Discussion: JWOC 2002 Results

Hi all.

The results from JWOC 2002, currently going on in Spain, are available at http://www.jwoc2002spain.org/index_results.htm

The highlights (for Americans) of the short races included Corinne Porter making the Girls' A Final, John Frederickson making the Boys' B Final, and Samantha Saeger finishing 7th in the Girls' B Final.
The classic race is next.

Maps from the short final are at:


http://www.jwoc2002spain.org/carreras/courses.htm

The terrain looks fun. The classic and relay are going to be in very different terrain.

Well... After looking at the results, the only thought that crossed my mind is: WE ARE SCREWED !!! And then, wait a second... How the heck did it happen ??? I guess we are jinxed, or may be.. no we are definitely SCREWED.

Sergey, what are you talking about?

I think Corinne’s run in the A-Final - short showed that was an accident, John is definitely is too exited, made tons of errors, needs international exposure. I liked results of Sue's classic run -
that would be a good run if she produced it without
someone's help. Ross is usual, Dan, John will have
to improve (and can improve)

Yeah, no qual after an 8th place by the same old 4 yrs ago, and countless "training" visits to Nordic countries. Speak about the proper training process. I'll get *t on my head for this, but can't we find someone a tad more qualified than c. Jeff? Just a thought.

Maps from the classic are at:


http://www.jwoc2002spain.org/carreras/courses_clas...

hi- thanks for the vote of confidence in us running over here (specifically referring to the ´we are screwed´ comment).

i had a really bad short qualies (it was a technical area and many runners took it out too fast and blew up and it was a tough place for relocating), short finals was better (sam did well on the b-finals), and i had my cleanest run ever on the classic. looking forward to the relay:) i´d write more but people are waiting for computers-

Vlad - how dare you??!!! Leave Samantha alone. Her 8th place still remains the best single American performance at any major O-competition, and not living up to such a high standard is nothing to be ashamed of. Worry about your own "training visits" to Europe.

As the US team´s leader at this year´s JWOC I can´t let these ill-timed, thoughtless comments go by this time. - I felt that Sergey´s likely well-intended, but hideously untactful email in the middle of last year´s WOC was bad enough; this year´s efforts, particularly where juniors are concerned, are inexcusable.
Firstly, let´s clear some facts up about this year´s U.S. JWOC team performance so far.
1. Zan´s run in the classic and Sam´s 7th in the B sbort final were world class performances. Zan´s classic time (and yes it was all her own work - check out the start lists and splits before making sweeping assertions) was right up there with the top nations´ juniors - and I´ve never seen such a densely packed high-quality field in a women´s JWOC final.
2. Zan, Sam´s and Ashley´s collective performances in the classic came close with that of the British team who are preparing under much more privileged conditions.
3. Sam finished ahead of both British athletes in her short race final. (As my home nation I feel I can make comparisons to the Brits!)
4. The U.S. had 2 women home in the classic before Austria (another team I am familiar with that has paid coaches and more funding) had one.
5. John is a remarkably mature orienteer for his age. If you want some idea of his commitment and composure, witness that he tore a shoe early on in the classic, but rather than giving up, continued barefoot on extremely rocky terrain, borrowed a new (albeit too large) shoe and ran most of the rest of his 10km course in boiling sunshine. He also put a lot of effort into his preparations by coming out to Europe early and training in Norway and Spain for several weeks.
6. Ross and Dan got ahead of several orienteers in the classic who I´m sure had better preparation opportunities.
7. The team´s attitude and motivation is impressive given the relatively little support the U.S. currently offers. They are all aiming for the top places and are making or are considering making long term commitments to orienteering. Consider Ashley for example, who, aged 18, has moved out to Sweden to go to university and improve her orienteering.

To progress and training in general: A few summer trips to Scandinavia are not like waving a magic wand over orienteering abilities. - Note the Brits have had junior Scandinavian summer tour programmes for 20 years and a lot more cash and have only recently started to see consistent performances at senior level. It takes a lot more than that. By the way, I believe that Joe´s trip to Finland a few summers ago with this present group of juniors is what inspired them to become serious orienteers.
Another very important point is that most other nations have had several good competition experiences in the months leading up to JWOC (O-festivalen, major relays, European youth match etc.) I think this is a major factor that holds the U.S. juniors back.

