Discussion: WOC Quals

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the words of encouragements. You'll see some details on my races in my training log. I had a very good long-qual, except for a major mistake (~4 minutes) 3 controls from the finish. Even without the mistake I would have been out of the top 15 (I was 19th before the mistake and 21st after). I was pretty scared going into the long qual, but the course turned out to be easier than expected. We only got into really technical stuff for a few controls, most of the running was fairly straightforward, even with some paths. Overall, I'm happy, though of course would be much happier without the mistake.

The middle distance race was tough from the get-go. The woods were thick and the footing was super-tough ... rocky and mossy. I was getting pushed around a lot and having a tough time keeping on a bearing and reading on the run. First controls went just fine, but then I lost contact on the way to #4 and relocated on #5! 4 minutes lost on that one, but with confidence shattered it was a bobbly, slow and uninspired run for the remainder. Overall, a tough day. Nevertheless, my placing was about the same as the long qual, it was tough out there for a lot of people with lots of spread in the results.

For the next few days, I'm looking forward to some rest. I will do the sprint, I think, but am mainly focused on the relay in 6 days time.

Cheers,
Brian

Ps. There are some more photos on the US Team website, but not to many of the runners (hard to race and take pictures at the same time!).

Hi Everyone,

Thanks everyone for the support and comments. We appreciate that you all are watching closely! Things have been all together postive and fun here in Sweden for the team and we can already look back at our days spend together with memories of a lot of laughter and fun.

Unfortunately for me, that has been the most positive aspect of my week so far, since my illness has not allowed me to run well. Yesterdays long quali was a really hard race for me. I had tried to rest sufficently to be able to feel good during the race the week before, but it proved to not be enough. I had not tried to run at race tempo over the last few weeks, and yesterday was too great of an effort for my body. I pushed through the race, but was dizzy and exhaused for most of it.

On a positive note, it gave me encouragment that under healthy conditions I am on my way to having some good races. Technically I felt good after a mistake on number 1. I didnt have enough respect for my short leg to number 1 and thought I would just "run" into it. You dont just run into any controls here in Sweden. Bad start, but I am certain there will be better races ahead of me.

I was unable to run today in the middle quali as planned. My mono has kept me in bed this morning, and tired all together. I have been able to keep other symptoms such as sore throat and fever away with a lot of rest, but its still in discussion if I will run the sprint on Wednesday.

thanks again for the support and keep watching!
with kind regards,
Sandra

Hej, again, thanks for support.
As for my experiences here so far...
I've had decent runs so far in both the long and middle. Nothing devastating, but nothing fantastic. Route choices on the long were a little poor and I probably lost a few minutes on both 1 and 8 becuase of this. Nothing went wrong in the circle, however unprepared I went into them. So perhaps it is possible to 'run' into controls in sweden. Or else I was super lucky.
Today, however, was the middle. Route choice wasnegligible but actually finding the control proved rather difficult. The woods were much thicker than the map showed and as Brian said,the footing was so technical that it was very hard to get a chance to look at the map on the go. I made several small (20-90sec) errors on almost all the controls. Just circling around, not quite sure where I was.
Unfortunately, I came down with a common cold as soon as I got here and have been fighting it all week. It made the races a bit slower due to congested breathing.
Overall, though, the weeks have been great, the maps are excellent, training was fun and the city of Västerås is very nice. And I am certainly looking forward to quite a few days of rest here before the relay!
See you all soon!
Erin

Anyone who thinks the terrain isn't really difficult should look at Eddie's photos from training, posted on the USOF website (http://www.us.orienteering.org/), go to the U.S. Team page, and click on Eddie's photos from Sept. 10.
It's frustrating not to qualify for the final, but our team is having some good runs. Remember that last year in Switzerland the top 17 in each heat qualified (vs. top 15 this year, don't know why they changed it...). If top 17 was still the rule, Erin would have made it today and Pavlina would have missed by less than a minute.
Also, bravo goes to Sandy for qualifying easily for the Canadians today. It does help to live over there. I'd guess most of the non-Scandinavians that qualified either live in Scandinavia or at least spend substantial amounts of time training and competiting there.

Thanks for all the updates guys. It certainly does look tough but you guys did great and we're all proud of you. Qualifying for the finals just seems to get tougher and tougher...

Enjoy some rest and go get them later this week!

You can see Hanne Staff's map of today's middle qualifier and Holger Hott Johansen's for the men's middle qualifier.
Also, maps from the long qualifier yesterday: Hanne's and Bjorner Valstadt's.

