Discussion: North American Orienteering Champs

A quick reminder that registration for the 2006 NAOC closes in just one week. September 21st at 6pm (eastern time). No entries will be permitted after the deadline.
http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof

Course notes and additional race information will be posted on the web site in the week leading up to the races.

Check the web site for regular updates. An update to the terrain desciption on the web site was recently made including posting this new map clip: http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof/webmap.jpg

Nice terrain! Looks like I'll be getting more hours for my $ than I expected.

I'm looking forward to it.

Where are the top American elite women?

Map comparison time:

Rocky Ridge (2006) North American Champs (training area)http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof/rrtrain.jpg

Hilton Falls (1978) Canadian Champs
http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof/hiltonold.JPG

Wow the mapping standards have changed!
Can't wait to get confused by all the limestone pavement!

If this isn't a fair 'before competition' question, just say so and I will wait for the photos and the Model Event.

"Limestone pavement" sounds like "bare rock" except you suggest it might be hard running.
I am curious as to the difference that necessitates using an alternate symbol, grey dot screen.

Long Course 5: 6.4K, 10 controls - that will definitely be the longest 'average leg length' I have ever run. Sounds like a great and fun challenge!

In my experience, the surface of limestone pavement is un even, with large vertical cracks. I find that it takes more attention to run over.

I will put some photos up tonight but they aren't that good (almost every day I have been up there in the last few weeks it has been raining so the photos are dark).

Anyway Jim is correct. it is uneven with cracks and bumps and requires as he says a lot of attention while running on it. They are also low to the ground and in places covered in moss so sometimes hard to see. So hard to use as a navigational aid but useful to know where it is since it will slow you down.

Why does it necessitate a different symbol? Well it isn't bare rock because trees grow out of the rock and since bare rock is a screen symbol that wouldn't work (grey and green could not be shown together). Certainly the rocky ground symbol would work but we felt that the 'shape' of the limestone pavement was useful to show which is hard to capture with the dots of the rocky ground symbol. Also we wanted to distinguish between a) limestone pavement, b) rocky ground and c) boulder field (as described on the web site).

re: the long course. Yes it was certainly enjoyable finally being able to set a true middle and long distance course and we hope you enjoy racing them.

That helps a lot - thanks.

Are they anything like the limestone at Thatcher SP? I recall sections of ankle breaking, forested, flat, moss covered rock that was very slow.

No, it's actually nicer than Thatcher - not as dangerous - from what I recall anyway.

I'll second that, but not vastly better. Still watch your feet on the various kinds of rock (stony ground, which is sharp, limestone pavement, which can be a bit tricky sometimes, boulders and cliffs, which are often in a bunch of stony ground.

The limestone pavement at Rocky Ridge is very often in the form of small areas raised a few metres above the surrounding forest floor. These areas are clearly visible and are often a great aid to navigation.

>stony ground, which is sharp
No the stony ground is not sharp - it is usually quite well rounded. Today was another dark day in the forest so I still don't have photos good enough to put on the web site.

A few new photos...
http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof/photos.htm

Are the trees really looking that bare?

>Are the trees really looking that bare?
YOu are probably referring to the pic 2nd from the bottom. No that photo was taken in spring (notice the trillium flowers). The picture taken this week is the limestone pavement one. Most leaves are still on the trees. Some saplings have lost their leaves. Autumn is about a week to a week and a half behind normal throughout Ontario at the moment.

Note that if you wish to change the federation that you're running for at NAOC for world ranking purposes, you need to contact the address below before the event. (Otherwise, the change won't happen until the next world ranking event you run in.)

wre_corrections@6prog.org

Also, if you haven't been ranked before, and will run on an elite course (such as at the Sprint), you should tell the organizers your nationality, if you're not sure if they know it. (Presumably at "barbrich at ca.inter.net" )

Quoting the world ranking page:

"The Ranking System Identifier is allocated the first time an athlete takes part in a WRE. If event organisers do not supply the nationality, 6prog will assume the nationality of the athlete's club, or of athletes with identically spelt surnames. In the absence of any other information, 6prog will assume that the athlete's first WRE is in their home federation.

If an athlete wishes to represent another federation - for example having dual nationality, please send eMail. The allocated identifier will not be changed until the next time the athlete competes, and all previous runs will then be listed under the new federation (including Relay runs)."