From my experience of leading the team this year I would say the U.S. is far from "screwed". Sergey, I appreciate that you may mean well in trying to shake up the powers that be into action, but messages like this on a forum that the juniors read (note they´ve been logging their training on this site prior to JWOC) are misplaced and not helpful. I would not want to be as cherlish as to suggest some good senior results would act as a fantastic incentive to upcoming juniors, but I think you know where I am going.
To you all, put your thinking caps on as to how the U.S can raise the money to support its orienteers rather than jump to defeatest criticism and thoughtless comments (above all right in the middle of JWOC!). How can the team ever hope to challenge for the top places with attitudes like that back home? So, how´s about a word of good luck for tomorrow´s relays?!

Hey,I said we screwed but not completely!!! Just seenig John's DNF in classic preliminary results almost threw me out of chair that how shocked I was at that moment. Yea shocked, because we all know and, you should too, how supportive we are of our Juniors. Although, it was absolutely right to criticize us for lack of verbal support( because the rest of us also screwed by not at least saying anything supportive on this site), I am going to say this.
One artist said talking about his ancle Sam that he was a heck of a talent in playing on guitar. But accident had happened and he lost his arm. But uncle Sam didn't give up and learned to play on guitar with only one arm. But in another accidend he lost his other arm, and even then Sam didn't give up and learned how to no guitar with legs. It happend that Sam lost his leg, but even than he learned how to play with other leg. And as such: NO MATTER WHAT THIS GUYS ARE GOING TO WIN EVEN ON THEIR BAREFOOTS!!!.
p.s. we never gave up and never will because we are orienteers!!!

To protect The First Amendment - we can say what we want, criticizing or supportive, and no one to tell us what we can or can not
say.
Second and most important - If JWOC is your most important race of the year
you shell not read on internet what some old farts have to say about your performance, but concentrate on the races - your own
performance and team spirit and results.

To protect coach Jeff: before him we did not have a junior team community like we have now, and not too many orienteers in this
country, to be exact none, are willing to spent as much time and effort to help this wonderful group of kids grow up to be a real
team as they are right now. You can even see continuity now: with Kenny and Boris departing from from this team to face us (ugly
old guys) in races, this team is no less than it was four or two ears ago. Thanks to Jeff.

As far as technical aspect of junior team training Jeff is always open to listen,
but it's us (Vlad, you including) who are to help with this - need input.

Relay results: outstanding!!!
I can imagine who much they screamed seeing Suzanne, coming out from the woods in leading pack - good job everybody,
definitely best ever for US in JWOC Relays
Greg Balter

Boris: Unlike JWOC Team members, I was not chosen to represent the US or any other nation at any race I ran. I do not receive any money to travel or compete, however small the amounts may be, except for the Team Admin entry fees for a couple of World Cups I've been to.

I am one of USOF members who contributes money to the Teams. Given that the Junior Team efforts are publicly supported (I do know that this support is only a small portion of what is really needed), I feel that I have a right to question in an open forum whether the training process for the races has been adequate. There is a Junior Team coach whose responsibility is to organize and coordinate the process.

Sure, there is a different junior community now compared to what was around 10 years ago. From those times, we have James who sometimes qualifies for the WOC finals. No ex-junior since James has qualified for the WOC finals (Eirik Moe trained in Norway as a junior). Time will show if anyone of the current crop is going to perform
well as an adult. After all, the main goal of junior
competition is to prepare the athlete for the much more intense and demanding adult races. Training for junior competition should be directed at this goal.

Given all of this, I cannot agree with the way the
Junior Team's training is organized. I've been following the juniors' reports from training camps and trips to Europe closely for the past few years. It seems to me that there is much more emphasis on getting the gang together, travelling, and having a good time, than there is on serious training. This doesn't apply to the older guys (Kenny, Boris, & Co.) who seem to have figured out what to do by some point.

One can set goals of any level for oneself, but without proper training, they aren't going to be reachable. Yes, it is important to have a good time while you're doing things. One also shouldn't push young athletes beyond their limits. Looking at the training logs of the few juniors on AttackPoint, I can't see how anyone can complain of pushing him/herself or being pushed beyond limits, especially compared to the logs of the few
non-US juniors. It seems to me that the level of the
results I am seeing at the JWOC is appropriate for
the training that has been put in. The fact that someone may have achieved something while better-trained athletes from other countries didn't do as well doesn't mean much. They'll get what they worked for next time.

