Discussion: Factors leading to top orienteering elite

I tried to put some of my thoughts that reflect my personal believes on major factors that would lead an athlete to top orienteering elite:

1. Personal motivation and willingness to sacrifice to achieve top results.
2. 10-15 hour/week training process under supervision of qualified coach(es).
3. Close proximity to high quality training terrain and maps.
4. Good team of training buddies at the same or higher level.
5. 25-40 starts per year at the international competitions.
6. Financial support to cover travel and other costs from the club, federation, and sponsors. $20-30K/year?
7. Support from the family.

All these factors should work together.

Do you see anything else that you would like to add to the list? Do we have anyone in North America who can say that all these factors work for him or her?

No wonder that there is a trend to move to Scandinavia where you can get all the above at reasonable cost (except for personal motivation and family support that have to come naturally within).

8. Talent

No J.J., actualy is:
1.Talent
and then Sergey's elaboration, is pretty close to the truth.

I think talent actually comes in around number three...

Checking the list, it becomes clear why I haven't made the standard YET...

1 - I'm not 100% committed, because I have another dual priority - maths phd. but do makes sacrifices.
2 - no coach. no excuse. haven't managed even to build up to 5-6 hrs running a week regularly. several factors - tiredness, overuse worries, small injuries, time constraints, motivation. don't clock strength/toning exercises.
3 - Fontainebleau isn't bad, certainly adequate. A little far away.
4 - you'd think i'd find someone in a city of 10 million, no? been training with others maybe twice since the summer.
5 - make 10-20... not bad given finances.
6 - haha. essentially totally self-funded. 13K per year, and that pays everything (ok the IOA will pay half the costs of some major comp'ns)
7 - on principle, I don't accept mafia support

talent - if the definition is performs better than deserved based on one's training, then yeah. enough, who knows?

What are the major barriers? I think being a full-time anything else causes severe problems. During vacations, living by a forest, training twice a day is relatively easy. trying to give a tutorial, or do some research, when tired is much much harder. Proper training is detrimental to my work.
Not being in the italian army, or a french sport student, or already elite, it is hard to get paid to orienteer.

This summer I will be three months away from the uni. Of this, three weeks will be at a summer school in italy, the rest in scandinavia. add in ten days in sweden this month and teaching commitments and i can't take the extra days off to go home before or after the irish champs, and so won't be home until october at least.
Life is great and I love what I do, but even at my small level of training the sacrifices are large.

The list above is good. Given the size of the USOF/IOA/other small federations, and the difficulty of realising the list factors, I am very impressed by the few who manage to really compete at an elite level.
lunch calls...

You're of course right, Mihai, "talent" should be well above some (or all) of the other items on the list. I hadn't been thinking of it as sorted in order of importance, but rather as a list of items all of which are essential.

Another item tha might belong on the list is "getting started at an early enough age". It's clear that if you start orienteering when you're 50, it's too late. But when does "too late" occur? Seems doubtful that you could get there starting at 30, but maybe with enough physical background and intellectual gifts it might be possible. I suspect that there was still some hope for me, starting at about age 22 (not counting my few earlier encounters with orienteering). But since I had only one of the other eight items on my side...

I agree that talent should be present. But "athlete" definition already includes it. Right?

I think it takes 10 or so years of technical training before the one can do orienteering flowlessly. Thus the one should start at 18-19 years old latest. I also think the best age to really start doing orienteering is around 12-14 when the person is self-intelligent enough to recognize the beauty of the sport and, therefore, be self-motivated.

I wonder if there are cases when people start late and raise to elite in less than 10 or so years.

I agree that talent should be present. But "athlete" definition already includes it. Right?

I think it takes 10 or so years of technical training before the one can do orienteering flowlessly. Thus the one should start at 18-19 years old latest. I also think the best age to really start doing orienteering is around 12-14 when the person is self-intelligent enough to recognize the beauty of the sport and, therefore, be self-motivated.

I wonder if there are cases when people start late and raise to elite in less than 10 or so years.

Depends on your definition of "athlete", and even then, you have to have enough talent and the right kind. Many people are capable of being active athletically, but to be in the top elite requires some very special genes. You also have to have the right build for running on uneven terrain, along with the natural agility and balance. And of utmost importance is the intellectual talent for reading a map and navigating. I think there are very few who really have that. I know of some people in the USA who I believe do, but most of the ones who come to mind right off don't have the natural physical ability required to be at the top. I also know that I do not have the mental talent required. I'm not horrible, but I can tell that I really just don't have the brain for this that a few other people who I know do. But there are also many others far worse off than I am.

I put talent as #1, because when I started out in orinteering(1973),I already tried to be a runner, before I found out about orientering and usualy I was dead last in all the running races, preceding my first orienteering race, when I finished 4 th out of ~ 20 participants,with a 15 mins. compass error and I had the strong feeling of what was going on and as soon as I had the map in my hand I had no problems understanding what to do and from there on I had worked hard several years to built my athletic abilities and gradualy became a good runner, but I was never at the level required to became a world class elite but my talent kept me in close proximity.The years of hard physical training brought my running capabilities at a close to decent leve, for orienteering, but this days thats not what is keeping me close to the top.
And I have known many people who started out in orinteering on top and stayed on top for long time, most of them had the necessary talent for orienteering, but they had good athletic built up as well.
Reading the map and navigating at a leisure pace, can be done by almost anybody.The map reading and navigation decreases, as the cruising speed increases, if you are not trained. The best orienteers are the ones, who can effectively combine the two, or idealy, they can navigate and read the map the same at any running speed.For the people who have real talent for orienteering, this can be achieved, by beeing in max. physical condition, which in orienteering, will put you in a "comfort zone" where you feel confident that you can ran at race speed and not loose your focus on navigation.So when we are talking about map reading and running, the ones who have talent can do that at at a 30-34 mins/10 km. pace or 5-6 mins/km.,or less, orienteering race pace, on regular basis, as long as they stay in shape.