Yes, if NAOC will be your first WRE event, and if you wish to represent a different federation from the one you registered under, please let me know at barbrich AT ca.inter.net.

Remember that even 35-44's (and the 17-19's) will be on the elite course, and will be world-ranked, for the Sprint, so this may include more of you than you realize. (Even IOF contact for world rankings David May reports being surprised at being world ranked for running M55 at a local event that was a WRE, where just as at NAOC, the organizers had put several categories on the elite course, in order to be able to report them all as elite category for rankings purposes. (But this is legit, as he and Vlad, the Controller, have pointed out, and will be happening for the NAOC Sprint. Just not M45 anymore as Mike recently posted.)) So make sure your federation is known if you care.

North American Champs Update!

Over 350 participants will participate in this year's NAOC in Hamilton/Milton including a great field in the World Ranking Events. Registration is closed and the start lists will be posted before the end of this week. Some recent updates have been added to the web site including driving directions, a diagram showing the layout of the sprint, middle and long distance finish lines and a revised schedule. The only main change to the schedule is the time of the sprint training and sprint race. Due to an unusual amount of construction on the McMaster campus we have moved the first start to 4:30pm.

NAOC start lists are now online.
http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof

Priority Seating!!

"Have a seat on us"
GHO has expanded our priority seating opportunity to all 350 participants. What is it? Well we have put together a nice finish line atmosphere with a kid’s zone, washrooms (with changing facility inside), BBQ area and music with announcer among other things. We have also ordered beautiful sunshine and some nice fall colours. All we need are the people at the finish line to make the race more enjoyable and exciting. So GHO is giving all participants a FREE fold up chair for you to keep! (Sorry, we don’t have chairs for non-participants) Come by the registration tent from 8 to 11am on the middle or long distance day and pick up your chair. Not going to be around those days? Send somebody else to pick it up for you. Let's make the atmosphere at the finish line a great one - so bring your stuff from your car, get your chair and have a seat on us.

---final race info coming very soon.

Sounds awesome Hammer. Are the predicted winning times posted anywhere?

Wow, the Men Elite will be hitting 81 controls over the 4 days. Now that's how I define and awesome weekend!

ok guys, so I procrastinated, and RRR tell me their accomodation is full, unless I'm a single female, that is. any suggestions?

Hormones?

scissors?

Try a wig and silicone.

Predicted winning times are within the range reported by IOF for M/F Elite classes.

the chairs are available only after the sprint ( saturday or sunday only ?? ), so for sprint bring your own ?

Yes that is correct Nick

looks like I'm set, thanks all. actually maybe that's a good way to get help NA get more WRE points in the F-Elite.

Are they gonna make us pee in a bottle after the events? If not I'm getting a ringer run for me ;-)

I also procrastinated, and I only need accommodation for Saturday night (driving from Rochester Saturday morning and going back Sunday night) - anyone with space in a room some place?

Quick update....
The weather for the weekend looks tremendous. Highs of 13-19 and sunny for each day of the NAOC races - perfect for running. However, the weather the last 2 days has been very wet. The McMaster campus has many large (and some deep) puddles. While it is possible it will dry up in the next 48 hours you might want to take that into cosideration when choosing footwear (again no metal studs or spikes are permitted).

There is a lot of construction on the Mcmaster campus and the athletics facility renovation is still not complete. We were hoping to be able to use this facility but it is still not officially open. As such we do not have access to changing rooms. There are a few washrooms close to the sprint registration area but it might be easier to arrive 'ready to run'. The awards for the sprint will now take place on Saturday afternoon following the middle distance.

The south and southeast portion of the McMaster campus (see map linked below) are no longer under a "training with map" embargo. This is the sprint training area. Here is a link to the map.

http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof/mactrain.jpg

** NOTE: The entire campus (including) the area shown in the link is, however, embargoed from 2-3:15PM on race day. Also, controls 3,4, 5 and 6 are out-of-bounds from 4:30 to 6:30pm. People are welcome to warm-up/ cool down in the areas surrounding controls 1,2 & 7 from 4:30-6:30pm

A late note—I cannot be at the North Americans because the United States government no longer allows me to come back into the States^(*) without a six-week security check. This was in play when I signed up for advising the WRE; however, the work around the situation can no longer be done. The WRE status of course still stands, and I have high confidence in GHO's capability to put together a fine event.

