coverage, wonder if there's some difference there.

nice to see very little in the way grouping - thanks to 3min start interval

A couple of other annoyances: the women's gps won't come up until the live tv at 16:20, and every time I go back to the Live page from the full screen tv I can't get the full screen again.

Well done Henry - good recovery after two bad mistakes, including going off the map!

Simmo, I have been watching women gps since around 2 hours with no issues.

me too

Looks like she's going to be spending a decent amount of time on the leader's couch (assuming they've got one).

I looked for but couldn't find the photo I saw a few days ago of the "leader's chair" being moved into place by a crane. It was a large green Adirondack-type chair.

The leader chair flying into the arena:
https://twitter.com/orienteeringWOC/status/1160836...

I've been sitting back watching the mens race with just the tracking and no TV (using a modest internet connection in our holiday apartment in Germany) and I've had a few minor freezes but no major problems.

According to World of O they gave an expected winning time of 98 minutes. I assume this was a stuff up by World of O and not the Course planner? Was this raised on the TV coverage?

Fosser may well have won with a bit more endurance in his legs. It looks like he just slowed down in the last part of the race as the older runners kept their speed. Amazing effort for a junior. People sick of Norwegian dominance in long distance WOC men's races may not have a lot to look forward too when Lundanes retires!

The long route choices ended up being quite decisive. If you choose to go left on the first long leg it was fatal. Cost 90 to 120 seconds or so.

Looking forward to the analysis on World of O when it goes up.

Swedish TV were saying early on that 98min was the EWT but predicted about 94min.

There's no live link to women's gps on the IOF Live page on my desktop screen.

Do you meen https://orienteering.sport/event/world-orienteerin...?
There's a section Live GPS there - and links to Men and Women opened hours ago.
Link was also posted above by MrWonderful

How many juniors have taken a medal at WOC historically?

Hanny Allston's gold in the sprint in 2006 comes to mind.

Both Ikonen and Rostrup won gold at 21, but no WOC was held in their 20th year.

Jan Fjærestad was 20 when he won individual silver at the 1974 WOC. Fabulous runner with 28:25 in the 10,000m and 2.13 marathon

I guess Kringstad was 21 when she won her first gold?

Tore Sagvolden was a junior when he took bronze in 1979. Thanks to Terje M and Wikipedia.

According to Wikipedia, Annichen would have turned 21 in July before her gold at the the Sept 1981 WOC.

has anyone else had issues either with creating an InPlayer account, or with purchases not being completed? Unless my experiences so far are unique or result purely from bad luck or my own incompetence, I would hope orienteering dot org will not continue to use this platform....

Try another network/internet connection or make sure the ports 18891 – 18894

ROFL...try implementing your shit properly you idiots. If you need someone to mess with their firewall to view something on the internet these days YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

I've now done preliminary scores after the long. There's a bit more scope for things to move around this year because there are no carryover points from last year (only this year counts), so early days. In particular a good relay (or a mispunch) can swing things a lot.

Men

Bottom of division 1: looks like one to go down out of RUS (166), FRA (176) and EST (190). It certainly won't help Estonia that they've only qualified one for the middle final (the others have three), although the middle only counts half what the long does.

Top of division 2: AUT 192, FIN 184, GBR 162, LAT 146. Anyone below that probably needs to do something big in the relay. These four all have at least two in the middle final (only two count).

Bottom of division 2: SVK (8) look almost certain to go down. Joining them will probably be one of BUL (42), ESP (42), DEN (!) (56), POL (56), BLR (62), AUS (66), or HUN (66). Denmark, Hungary and Spain have two middle finalists, the others have one (Denmark only ran one in the long).

Top of division 3: GER (70) off to a very good start. Below that the scores are low enough that it's hard to tell anything before the relay, but ITA (36) and NED (32) have the inside running (but do the Dutch have a relay team?).

Women

Bottom of division 1: clearly at the bottom are DEN (140) and LAT (138). Denmark ran one short in the long but have a full complement in the middle (as do Latvia). Without home advantage this year Latvia will be hard-pressed to stay up. With the scores as low as they are, it's also possible that both might go down (if second in division 2 outscores second-last in division 1 they get promoted too, a rule which has not yet been used).

Top of division 2: quite a few contenders here: EST (148), GBR (130), GER (130), AUT (126) and POL (116). Only the first two have two or more middle finalists, which gives them the inside running.