It is big commitment for a person to focus and spend 10 or so years of hard training to bring running speed and navigation in par to the top level. Mihai is right – you must run at 30-34 min/10K or 5-6 min/mile and be able to navigate cleanly at the same time. Unfortunately, only two or three athletes in NA are capable but not realizing their potential. And worth – none from juniors is working toward these goals. Sad.

Aye it's sad, but what proportion of people/ juniors would you expect to make the commitment, what proportion of those do you would have the necessary athletic and mental talent, and how many are you starting with?

Bigger O-nations have huge bases from which to choose.
France doesn't, but managed it by having a group of reasonably talented juniors with great spirit and a purist's love for orienteering, offering them a college education (of sorts) built around their training requirements and providing them with an excellent support network (transport, coaching, regular quality training weekends etc).
This kind of support makes the commitment much easier.

silk purses and sow's ears...

I always believed in 1 from 10 (or so) rule: from 10 who tried orienteering only 1 will come for more than 3 meets, from that 1 from 10 will continue for more than 3 years, from that 1 from 10 will be motivated enough to train enough to be considered local elite (or so), from that 1 from 10 will train really hard to be considered part of world elite. You can count the numbers.

With France team situation I can predict that as there is no a good elite base in about 5 years or so the status of France team will go down as people will start retiring, loose motivation, etc. Building real pool of talented athletes from the mass pool of orienteering fans is the only way to have sustained high level of elite orineteering in a country.

Unfortunately, in the USA and Canada situation with mass orienteering is very bad. Number of juniors competing is clear sign of this, as well as aging of the natinal teams. We should do as much as possible to increase the numbers at local levels. In addition, there should a system in place that would help transfer experience of the old elite to new generation. Supposedly it should be done via good national team organization and coaching system. Canadian team has, probably, better organization nowdays comparing to the USA team. Just wait for their juniors starting beating the USA elite :)

i have a few comments about you alls opinions about junior orienteering in the US. Many of you might not know me but my name is Tim. Im 18 im a Junior Orienteering from TX. If you havent noticed we have many great juniors who strive year in and out to be the best. Namely John Fredrickson, Robbie Paddock, and whole bunch others. Im not mad or anything but for those of us juniors in the TX we are doing our best getting out there competiting every chance we can to compete and i would guess that the give us about 5 years or so and we will be top conteders in the US Elite category(just a speculation).

Tim, I am personally very glad to see the enthusiastic group of juniors from TX at many competitions! I hope you set your goals and work hard toward them, running at least 5-6 days per week. We have a number of first class orienteering coaches in the country - it is very important to work with a person whom you can trust in fulfilling your goals. The team needs young and talented athletes who will raise the competitive level of the sport in the USA!

Well im under the supervision of Maj Larry Vidinha. He has done so much for kids in LP unfortunetly one thing he hasnt done is send one of us to JWOC, but for some reason i have a feeling that will change in the next few years. Well a group of us from lp get up early every morning and meet at the rotc building and we run ypically its about a 3 mile run or so but i have uped that because of interscholastic by running 5 miles in the morning. Grant it i havent done that in about a few days because of meets, ROTC inspection and what not. I do try and run just about every morning. Like i said though we run just about every morning and also in the afternoon during our "Orienteering Class". Yes we do have an actual Orienteering Class. Also we have a one day a week where everyone who isnt in our orientering class (only offered to 10-12) comes to Orienteering practice and sometimes it works out where we are running 3 times a day.

Tim, This is great! At your age you should gradually increase running volumes to 50-60 miles per week that includes a mixture of middle and long (10 miles or longer) runs. Your weekly training should also include at least 1 training session with interval workout (something like 10x400m or 5x800m or 3x1600m), and at least 1 training session with hills or strength workout. Please work with your coach on establishing long term goals and long term training schedule. Be motivated - this takes years of hard work and tons of sweat. Good luck in your training and hope to see you at the elite courses very soon! We need young athletes who will challenge all these old guys in funny pajamas who roam the woods!

Keep an eye on the performance of the JWOC and World University OC teams this year... for example, Leif Anderson (from the Seattle area and now a freshman at Montana State) has the potential to be one of the best juniors to ever come out of US orienteering.

Almost everyone who's going this year has talent and is training hard, so we should see some good results in June and July. I think one-on-one mentoring by senior elite orienteers could be a big help in getting the best juniors to continue improving over the next few years.

During Flying Pig I was very pleased with the juniors' performances. We have talents in the USA O world! Seniors bewere - new wave is coming!

see i think i did ok the 3rd of comp 11/k which is pretty good for me. I was originally aming for 10/k but hills kill is TXs. For some reason though i can never get it together until the final day of competition. Would any of you care to i guess in enlighten me on something i could do about that?