Wow, the courses look really tough from the map, pictures, and Brian's descriptions. Guys, you are doing great, and it's awesome to watch results live on the web!
Keep it up, and kick some butt in the sprints, and especially the relays!
Also, awesome job by Cherie and Sandy, good luck in the finals!

Here's an attempt to use Brian's method to rank the standings of the teams so far. I think I've done it right.
Note that I've marked in RED the teams that Spike identified as our peers (except he also included France, Poland, and Slovakia, which I think should be in a higher group).
Men are on the left, women on the right, the list is ordered by the total of the men and women (far right column).
Looks to me like we're doing pretty good.

It looks like we are doing pretty well in the all-countries ranking.

US WOC runners - even if you make a mistake, or think you can't make the final, keep focused & moving! Every person you beat from the continued effort contributes to the US country ranking... and you might just beat a Canadian by a few seconds (which I think has happened at least twice already this week!) Go Team!

Go New Zealand! and watch out USA! Good to see that we are on the 'peers' list :)

New Zealand too has slipped in the last several years, our fierce rival Australia has an excellent High Performance strategy, and their results show.

Random things: We have an equivalent message board for anyone interested in orienteering down under: http://www.maptalk.coo.nz/forum

and hi to everyone from WUOC and JWOC, email me, i havent got your addresses. good luck sandra

I've also added won-lost standings (Spike's idea). So far we are 5-6 head-to-head against Canada, 5-4 against New Zealand, and 7-5 against Japan (host of WOC-2005).

Tom Hollowell is in the sprint startlist. What's the story?

PG,

On a percentile basis, US is 10 pts ahead of BEL, but head-to-head we're 1-7. Does that make sense?

You have to show up to get points. A number of teams have small or no women's teams, including Belgium with only one woman. How big a difference it could make would depend on how good the rest of their top women are.
Teams with fewer than 3 women are:
Bulgaria and New Zealand (2 each)
Belgium, Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia, Hong Kong, ant the Netherlands (1 each)
South Africa, Israel, China Taipei, and Serbia and Montenegro (no women).
If they all sent at least 3 women, I would guess that our scores, both percentile and head-to-head would be better (I expect our women's team would be better than a lot of them). But you never know if you can beat someone if they don't show....

Great job Brian! Two years in a row! Woo.

I'm not sure why neither James nor Mikell have been able to run the Sprint, but I'm sure we'll know the story in due time. I do not think a team can enter a person in a race who was not entered into the WOC, and I do not think any of the team officials on site had the authority with USOF to enter a runner who did not go through the Team Selection process. So, it is a very interesting question why Tom Hollowell was ever on the start list. I certainly hope it was the organizers' mistake. If it was not, then I think there needs to be a serious discussion in regards to US Team representation at the WOC.

On August 16, Mikell wrote in his blog: "I will not under any circumstance run in the WOC Sprint race." I'll speculate that James either felt similarly or had an injury or something. Given that there was an extra slot, perhaps it was given to the only person around who was interested, that being Tom. Is it proper to let someone step into an empty spot like that, as opposed to leaving it vacant, if there's nobody else around to fill it? I can't say. Certainly if it were a relay, I think the consensus would be that we should find a substitute, but for an individual race I don't know.

My guess based on the WinSplits is that it looks like Tom was doing reasonably well for the first seven controls, then lost 90+ seconds on the eighth, and didn't continue after that.

Interesting - there is something a little disquieting about this in my opinion. I suppose the fact that we didn't take advantage of all our opportunities to have selected team members run in a race where we had three slots is my biggest concern. Of course if there is a serious injury or illness, that's one thing, but otherwise... I can't justify not having three team members in a race because some people didn't want to run.

So, I suppose putting another person in is better than leaving it vacant. But, it still doesn't seem quite right that the team selction procedure is abrograted, although I understand the motivation of those on the ground to deal with things.

But if this was due to a last minute injury, could an alternate have stepped in? (I realize this is probably a moot point because I don't think we have alternates at the WOC this year.) In an ideal world, if we have injury scratches or forseen performance impairment due to accute illness, having an alternate available would be really desirable. I guess when the team gets a bigger budget such considerations may not be as fanciful ;)

If Tom Hollowell was in the race officially, with sanctioning from the Team Leader (Beatrice), it is plainly a shame.

To an outside person, it looks like an end run around the qualification process. It is a spit into the face of the Team selection process that has been so carefully crafted with much public input and after a series of painful trials, Trials, and errors.
To an international observer, it hints that the Americans do not view their participation in the WOC seriously, throwing in a ringer at the last moment.