Bottom of division 2: BUL (48), HUN (50), AUS (60) and ITA (72) at the bottom, but there are several others in the 80s or 90s who could get sucked into the relegation battle with a bad relay. Australia are the only one of this group who have two middle finalists.

Top of division 3: as with the men, too soon to tell much yet, but current frontrunners are MDA (48) and USA (40), then a few in the 20s.

Top of division 2:

"the middle only counts half what the long does"
Since when do you speak American? :)
I believe the Queen's English equivalent to be: "the middle only counts for half of that which the long does".

Thanks for posting, Blair! Any chance you have the full scores somewhere?

I've got a spreadsheet but not a convenient place to put it. Have sent it to the IOF office so hopefully they'll put it on the IOF website.

How come this whole system is not required to be a built in part of the WOC results system? Isn't it a bit mickey mouse relying on one bloke in Australia to do it all in his spare time on Excel? Would it be that hard for someone to write some software to do it?

I mean if Blair was hit by a bus tonight I get the impression no one else would have a clue how to do it. Seems like IOF/WOC organisers really don't care about this.

Blair, can you at least remind us of the current list of countries by division?

FWIW, TracTrac worked splendidly well at the arena on a Galaxy S8 active running Pie either on arena Wi-Fi or on Telenor (a bit glitchier on the latter). Maybe mobile was the intended development target in the first place. For those with firewall problems at work, maybe just take your phone off work Wi-Fi? smaller screen than work computer but at least functions.

TracTrac replay does not work at all with Firefox. Just gets stuck with browser warning "A web page is slowing down your browser" with wait and stop buttons. Tried two computer and 3 versions of Firefox.

Jumping forward to the relay a bit, what do we think of the implications of rule 24.7 on the division competition?

24.7: "In relays where there are mass starts for later legs, the sum of the individual times of the team members shall determine the placings of the teams that have taken part in such mass starts. Teams taking part in mass starts for later legs are placed after all teams which have changed over and finished in the ordinary way."

This year the mass start is not leaving much space for error, taking place 18 mins after the predicted for 2nd leg finish for women and 21 for the men. The implication being that with 2 good runners you can get in before the mass start and guarantee a nice placing and it doesn't matter if your last runner is no good at all.
I feel the competition should require you to have a full team of good runners, not just 2 that can run within 30% of the winners.

The rule itself sounds fine to me and I think the race is there to determine the position of nations in the WOC relay rather than anything else. The points should use the outcome. So I think it is more a question of whether there should be a greater gap from leg 2/3 leader changeover before the mass start for remaining teams, in order to give the fairest outcome in the relay for teams lower down the result list.

For the men, at least, that's probably partly because of the light - with the race starting only 2.30 before sunset there's a very real chance that the later teams will be finishing in semi-darkness.

the kempster is doing superb run. Clean so far with the easy last loop to go.

Is anyone else who is watching the official IOF video feed experiencing lots of lagging and freezing?

Have you tried opening up some ports?

TracTrac is slow. Takes too long to load map and competitor data. It sucks that you need an app on iPhone to use it. I believe in this day and age you should be able to load anything in any webpage for the ease of the user. I can’t seem to get the replay to work on the app either. So all in all tractrac may look prettier (in some peoples eyes) and have some small advantages (timing splits display) over gpsseuranta, I believe the overall experience of watching and replaying the tracking is pretty useless.

And I do think there is no excuses for not having a server that could take the load in the middle qual. That was very poor. And the app has crashed a fair bit for me.

Top 25 for Kemp?

Guessing between 25-30.

That number 11 is catching a lot of them out.

Wow...

Are there results available without paying?

Thank you

This looks like it's going to be very tight. Got to be good on 20

Team points summary. Note here that (a) where I say that a team needs to beat another team by X places I'm assuming they're not in the top 5, and (b) a mispunch could drop an otherwise safe team not mentioned here into a relegation battle.

Men

Div 1 lower: looks like EST (238) and RUS (271) at the bottom. Estonia would need to beat Russia by 8 places to have a chance of staying up. Even if they don't, Russia would also go down if Austria beat them by 3 places (or,less likely, Great Britain by 10). France's two podium places today take them out of the danger zone.

Div 2 upper: FIN 290, AUT 261, GBR 234. Finland had a good day today (their first men's forest top 10 in six years) which gives them the inside running - as long as they finish within 7 places of Austria they should go up. As noted above, Austria can also go up if they beat Russia by 3 places.

