Discussion: Emit in Sweden?

I've been looking at the pictures taken by James and Eddie, and clearly Emit punches are being used. Is there an IOF rule that Emit is the punching system that will always be used at the world championships, and not SI?

I'm asking because when I was in Scandinavia in the summer of 2001, the O-Ringen used SI, and the Fin5 and the WOC (held in Finland that year) used Emit. My understanding was that there was something of a war going on between the two systems, with Emit beng the "Finnish" system and SI the "Swedish" system.

So I'm kind of surprised to see Emit punches being used at a Swedish event. What's the story?

At one time I thought that Emit was the official electronic system for world championship events, but searching around on the web I discovered that Sportident was used in Switzerland last year.

SI is the most used system in Sweden. However, for the WOC, as well as Tiomila, Emit obviously approached the organizer offering a better deal. Also, since those events I mentioned above are "special" events my guess is that a special system/programme for that specific event must be used and maybe Emit is more flexible.

I think they use Emit more in Norway too. At least they did at the races we went to last summer. the nice thing is the emit has the paper backup, the bad thing is that it is like those logic puzzles just trying to fit it in there properly. Pippa was joking that the 28 secs she missed the WOC sprint final by could have been made up if she had trained more to use the Emit system. Maybe that would have been better use of time then the speed work?:) If she lost a second or two at every control though she might not be totally wrong...

The rules say they must use an IOF approved system. At present that includes three options:
Emit
SportIdent
Pin punching w/control cards

I believe Emit is petitioning the IOF to approve their
proximity punching system, which is quite sweet --
my tests show you only need to pass within about
2ft/70cm of the punch. Of course, there is no paper
backup.

The proximity system was used as the second backup for finish timing at the WOC.

Note that the Emit system is not used to time the runners at WOC. It is only used for punch control and splits.

Actually, the SI system and the Emit system were never designed to be accurate timing systems. They were engineered to replace the huge manual labour of checking the needle punches. Up to a quarter million needle punches every day at events like O-ringen. As a bonus you get splits, but who cares if they are off by a second or two? The clocks in the systems are cheap and drift a lot.

When I started running events with electronic punching in Sweden in the mid 90s, the system was only used to replace needle punching and to give splits. Later, organizers started to use the systems to time the runners as well, but I think it's obvious when you work with the systems that they do not have the accuracy and reliability needed for a big championship.

Also, Emit is a Norwegian company. Norway use only Emit. Some province federations in Sweden and Finland bought the system in the 90s, so you see it here and there in those countries. SI is a German company and they completely dominate in continental Europe and have also a big part of the market in Sweden. Not as much in Finland.

If you're interested in the history of these systems and how they work, I wrote this long article in Due West last winter:

http://www.orienteeringbc.ca/duewest/DueWestFeb200...

The district of Västmanland, where in the WOC 2004 host city Västerås lies, are one of the few districts in Sweden where EMIT is the leading punching system. The organizing clubs were much more used to use EMIT at their events and hence EMIT was the system to use att WOC too. If WOC had been held in for example Gothenburg (my home town) we would for sure use SI.

Note that there is a rule pointing out that the time taking system andthe punching system should be independet from each other when organizing WOC. Hence EMIT was just used for punching control and the clocks that are built into the EMIT-units were only used for retreiving the split times, not for the official results. For the "real" time taking they used eTime which is a separate system (but also developed by the company Emit As) using starting grids and a "photo optic" finish line. That is the story


Otherwise, Sweden is about 85% SI and 15% EMIT (my approximation) while Norway and Finland is almost 100% EMIT and Denmark is about 50/50

The district of Västmanland, where in the WOC 2004 host city Västerås lies, are one of the few districts in Sweden where EMIT is the leading punching system. The organizing clubs were much more used to use EMIT at their events and hence EMIT was the system to use att WOC too. If WOC had been held in for example Gothenburg (my home town) we would for sure use SI.

Note that there is a rule pointing out that the time taking system andthe punching system should be independet from each other when organizing WOC. Hence EMIT was just used for punching control and the clocks that are built into the EMIT-units were only used for retreiving the split times, not for the official results. For the "real" time taking they used eTime which is a separate system (but also developed by the company Emit As) using starting grids and a "photo optic" finish line. That is the story


Otherwise, Sweden is about 85% SI and 15% EMIT (my approximation) while Norway and Finland is almost 100% EMIT and Denmark is about 50/50