If the slot was open and neither Mikell nor James were willing to run, then the slot should have been open in agreement with the spirit, if not the letter, of the Team qualification rules. We have something to talk about there.

So, here's the deal. Names of all runners for a country had to have been submitted by noon Central European time, 11 September 2004. Thus, if Tom Hollowell was officially allowed to run, he would have had to have been entered by that time. If there was an injury and-or lack of interest on the part of James and Mikell, this situation was known by 6 pm EDT this past Saturday. This assumes that IOF Rules were followed. On Saturday evening, Team leaders, Beatrice Zürcher and Tom Hollowell, then knew that there was one empty slot for the Wednesday race.

It appears that two decisions were made before that noon deadline on Saturday:

(1) That one more male runner should be entered, for a total of five.

(2) That such runner should be Tom Hollowell.

Whereas (1) is not what we have in Team selection rules (which, by the way, are part of USOF Rules of Competition), I agree with Clem: it may have made a lot of sense to the Team officials, the Team runners present, and would probably make a lot of common sense, too. While I lament that a proper discussion and at least a request for ESC's blessing were not undertaken in this case, it is not with (1) that I have the real problem. It is with (2). There were two Team alternates selected in Wyoming, I believe Mook and Mihai. If the alternates are not available, it is the Team policy to go deeper down the Trials result list.

Since Clem, one of Team Trials participants, appears unaware of any requests that may have been going on, one has to conclude that such inquiries were not undertaken. Neither Mook, Mihai, Boris, Wyatt, Clem, Robbie, Leif, Randy, etc. were contacted. I think that any of those I have just named (and, say, even Erin! she was on site! IOF has already allowed women to run men's courses) has more merit for the open slot that Tom Hollowell. All of the above have gone through a rigorous Team selection process.

To go particularly un-PC on the issue, just who on earth is Tom Hollowell? He is not on the Standing Team. Is he even a USOF member? Robin S has to approve all people who go out to international competitions for USOF membership. It appears that the only particular merit Mr. Hollowell had was being on site and being a USOF-approved official. USOF needs to pay more attention to how it selects and approves officials for the WOCs.

Could one have been contacted, have made a decision, and actually made it out to Västerås in the time left before the race? The answer is yes! I just made it out to Västerås. I made up my final version of flight plans on Monday afternoon US time. To get here in time for the race, one would have had to leave a day earlier than I did, on Monday morning. It is clearly later than the Saturday afternoon deadline. Could one or more of those contacted afford it? I bet several could. In particular, if asked, I would rather have parted with my own FF miles for someone like Leif, than trying to salvage half of the trip using the same miles. Would one realistically have been interested in going just for one race, even if mostly for free? The answer is again yes! This is just what happened in 1997, when Tim Derrick came to Norway knowing that he only had one running slot.

In conclusion, the situation has been mishandled. The way it has been handled has hurt primarily those Team members who have been striving for fairness of the Team selection for years. It gives the Team a black eye before the general USOF membership. The Team leaders on site owe USOF an explanation and an apology.

So, now I have vented. At some point, things have to be taken seriously, we're not just playing games with all this international competition. If we create an impression that we do, we'll never see any sponsorship or recognition.

Just to add to my previous comments (and Vlad's):

The US Team selection process has been through many iterations over the years and may not be perfect. However, I think it (especially as realized for the last two WOCs) has been quite good - transparent, fair, and relevant. I also feel that the team selected this year (and the alternates - which, for the men, as Vlad mentioned included Scarborough, Everett, and Veres) is the best possible to represent the US. And of course, they are the product of the aforesaid selection process.

We do not currently expressly select people based on potential for the sprint. While I suppose a case can be made in some countries for this (Rostrup did quite well for himself) in the US with our relative lack of depth, such specificity is wasted effort. I honestly believe that for the most part, any of the selected team members or alternates would have done better than any non-selected people at _any_ of the WOC disciplines. Whether they want to prove this is another issue. Moreover, whether or not there is some other athlete in the US that didn't go through the trials that could be expected to do better at some discipline than the people who actually did prevail there is a moot point - the fact of the matter is they did not go through the process - end of story.

I don't know how viable it would have been for one of the alternates to step in at this WOC, but I can simply say that it is unfortunate that our alternates are ceremonial and aren't available as reserve athletes. However, I also realize that it is hard enough to simply provision for our top 8 athletes, so I don't want to be seen as unreasonable.