^(*)I'm not the only one, nationals of "friendly" countries are not exempt, and all you have to do to deserve this is to study most kinds of science as an undergraduate.

Why would you want to go back anyway??

Ouch, that's below the belt. We've all had unpopular governments but it doesn't mean that we should trash the whole country. Besides, at least half the people who use this site are americans who might feel a bit slighted by such a comment.

Nah, we can take a good ribbing. Humorlessness does not percolate down to the plebians.

OK then. I cheerfully withdraw my earlier statement and would like to point out that I too plan to surround myself with absurd security measures designed to further isolate myself form contact with the outside world and all the evil it contains, particularly undergraduate level scientists and map nerds.

Quite right too.

As a Brit, I'll be available to loyally carry the bags of all US citizens all weekend. Alternatively to stand slightly behind you looking sheepish, and nodding in agreement as you speak.

Here are the (very) unofficial results from the NOAC Sprint in Hamilton.

1. Katarina Smith
2. Louise Oram
3. Samantha Saeger

1. Patrick Goeres
2. Hans Fransson
3. Mike Smith & Thomas Nipen (tied?)

(sorry for any mistakes or misspelled names)

The course was a fast campus sprint, making awesome use of the map and included lots of very good route choice legs.

Results coming soon (above is correct).
Here are the maps (1:5,000)

M-Elite (3.1)
http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof/NAOCMSprint.jpg

F-Elite (2.7)
http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof/NAOCFSprint.jpg

Results are here:
http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof/results.htm



Unofficial Bjorn Kjellstrom Standings after sprint:

CANADA
Men: 66, Women: 63, TOTAL: 129

USA
Men: 30, Women: 32, TOTAL: 62

Some Sprint Photos
High-res photos available if you click through.

The courses were really interesting and fast.

Mike Minium thinks this might be the first time in orienteering history that a connection line between controls went directly through a nuclear reactor.

And JJ wore pajamas. No---really---pajamas.

Middle distance results--

F21 -- Katta Smith, Pavlina Brautigam, Angelica Riley
M21 -- John Fredrickson, William Hawkins, Brian May

USA took both the men's and women's competitions for the BK Cup, though by narrow margins. So it stands Canada 1, USA 1 with 1 day to go.

BTW - it was awesome to have results online so fast - we could compare splits in the hotel room in the evening of the Sprint - an event where people were still starting at 6pm!

Results from today's middle distance (including maps) are here:

http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof/results.htm

Unofficial Bjorn Kjellstrom Standings after middle:

CANADA
Men: 48, Women: 51, Subtot: 99, TOT: 228

USA
Men: 57, Women: 54, Subtot: 111, TOT: 173

Some Middle Photos.
High-res photos available if you click through.

I appreciate the results getting up on the web so fast!

Yes--thanks for the great updates on results and photos!

NAOC Long course.

M21: Wil Smith, Mike Smith, John Fredrickson
F21: Katta Smith, Pam James, Saanatha Saeger

Canada won today's edition of the BK Cup, plus the overall.

A fine event hosted by GHO!

Some Long Photos.
High-res photos available if you click through.

I had a low-percentage shot today, so I had a lot of blurry and over/under exposed photos.

Sprint event is available in RouteGadget. Go draw your routes...
rg.orienteering.ca

Results from today's long distance are here:

http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof/results.htm

Final Bjorn Kjellstrom Standings

CANADA
Men: 63, Women: 60, Subtot: 123, TOT: 351

USA
Men: 42, Women: 43, Subtot: 85, TOT: 258

Route Gadget to follow shortly for middle and long.

Some pics, mostly from control #53 and #202 on the long day (course 8 #1 and #20). Lighting was dubious, as are the pics.

Middle and long (courses 5-8 only so far) courses are on the rg.orienteering.ca Route Gadget site. Link from here:
http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof/results.htm

Orienteering is Fun!!!

Some pics from the NAOC sprint. These are all the photos I managed to take this weekend. Randy got some nice ones at the long distance race.