Back to the goal, that of preparing juniors for adult
competition. How much preparation does a trip to JWOC or a couple of Scandinavian O-weeks really carry? It seems to me that those trips aren't proper places and times to teach orienteering. Juniors should do the bulk of training at home, with local clubs, and should attend training camps held regularly in their areas. (It's hard to argue that putting on training camps is more work or money than chaperoning a bunch of kids around Europe, on an intense schedule.) The emphasis with the camps should not be on the party get-together
thing, but on O-technique training. After all, there are many terrain types available in the US, close to major metro areas, to prepare well for European competition. If someone goes out at JWOC, gets lost, and says "I have never seen terrain type X in my life" as an excuse, that's bad. It means that the athlete and the coach did not do the homework.

There is also much to be said about running training
which tends to get neglected among US orienteers, both juniors and adults. There is a great deal of confidence and efficiency that can be achieved if one is physically well fit. I don't see much understanding of the proper running training exercises among orienteers; it is so much more paradoxical because the US has a great tradition and a wealth of available knowledge in track and cross-country. If you are going to live in Sweden every summer, but you don't do the base running and speed work during winter and spring, the outcome of your visits will be that you may
become a much better orienteer technically, but you will still be slow.

Oh, and finally: I don't think mediocre performances
should be called anything other than that. Said performer may feel free to get offended and never talk to me again. I won't mind. I'll call a great race when I see one. Sam's 8th place was one. It showed that she was at least physically fit to be among the world's best, and that with being 2-3 years younger than most. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if the same can be said of any of the
current JWOC Team members. If we could claim to be so far behind the world that we had nothing to be proud of other than incremental progress in the B- and C-finals, then I'd cheer up on such progress. But we had (and may still have) an athlete worthy of world-class performance.It would be very sad if such talent were not to develop good results as an adult.

Also, please note that I am in no way blaming, criticizing, trying to disappoint, or demoralize the juniors themselves. There aren't almost any people under 21 who are capable of setting a clear and achievable athletic goal, devising a plan to get there, and following through on the plan. They need qualified help and supervision to make these things happen.

All I'm trying to say is that the present coaching efforts do not seem to me to have content that would help the very talented, inspired, and enthusiastic juniors reach the high goals they've chosen.

So, here's more insane boring drivel from an old fat ugly russky guy. This war and peace may be ultra-long but hopefully the arguments won't be accused of being thoughtless. It is obvious that it is best for an athlete, junior or adult, to have a personal coach who would spend time working one-on-one with the athlete. It's the ideal situation. Nobody in the States has such luxury. What we have to deal with is gathering bits and pieces of information on training and competition, processing them with our own brains, deciding whether this would work, making plans, following through, and sometimes not; only occasionally getting feedback from people who seem to know better. And you know what: the
majority of the elite athletes you see at the World Cups and the WOC are the same way, too. They have made it all work. We have to learn how. And if we want to, we have to apply some critical thinking; to decide whether the cause would have the desired effect, to make mistakes and learn from them.

I personally am a mediocre orienteer at best. I'm the first one to say that. I was a promising junior at one point, in a galaxy far away. What made the kids around me improve, in some cases to become world-class athletes, is that they sought coaching guidance and learned from such. I learned from my own mistakes, eventually. I still can't claim to have mastered orienteering to a point that I would feel qualified to coach anyone in it.

During the past years, we in USOF went from essentially no junior Team to a point where we have a group of enthusiastic kids and parents who enjoy each other's company and travel yearly to JWOCs and Scandinavian events. It is mostly coach Jeff's work; it has been a lot of effort, and as a result, we have this wonderful community. Team spirit is great; we at the "senior" O-Team lack it big time. It is an essential ingredient in any non-individual endeavour. What I think is missing is the proper content of the endeavour itself. Let me try to explain.

I think the proper goal of juinior training is to educate the young orienteers and to prepare them for adult competition. What I have seen in the recent years is a group of young orienteers who spent time at A-meets and training camps largely in the company of other kids. The Junior Team are a fun and friendly bunch. Just like at school or in college, you spend most of your time around other kids like yourself. Except at school and in college, you get instruction from teachers and professors. Notice that there are usually many teachers in different subjects because nobody can be proficient in all things. An ideal orienteering coach does not exist, either. Some "older folks" will know tons about psychology, for example, but may not be as skilled in route choice analysis or planning for proper interval workouts.