Div 2 lower: SVK 21, ESP 55, BUL 58, then various teams in the 80s and 90s. Slovakia need a miracle, then the second relegation place will probably be whoever finishes lower out of Spain and Bulgaria. Others are only likely to be sucked in if they mispunch.

Div 3 upper: GER 107, ITA 56, NED 50, IRL 30. Netherlands don't have a relay team, so almost certain to be Germany and Italy to go up. Ireland would need to beat Italy (or the winner of Spain-Bulgaria) by 7 places, and USA or Canada would need to do it by 10.

Women

Div 1 lower: DEN 240, LAT 222. Latvia need to beat Denmark by 5 places. Extra swaps between division 1 and 2 probably don't come into play.

Div 2 upper: GBR 207, EST 194, POL 184, GER 166. Great Britain in the box seat here; Estonia would need to beat them by 4 places, Poland by 6 or Germany by 11.

Div 2 lower: BUL 61, HUN 70, ITA 83, AUS 93. Hungary would need to beat Italy by 4 places, or Australia by 6, to stay up. A bit harder still for Bulgaria.

Div 3 upper: MDA 66, USA 52, BLR 42, CAN 35, BEL 30. Moldova, Belarus and Belgium don't have relay teams, so USA should go up. Canada need to come 23rd to displace Moldova. Lower teams which are running (e.g. Japan, China) would need to come in the low 20s at worst to have a chance of displacing Moldova or USA.

Hopefully the IOF put the provisional points on their website, but in case they haven't I've temporarily put them on the Orienteering Australia website here.

Some fantastic racing yesterday in the middle distance with interesting courses and terrain. It was great being able to follow the tracking live (it worked pretty consistently for me) and see how even a small mistake makes the difference at the pointy end of the race.

But...the idea of granting finals places to the best runners in those countries otherwise unrepresented is a complete joke. Watching the group of the first 4 starters in the womens final meander around the forest together like a family group at a club event does nothing to advance our sport as well as making a mockery of the qualification process. I believe that IOF claims that it's important to give emerging o nations finals "recognition" for promotion, funding and development. However there must be a million better ways to advance orienteering than this. Dumb decision.

Interesting comparison between Tove and the mens field.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/11619029944992112...

Have now rechecked the numbers - a few changes but none which affect any of the scenarios above (except that the USA men only need to beat Italy by 7).

the idea of granting finals places to the best runners in those countries otherwise unrepresented is a complete joke

Hard to say it's a complete joke when eight standard qualifiers got skunked by a non-represented qualifier.

+1 like

12 could cause some fun here. Glad I am not doing it.

"Hard to say it's a complete joke when eight standard qualifiers got skunked by a non-represented qualifier."

Sorry but I stand by my comment. One of the additional qualifiers beating 8 of the 45 "normal" qualifiers is hardly impressive. Given the nature of orienteering where one mistake can cost you many places in the field, this statistic only reinforces how much weaker the additional qualifiers were as a collective.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to put down their efforts - just that there are better ways to advance the sport in developing countries than awarding token final places outside the normal qualification process.

I see absolutely no harm in having the non-represented qualifiers.

...And much good in giving some who "just missed" the experience of a final.

And the team promotion/relegation contests:

Men

Promoted from div 2 to div 1: FIN, AUT (since AUT outscored RUS)
Relegated from div 1 to div 2: EST, RUS
Promoted from div 3 to div 2: GER, ITA
Relegated from div 2 to div 3: SVK, BUL

Women

Promoted from div 2 to div 1: GBR
Relegated from div 1 to div 2: LAT
Promoted from div 3 to div 2: USA, CAN
Relegated from div 2 to div 3: ITA, HUN

In the end, the most notable move in the points (apart from Canada comfortably getting the points they needed) was the Bulgarian women, bottom of division 2 going into today, staying up with a 14th place. Spain had just enough points in hand to survive a mispunch - a top 20 place for Italy would have sunk them.

One of the additional qualifiers beating 8 of the 45 "normal" qualifiers is hardly impressive.

Not that I think this is the measure we should be using either, but there was also an additional qualifier in 24th.

I think it's nice to have a Final with more countries represented, as long as there's some kind of standard for getting in. Whether the IOF has figured out the best way to do that is still open to debate.