BTW, part of my sensitivity to this issue is was motivated by recent discussions of the deficiencies of the rankings for team selection and the process in general. I frankly found much of that ... misguided ... but apparently some parties who like to expound there don't need much fuel for their fire. I wonder what they'll think.

Some comments regarding Tom Hollowell's running the Sprint ...

1) Mikell and James decided not to run the sprint of their own accord. Both were encouraged to run, but decided not to, either because they felt poorly prepared for a sprint race (having never or rarely run sprint races in the US) or because they felt it better to allow their legs to rest in preparation for the relay.

2) Tom suggested that he might enjoy running the event and the team members were supportive of the idea. The organizers were asked whether a team official could run in a WOC event and obviously the answer on this occasion was yes.

3) Tom has been an excellent team leader. He has represented the US in past World Champs (1980's). He is in a great position to help the US team in our endeavors. He is an elite trainer for a major Swedish club (OK Tyr), is very knowledgable of the technical and physical aspects of orienteering training, and has already offered to assist in facilitating training and racing in Sweden for US athletes.

Should Tom have raced in the sprint qualifier? Given the discussion here, probably not. But, I don't think this should be a big issue. Simply put, he's been great for our team over here (including arranging the outright sponsorship of two rental cars for the duration). He is an asset and we should be appreciative of that.

Let me offer my opinion as a member of the ESC (but just speaking for myself).

1. I don't think that Tom should have run.

2. I expect that over the next month or so the ESC, with input from the team, will establish guidelines to deal with similar situations in the future.

3. Looking at the big picture, I would make the following points:

-- We are working to try and make the team better, That's a big and complicated task. We will have problems and we will have successes. To the extent we have problems, we try to fix then and move on. To the extent we have successes, we enjoy them and then try to build on them. We have a problem here concerning eligibility to run and we will fix it. We also should make sure we enjoy Brian's success today, and many other fine runs by team members, and then try to build on them.

-- In the meantime, cut Tom a little slack. The team needs as many friends/helpers as it can get, and Tom is right up at the top of list. His history with the team goes back to the early 80s, when he was on the WOC teams to Switzerland in 1981 and Hungery in 1983, both times just running in the relay, and both times the team had results among our best ever. As Brian says, he has been an excellent team leader (Beatrice couldn't make it at the last minute), no easy task (I say from experience....). Both he and his company (Prevas) have sponsored tthe team financially. And he is a first-class person in every way.

-- As I said, I hear what Clem and Vlad are saying, and we will address it. In the meantime, I'm working on sending all sorts of positive vibes over to Sweden so both our men's and women's teams run fast and clean and beat Canada....

Peter

Thanks Peter- I very much agree with all your points. And thanks Brian for the clarification on the situation on the ground. We are certainly very much behind you guys in everything and realize that competing at WOC is far from the only complication in being there. Certainly, anyone who volunteers to take upon themselves the difficulties of arranging for all logistics so that team members don't need to worry about that too is doing a very valuable service. That too should be much appreciated. I know the team does and far be it from us as spectators to detract from that effort. So, thanks go out to Tom for helping the team on the ground much as the ESC has stateside.

Hi all,

nice to meet all the runners in Västerås. The Team mood is very positive. There have been a number of great runs, most notably by Brian, and the Team is looking forward to the Relay.

One point that I wish to make is that Team members can possibly be the Team's best friends. Not just those who are currently running in the WOC, but all of them. We work hard putting on fundraiser events, soliciting donations, organizing training, and working on promotion so that those of us who have the highest merit could represent the national Federation on the world scene. I think that it is important to feel that we all are working for a common goal within an agreed framework. It is just as important to keep USOF membership aware of the Team's goals, its plans to reach the goals, and its progress on the way. I think that surprises in this process should only be positive ones!

Hello All,

I have not been able to access the internet and read this discussion until now. I am sorry to have obviously caused such a storm over this issue. I am very sorry if my participation in the sprint qualification race has offended anyone. I certainly did not intend to disregard any selection process nor to cause any offence. In hindsight, this was a (poor) decision made based upon the actual situation here in Sweden.

Right now however I, in my capacity as team manager, intend on focusing on assisting the team in what remains of the WOC week and to help us do our very best at the relays.

/Tom Hollowell

For those that are wondering what happened in my middle qual race. I was running well with a small error at #4 but had many good splits. On the way to #8 I sprained my 'good' ankle. After a few minutes of swearing and sitting I decided to continue. Elected to pass on the sprint and will run the relay with both ankles now taped.