Say I look at I a typical finish line at an A-meet at which the Junior Team has some scheduled activity. Young orienteers would finish their courses and socialize, then they'd pack up, then go to the event dinner, then for some ice cream or stuff, and crash in someone's barn for the night. What I don't see (but I've seen plenty in other countries) is kids finishing and then going out on a part of the course they made mistakes at. The controls may be packed up, the finish staff gone, but there'd be an adult for supervision, and the young athlete would go out with the map and try to make sense of the mistakes s/he made. As a rule, I don't see kids at the event dinner glued to their maps doing route analysis. And what I'm most concerned about is I don't see any juniors trying to actively learn from adults who run the same courses as them, in a better time. (Even John F gets beat on Red every once in a while!) Usually there was someone who did the stuff better, has more experience, and could share much of life's wisdom with the eager junior. Ask us. We old people usually don't bite.

The impression I get from observing this is that the kids in the Junior Team, and supervising adults, are primarily concerned about having fun. It's a great objective to have in order get a kid hooked up and excited about O. But in order to help an advanced junior achieve a respectable task, such as consistently qualifying for the 60 best at the WOC, this won't work. The junior, and the adults interested in the junior's O-improvement, should seek advice from older folks, sometimes critically analyze it, and follow up on the recommendations. I'm not suggesting that anyone should replace Jeff as the Junior Team coach. Jeff is doing great organizational work, and I don't think there is anyone willing to take over the bulk of the responsibilities. People usually won't come forward and say "I want to guide the juniors in what concerns X area of expertise." But a lot will help if
asked.

Contrary to what one may believe, there is considerable orienteering expertise in USOF. Generally, us senior Team folks tend to get better (and uglier) with age, until a certain point. We won't be as good as the world's elite, but there are people who win their age categories at World Masters' Champs, people who qualify for the WOC finals, and some imports from other places who spent considerable time teaching orienteering professionally. It will pay off dramatically to pick those folks' brains. You have to ask. For example, coach Stanislav won't work with anyone personally, but he is always excited about setting up and planing proper exercises for training camps. If one were to plan 6-8 months in advance, I'm sure it's possible to get Stanislav out to almost any location to work with a group of enthusiastic kids for 3-5 days, possibly several times a year. Stanislav worked with Mamleev for a couple of years, so he has to know a thing or two about coaching juniors. (Mamleev is currently 7th in World Cup standings.) Another example: there is a Dr. Peter Snell in NTOA. He must know a thing or two about proper running training. He may not be interested in sharing the expertise, after all; I never asked. But I don't think he'll bite if you do. There are Joe and Pavlina who have seen it all, been everywhere, achieved the most of what currently seems possible for a North American athlete, and even have kids of their own. The list can have several more entries.

Another thing that gets me upset and thinking that someone isn't as serious as need be is the courses that advanced juniors run in competition. The proper US course for an advanced junior, that is, for someone who can read the map while running, trains several hours per week, and wants to do international competition, is Blue for males, Red for females. Maybe not both days of a weekend A-meet on Blue, but at least a day. The US course/class system is already at least a notch below anywhere else in the world. The juniors who run their "proper" age course shortchange themselves; they don't get the competition with many more people who can do it better and who the juniors can learn from. We all know what the course length is at JWOC. An advanced junior should train at that level (and use A-meets primarily for training at that level). You most likely won't get overtrained or injured; the rest of the world does it.

Anyway, so you all know now that Vladimir is no fun (as if that needed further proof). Course re-runs and route analysis instead of ice cream. Yuck.

Juniors on Red and Blue, boy that sounds right. I remember myself, while still being a junior, running the same courses as my trainer did and then compare the route choices and analysing the mistakes. Vlad is right, that may be the future for the JWOC. But running adults' couses is not all. Just the lack of personal trainers should not preclude these guys from approaching us, older guys, in order to being helped with analysing the run courses.
In addition a physical preparation must not be negleted. Judging my own phisical shape I can see a dramatic improvement since the last July when I first began to run again after the break of 5 years, thanks all to hard work that I do besides running at O-meets.
Add two of these together, and just you may witness a little miracle some day.

Vladimir and Sergey,
Thank you so much for bringing all this to the discussion table. We have to do something especially about junior O at the USA. It is in such bad state that I am afraid I have to be qualified for WOCs for another 10 years or so (grin)! Although I am afraid we are talking into "empty well". What do you think about moving to the ONA pages and make these concerns and recommendations available to wider public? Regular contribution from the wise ones may be that first push that will start moving O in this country in the right direction (right now it is moving toward the stagnation as diminishing number of A meet participants indicates).
Sergey

Sergey could you elaborate on what ONA pages are?

ONA is Orienteering in North America magazine that is part of your USOF membership. It gets distributed to all USOF members and gets much attention. I think the magazine would be appropriate place to discuss the issue.

Yeap. I agree.