I'm sure I've noticed the Bulgarian women before in recent years performing better as a relay team than as individuals, I wonder if this time they realised in advance the implications of a good performance or if it was a happy accident.

Belarus might be the men's equivalent - certainly this year they were much better in the relay compared to individual results

And regarding the middle qualification process - moving to 60 in a final I think was a good move, but looks like not everyone is happy with the model. The easiest thing would be to simply say 20 per heat qualify, which this year would have seen 7 more countries represented in the men and 4 in the women.

(that's: Germany, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Japan, Belgium, USA, Croatia
and Italy, Belarus, Hungary, Moldova)

Someone should do the analysis as to whether this would have included all the runners that beat at least one 'top 15' qualifier in the final.

Or to put it another way, a further 8 and 11 countries excluded from an additional chance to score (admittedly minimal) points for Long Distance promotion/relegation.... But then not everyone round here seems to be a fan of that, either!

Even if current middle final qualification rules may not be that good it's still nowhere near as stupid as the Long Distance promotion/relegation system. It forces athletes to choose between trying to make safe and secure mediocre runs or trying their absolute best and taking some risks to get close to top placing. And in case of injury it easily makes you keep on going despite injury getting worse, also may make nations best but injured runner to run relay instead of using less fast but not injured reserve.

Those sound like decisions which would have to be made whether it counted for future long distance qualification or not.

Finland hadn't had a men's top 10 result in an individual forest race since 2013, so can hardly claim to have been especially hard done by to go down to two men this year. They've now had their best year for a long time and been rewarded for it. (Was losing the third men's spot seen as a bit of a wake-up call?).

We know about wake-up calls down-under, don't we:-))

That was more like a case of allowing ourselves to believe for a week that we weren't rubbish. (Apologies to all followers of this thread for whom rugby references sail straight over their heads).

I like the new middle qualification scheme. As has already been pointed out, the previous scheme was also arbitrary. The long distance quota system is arbitrary, too. What is the harm in allowing slower or less skilled runners to compete? Some seem to see it as undignified, or something. Forgive me if I’m misunderstanding the objection, but if I am misunderstanding then it is probably because I have never heard it cogently articulated. If anything, I think having more different countries represented makes a competition more fitting as a world championship. Most years, the Nordic Championships is more competitive, and yet we do not consider that to be the World Championships.

So where can we watch the tv replay? Live page doesn't have a link. I tried to do a replay of the tracking on both tractrac and 2DR - both gave rubbish results.

In the old WOC programme there were 7 events (Sprint, Middle, Long Q+F & Relay). Now with the new WOC format there are 4 events. Is it really no interest to get back also Long Q?

I think this would bring back also relay teams from many countries which skip relay nowdays. It should be clear that interest from second & third best runner is to go to WOC and run at least 3 events. In today's format second best could run only middle Q because the best runner will probably run middle+long Q and qualified for the middle F based on the new rule. So in the old days all 3 runners from those countries have guaranted spot in 3 q races and relay was just an additional cherry on the WOC cake. Without Long Q we are seeing the effect -> less relay teams.

Except that we aren't; there were 36 men's teams and 30 women's teams this year, which compares with a couple of other sets of results I had to hand from the days when there were long qualifiers - 2010 (30 men, 28 women) and 2013 (30 and 26).

O.K. Maybe I just missing our relay team:)
But I went to the IOF page to make a quick check but I found out that only results from 2017 on are online. Why with every IOF page update more and more historical data is just cut off instead to be proud of the WOC results from its beggining.

Was losing the third men's spot seen as a bit of a wake-up call?

No. It was not seen as that much important issues really, if I remember correctly back when there was 3 slots Finns often could not fill all spots or sprinters ended up running long and forest specialist rested for relay (some medal chances in reley but not in long). Generation change has been been the explanation behind the dive and bounce back (and the slow nordic terrain type). When I wrote promotion/relegation may tempt some run when injured I did not think about team Finland (Teini ran relay despite being injured but hardly because of these points). I was thinking more those teams possibly getting or losing second slot. See, losing third slot is not that big deal, but doubling slots (from 1 to 2) may easily seen as worth the risk. And losing second spot now when WOC is biannual WOC means it will take at least 4 years to have it in use again. That's long time. One of the problem is this promotion/relegation does not mapper much for the big nations so they may not pay much attention advantages or disadvantages like this running when injured. They (like team Finland) are just happy to get full team straight to final and straight to good start positions without dangers losing any of that in qualification race.