It looks like only those registered in 20-34 were awarded world ranking points after all? (Earlier, it was indicated that all running the elite course, including 35 and 17-19, would be listed in the results reported to the IOF for world ranking purposes.)

Note that the country rankings of US and Canada (and individual rankings of some of the better North Am orienteers) jumped up a bunch after NAOC. Canadian women 19th; Canadian men and American mean and women 23rd or 24th. And that with much of the top twenty still with just one, two or three runs.

I contacted IOF about the mistake in the sprint WR points allotment 2 days ago. I have received no response from them yet.

Mike you have to contact Ray Barnes. he's the main programmer.. yeah and Hans might switch ( ask) to CAN instead of SWE ( the swedes are doing fine anyway, while Hans's points might bump us a bit higher ).

Thanks to the many people in the Attack Point community for coming to this race. It was a lot of fun to have you there and WOW what wonderful weather. The forecast for this week? Showers, rain, rain and then possible flurries...

>Mike you have to contact Ray Barnes. he's the main programmer.. yeah and Hans might switch ( ask) to CAN instead of SWE ( the swedes are doing fine anyway, while Hans's points might bump us a bit higher ).

Nick, yes it was Ray I emailed so hopefully this will be worked out shortly. Hans looks really good in the Maple Leaf - almost as good as Sundin does.

Thank you so much, Hammer and the rest of the GHO crew for an outstanding few days of orienteering! Not only were the courses interesting and challenging--certainly worthy of a North American Championship--but also the logistical details were well thought out, smoothly running, and convenient. Thanks, also, to Vladimir Gusiatnikov for his valuable work as event consultant and to Rocky Ridge Ranch for their embracing hospitality as they housed and fed us and hosted the finish for the middle and long races. This NAOC set a high but achievable standard for other high profile North American events to work toward, with the great finish arena atmosphere (complete with good music and gift tripod chairs for spectating) to complement the excellent map and courses in the forest.

It was truly a superb event in every regard. I hope that many future meet directors were there to take note of all the little things GHO did to make the event bigger and better than the average North American meet.

Likewise. I enjoyed it a great deal. Thanks to the whole crew.

First dittoes on all the compliments on course, map, and lodging!!!!!!!

Second, Swiss 19-year old Alexander G whom I picked up in Buffalo really enjoyed hanging out with Ross, Fraser, Carol, John, and all you young guys - you made him feel very welcome.

On Sunday, all advanced courses had 1 (or 2) uber-long legs. (uber is German for over 2K) On course 5, I felt that #7-8 was one of the best designed long legs that I have personally encountered! (Of course, veteran Red and Blue orienteers have encountered a lot more long legs than I have on Green.) First, there was no "80% trail run, then orienteer the rest" option. Second, this single leg required multiple skills: rough bearing, trail run, dense trail network. Third, for the 'major' route choice both 'just right of Red line' and 'well left of Red line' were very feasible (others?). But each major route choice required numerous intermediate route choices. I went right of Red line (which I still like), but noticed that I ignored two efficient 200+ m trail options along that way. The exhaustion of swamps and trail run paid its toll at end of leg. I was too drained to slow down and concentrate as I entered the dense trail network and paid a 3-4 penalty. Then Lady Luck blessed me. Stopped at a trail junction, I saw a huge deciduous tree. "Wow, that is sure distinct". Hmm, Walter S mentioned that Saturday. Wow, map shows two distinct trees - "There's #2 - wow!" And back to #8, carefully.

In summary, great leg! I ran it without disastrous loss of time; but certainly could execute it more cleanly!

I just took a seocnd look at the map clip that Hammer started this topic with (oh so long ago):
http://www.dontgetlost.ca/glof/webmap.jpg

I'm sure glad that I studied it! It contains Controls 2, 3, 4, and 5 of my Middle Distance Course 5! (Of course, I did not recognize that on the map, in the field, or when studying my courses!)

Just want to echo the Thanks to Jim, Mike, Mark, Barb and all the others at GHO who contributed to the North American Champs. It was a great weekend of racing. Maps and courses were excellent. The attention to detail was top-notch and well-appreciated. From the essentials (i.e., good maps, controls in correct location) to the not-so-essentials (i.e., chairs for all participants!), it is clear that the club had everything under control from start to finish.

