Discussion: What does the IOF do for orienteering?

Just trying to get some background for that other thread about biennial WOC's.

What concrete outcomes has the IOF produced for orienteering? sponsorship, profile, assistance of developing O countries? Just interested to hear....thought other people on this forum may have more of an idea.

All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?

wine

Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left.

Yeah - those Romulans always had the best alcohol...

here we go:) How bout someone answers the initial question? I do not know the full answer.

I know one key role of the IOF is to provide leadership in terms of rules, mapping standards, and championships.

Surely the IOF provides a common enemy to unite the minor countries?

One thing IOF have dropped the ball on is discipline distances. Here's a summary of where we are at at the moment:

Event (Men) Min Max
Sprint Distance 12 20
Middle (Qual) 20 30
Middle (Final) 30 40
Relay short leg 35 45
Relay long legs 45 55
Long (Qual) 50 60
Long (Final) 70 90

Three other major issues appear unresolved -
1 having two "Sprints" or especially "Middles" on the same day turns these events into different disciplines
2 Making one event dependent on the results of another e.g. making qualification for a Long distance dependent on the results of a middle race the day before
3 Women's winning times different to Men's

To me I think its a good idea to have different lengths as separate events and the general logic behind "Sprint", "Middle" and "Long" make sense. But having different relay length legs, and issues 1, 2 and 3 above make no sense to me.

ok, so they make rules and hand out championship events to those countries that can afford to pay them the money. They suck up for years to the IOC for no benefit and liaise with WADA.

but what good at all does this do for international orienteering.

is there any strategy, any plan, any worthy thing at all? (not if you go by their website).

the best news on their website is ski-o making the world military winter games, whoopde shit, is there nothing better to do than encourage euros to ski around with maps and guns?

I offered the humorous response above because it seemed like bridging from Politics to Rome to Star Trek would be a worthy thing to do. Let me bridge technology to Orienteering...

In the world of computers, your system administrator is at best invisible: If systems are running well, responses anticipate your needs, and capacity is planned for, you won't think about them. If things stink to high heaven, they will be on your mind all the time.

So being out of mind is not necessarily a bad thing...

The thing that strikes me about the IOF is that very first letter - the I. By definition, it would seem that the IOF is the body to regulate the sport across all of those different nations that do or want to compete in the sport.

How do you best manage a sport internationally? Is it a free for all with each nation getting a democratic vote? With an oligarchy of those that know best?

Which efforts does this international body back? Growing the sport in new nations, or supporting the sport in those that already compete? Keeping the rules pure or adjusting as life progresses?

It's absolutely a political body.

Sure, overthrow the empire - but only if you have a plan for a better empire in your back pocket... (deep pockets to support the new emperor would also be good)

If you look for things to complain about, you will always find some. Spend more time enjoying the day - you'll feel better at the end of it.

I think the IOF works quite well. The World Ranking Scheme, for one; I can go to a WRE-sanctioned event pretty much anywhere and know it's up to a certain consistent standard. And there are some "anywheres" where an event of this standard wouldn't have been possible say 15 years ago, and now there is one. And if the World Rankings had anything to do with making this development possible, that's certainly one good thing.

The fact that the sport exists internationally is a reasonable indicator that the IOF is at least functioning. No sport survives withtout the work done by a governing federation. Could things be done better? Of course. But providing a framework for international competition is a conglomeration of hundreds of little tasks, few of which are particularly glamorous, many of which are downright thankless, and all of which are far too numerous to list here.

good question jamie... i saw something interesting the other day about mountain biking in Australia - less than 1% of people who buy mountain bikes in Australia are members of MTBA. so MTBA are keen to work out what they're NOT doing for mountain bikers in Australia. the biggest difference with orienteering is that it's a lot easier to just go for a ride on a mountain bike. although you could always grab a map and go for a run in the forest, i imagine that for a lot of people it's like doing a trivia quiz with no answers (you know how they write them upside down at the bottom of the page) - if you're not absolutely sure you know the answer then how can you be sure you got it right? on the MTB (or any bike) you're a lot less dependent on organised races, if that were the case for orienteering, how many people would hactually join up as members of our federations?

The IOF does a heck of a lot.

ISOM and ISSOM for example. You can pick up a map anywhere in the world and run with it. Fancy using written control descriptions in Finnish?
How about referring back the legend to distinguish "slow running forest" green from the local "out of bounds" colour?

It has defined "sprint", "middle" and "long": we might not like them, but at least we know what we're getting. It has promoted electronic punching - not just nice for analysis, you may be too young to remember when you could get DQed from an entire 5-day for having one pin outside the box.

It has an internationally agreed World Champs. We might not like the details of frequency and format, but the IOF finds a host, ensures it happens and determines the process to avoid errors. Even though there's lots that can go wrong, WOC has never been voided AFAIK, kudos mainly to the organisers of course, but having sensible procedures is a big part of it.

There's hardly any sport where everyone loves the governing body - try looking at other sports (e.g. boxing, as I mentioned on the other thread!) and you'll find the IOF does a very difficult job pretty well.

I think electronic punching could really be classed as "inevitable" rather than something the IOF promoted. The concern I have is the way IOF's rules are used too harshly to DQ athletes and that hasn't changed much from pin punching to electronic (
Ross Morrison at WOC). In fact when electronic punching came along IOF tightened the punching rule.

a lot of what they've done ...........but what do the DO for orienteering.

Mouse, you're starting to sound like John Cleese...

whatever you do dont talk about the war!

Back to where the discussion began.
But apart from world ranking points, quality international events, event standardisation, world championships, standardised mapping... what has the IOF done for us?
I just knew we'd end up here.

They enforce the neutral zone - you're right - we did get back here;-)

Maybe we need to start at a different point. What do you WANT IOF to do? Especially, what do you want that they are not doing now? What do YOU want from your international governing body?

Well one thing they really ought to do is sort out their web presence. Given all the push for IOF races to be media friendly and generate TV and online coverage it's ironic that the Federation website looks like a relic from the 1990s. Why no multimedia? Why are there virtually no news updates outwith WOC and the World Cups? Why are there not even links to the likes of World of O? Compare the IOF site with the likes of FIFA, IAAF or UCI and it's an embarrassment. I realise those organisations have larger budgets but there is clearly expertise in the O world to do MUCH better than what we have now.

I agree with paw. I'm fairly pleased with what the IOF is doing/has done. The things that have been mentioned above. Possibly with the exception of yearly WOCs.

But the website is indeed an embarrasment. Ridicilous terminology and slogans ("Foot-O", how the f*ck do you market something called that? "At one with nature", what nonsense), terrible layout, colors, menues, links etc. Ugh.

hahaha foot-o.

I hear the word foot-E on radio sports commentaries quite often.
Not much difference to foot-O.

Shep, MTB would not be the only case - here in NZ a small %age of those who participate in e.g. triathlon actually belong to the national body ... to answer your end question, if that were the case for O then I'm sure a similar (small) %age would be members of the federation; the reason is less to do with the perceived/real weaknesses of O federations, and more to do with how different sports are structured and organised.

Many activties we class as "sport" have a recreational component where casual participants have no reason to be involved in that sport's organisation ... you mention MTB, add cycling, running/jogging, tennis, golf etc etc. The thing with O - as you allude to - is even a casual participant can only (mostly) "participate" at an organised competition thanks to the need for a specially prepared map, a set course etc. Thus even semi-regular participants tend to get sucked into (I dont mean that in a negative way) our sport's structure by joining a club etc, because you're right, you cant just go out the door and do it when/where you want to (unlike going for a run, ride, swim ...)