Some thoughts from a TV spectator perspective.

Three final races with starts and finish at same arena, two of those races with arena run through spectator leg. Must have been challenging task to design. The superb terrain helped there of course.

Men's long design feels like they tried to make it as difficult as possible for the big home favorite to win. Long road or field running legs with all forest short cuts being slower. No long decisive wilderness route choice legs. I am glad the best won anyway and home crowd even got to celebrate silver too, must have been great boost for arena atmosphere.

Middle, there was plenty of low value navigation / pure running for arena spectator friendliness issues, but on the other hand the rest of the course used the most challenging area there was available. Men's course feels slightly better, women's course possibly lacks a route choice leg, but maybe it just feels like it, short ones had route choice options too. But still great tough courses and races were thrillers, not to mention worthy winners.

Relay, there was seemingly very little forking, I though there would be bigger trains but touch terrain did the spreading and they eventually had to do a lot of independent navigation, so apparently forking was just fine. But surely one lucky men's team may have got some not entirely deserved advantage. But luckily they didn't win (got silver) and best teams eventually won both races, so all good, I guess thats can be seen as part of the game.

Maps looked well generalized and legible, made partly using quite local mapping style but something teams were well prepared for (unlike somewhere claimed the mapper did not add much any additional form lines, he avoided adding them best he could). My biggest map complaint doesn't affect runners, it is TV gps tracking maps. Those had dirty hill shading making maps look like used wrinkled map was scanned for tracking. No shading please, or at least make it with high enough DEM resolution to actually match contours in small detail level.

GPS tracking itself was quite poor and well below today's standards. Tractrac sure had it's hickups and that wirefall port openings instructions and not working with firefox at all is a bit lame, but as a system it still eventually did the job for most spectators and TV production just fine. The problem with tracking was not tractrac viewing clients, it was tracker hardware runners carried. Those were so poor and inaccurate. GPS dots hardly entered control circles and spectators could not see are they making mistake or is GPS just so wrong. Relay race was the worst, for example mens second leg where FIN followed right behind NOR all the way but gps tracking told NOR was 100m behind. Tracking lost all it credibility there. There has been plenty of tracked races in nerby forest and trackers GPS Seuranta uses hit control circle centers just fine. I see similar poor accuracy with some smartphones we use in Yökuppi so I believe it's just hardware can't handle forest canopy. Maybe fine for sailing. In future make sure tracker hardware is good enough when tractrac is used. If clients are just smartphones please simply use better ones.

"Relay, there was seemingly very little forking"
A Switzerland-Sweden quinella in the women's relay was a popular pick - if you had bet on that result you would have been happy to see that both teams had the same variation for the final leg. A conscious decision to stage a grandstand finish? Certainly not in keeping with IOF Rules Appendix 6, 4.2 "The best teams should be carefully allocated to different forking combinations".

In the men's race, it looks like both Norway and Sweden had the same variation after the arena passage, so maybe the organisers were hoping for another exciting finish and not expecting one of the runners to make mistakes.

With so few forkings it would be hard to live up to that recommendation

25 years ago, the rules definitely did not allow for that kind of engineering, the forkings had to be allocated by random draw.

It's also in Appendix 6 that the "very last part" of the last leg is unforked, but that seems to have been taken further than usual this year.

You don't necessarily need to have a lot of forked controls to split a field - the most effective splitting of a field I can remember in a WOC relay was in Denmark 2006, where there were only a few forked controls (five, if I recall correctly) but the split controls were quite far apart. Another one I liked was the leg to three controls all on the far side of a spur at WOC last year.

I think the organizers did a very good job locating this farm/golf course literally in the middle of nowhere, with interesting and totally virgin (!) terrain on all sides.

I do believe it would be better to rely on just GPS tracking in the future, and avoid all arena passages: They really do take quite a bit away from the actual orienteering, and the spectators who are all orienteers anyway don't need to see them running past, they are all mostly watching their tracking screens and the big arena screens anyway. I know that I personally only spent a few minutes total, over the entire week, standing and cheering by the arena run-in chute. :-)

It's also in Appendix 6 that the "very last part" of the last leg is unforked, but that seems to have been taken further than usual this year. Yes, to ensure no one is unfairly disadvantaged by getting a slower forking forking late in the 3rd leg when there is not enough time to catch up again.

You don't necessarily need to have a lot of forked controls to split a field - the most effective splitting of a field I can remember in a WOC relay was in Denmark 2006, where there were only a few forked controls (five, if I recall correctly)

This year the men had 4 forkings and the women 3 on the first two legs. Only 2 and 1 on the 3rd leg.

https://woc2019.no/files/maps/WOC2019_Relay_Men.pd...
https://woc2019.no/files/maps/WOC2019_Relay_Women....

I am a little unsure about the forking at control 12 for the men I assume that is meant to mean legs 1 and 2 are forked between controls 190 and 197 but leg 3 is unforked???

Having good route choices can also help split the field up of course but not necessarily - if there is a pack and the route choices seem fairly equal there is no advantage in choosing a different route (it is an obvious disadvantage not to stay with the pack) so the pack wont split up. The relationship of the route choice legs and the forkings can play a role - if you have a long route choice leg directly from a forking you may get a greater variety of independent route choice decisions being made: the pack is not together at the start of the route choice leg so runners don't see what choices the runners at the other forkings have made.

The other factor that probably accounts most for splitting up the fields at WOC is the relative range of abilities. In the women's there were 30 teams: the time difference between the fastest and slowest runners over a 30 min course was over 20 min. That's going to split the field up better than any forking can.

Seems to me that there is always going to be a significant pack on the first leg, so the forking is more important for the 2nd and 3rd legs. I note that Norway men and Sweden women had their top runners on the second leg, and indeed they pulled away very quickly after the changeover. Lesser teams most likely put their best runner on the first leg so that they can stay with the pack, but that just means their 2nd leg runners are even less likely to stay with the likes of Lundanes and Alexandersson.

The WOC relay is a weird thing. One of the world's smallest relays, with a huge spread in ability. The number of competitive teams that the forking needs to separate is very small. "Packs" are tiny.

from Terje M
"I do believe it would be better to rely on just GPS tracking in the future, and avoid all arena passages: They really do take quite a bit away from the actual orienteering, and the spectators who are all orienteers anyway don't need to see them running past, they are all mostly watching their tracking screens and the big arena screens anyway."

Thank you, I completely agree, and this has been my main technical complaint since at least WOC 2010, which I attended. What is the attraction (IOF mandated?) of watching meaningless running, when the live video, timing stats, and GPS animation are on the big screen.
OK maybe worthwhile for the Relay, but please, never for the Middle, this event suffers the most, and rarely for the Long.
I will say that this year's courses were less compromised than most by the spectator loops.
Again, plenty of good stuff here for which to congratulate the terrain selectors, mapper(s?) and course design team.

I am in favor of arena passages, because I find it exciting and interesting to see the runners in person. As a spectator, one has the opportunity to assess how each runner is doing by their facial expressions, body language/posture, running speed and form, and when and how much they look at their map. Watching a GPS dot is not an adequate substitute for any of these things, and watching on camera is a poor substitute for being able to see the runners close-up (in part because some runners may be shown very little on camera, depending upon what else is happening in the race.)

We didn't do arena passage in 2015, but that was down to the shape of the area, the arena being some 500m from the forest. It really depends on the area.But I think people seriously underestimate the challenge an arena passage can provide.

(It may not be true but) Elites will tell you their mistakes come from loss of concentration. A well designed arena passage can throw in a change of speed, an adventure with oxygen debt, a switch to "orange standard" orienteering, and a ton of distractions. Followed by a need to get back in control and refocus.

I'm also in favour of arena passages provided it can be done without compromising the courses too much.

I've found whenever I have to go through the arena in an event (when it hasn't been a designated passage), I always make a huge error because I find it hard to identify the open land under all the unmapped spectators.

In contrast to WOC, for those unaware (probably everyone), MTB WOC this year had a potential arena passage in the sprint (not mandated but I went through it), a mandated one in the middle, we went near to (but not through) the arena in the long, through the same arena passage four times (for the male elites) in the mass start and twice through different passages in the relay (the second of which was taped off from the direction I came from and it threw me).

Arena passages can be challenging to navigate when there's no arena, as I found out when running the WOC 2011 middle final course when on a visit to that part of the world a few months later - I went back into the forest in the wrong place with predictable consequences for navigation on the next leg (although on that occasion that merely added to an extensive list of mistakes already made).

I think either an arena passage or start in the arena, but prefer not having both. Having both added too much dead-time running, in my opinion.