Having said that, the greatest reward of the weekend was getting to compete against one of the deepest North American fields I can ever remember. With the hyping up of the North Americans as "Regional Championship" event, the USA/Canada Bjorn-Kjellstrom trash-talk, plus the new-found emphasis on WREs, it felt like an important event, as it absolutely should. The level of competition was great and provides excellent motivation as I contemplate my next few months of training.

I'll add to the positive comments about the weekend. I have to say that there was a sense of calm and an attitude of "we've got things under control". Maybe there were some behind-the-scenes glitches, but I wasn't aware of any. Everything was so smooth and well organized that it was like being pampered. Which was important for a weekend filled with challenging orienteering and tough competition!

Great events! And I really liked seeing a couple of the extras, like the "awards" given to all M-12 and F-12 participants, and the bottles of wine given to all adult finishers at Monday's Wine-O. Oh, and the chairs! Those extras were all really nice, but the important thing - challenging, well-designed courses in interesting terrain was also excellent. A first-class event!

Does someone have a link to the World Rankings points for the NAOCs? I didn't notice a link from the results pages, but maybe I just missed it.

I actually didn't do anything worth crediting. The GHO crew was more competent than I.

>Does someone have a link to the World Rankings points for the NAOCs? I didn't notice a link from the results pages, but maybe I just missed it.

A link has been added in our results section now.

Our entire family and friends enjoyed this past weekend at NAOC very much. Wonderful weather, detailed organization, challenging courses, highly competitive atmosphere made it memorable event.

Thank you Mike and all the NAOC organizers for your hard work and soul!

For a good chuckle, here is the tracking from my Forerunner 205 for my middle "adventure". :) I did not find #5 after either pass and bailed from there.

In the long/classic, I settled down after #1, and had my only other major error going into #8, and taking a poor route to #9.

Looks like you followed me on the medium.

Just wanted to point out that while I think we proved basic competency in most areas, Valerie demonstrated not only great depth of SI knowledge but also an extraordinary level of commitment and good neighbourliness. We did have some "behind the scenes" glitches, all with the SI equipment, and Valerie literally spent hours helping us out. (Actually it was kinda hard to get rid of her :) )
Thanks again Valerie!!

My thanks to GHO for making my first Canadian event a very fine one indeed.

Ahh, Mark, you make me blush - I truely enjoyed helping out - obviously. :)

Another good chuckle: have you heard of the blond that forgot to clear her SI until before the long distance and then proceeded to use the border around the map as a north line? Or the other blond that got lost, got to one of her controls but didn't think to look if it was one of hers? Such blonds are dangerous for the sport and should not be allowed alone out there without a shadow - or is it eye shadow and a mirror?

I see that IOF still has not added the M 35's to the WRE page for the Sprint. I sure hope they get their act together... I would simply have entered M-21+ instead of M35+ if I had thought there was any chance they weren't going to count it. Anyone heard anything else new about this issue yet?

>>>Such blonds are dangerous for the sport and should not be allowed alone out there without a shadow
On Saturday, in the middle distance this shadow might as well have been blond, too.

>>or is it eye shadow and a mirror?

So *that's* why it took you so long to catch me... You knew there were photographers ahead.

Captain Bellini, you see right through me!

Ooh, it even looks good in writing!

Few more pictures are posted here. As usually, drop me e-mail if you need a higher resolution (3-4MB).

What results were sent to the IOF/6prog for the world rankings? Was it a single list of the whole course, or separate lists for each category?

BTW, those of us who stuck around for Monday's Wine-O enjoyed some nice orienteering there too, on a new map that was much more runnable and open than Rocky Ridge. Nice job, Hans and friends!

>What results were sent to the IOF/6prog for the world rankings?

None, IOF calculated the points once the results went up on the NAOC web site.


This may interest the map geeks among us (myself included).

http://waddsquad.blogspot.com/2006/10/30th-oriente...

I would like to echo the other positive comments about the races - it will be a hard act to follow, for any Canadain club putting on a championship race in the future. But Saskatchewan is looking good for 2007......

Mike , Vlad !
is any chance that the results for sprint ( by course not by class ) it will be considered for WRE ? it will make a difference in some people rankings( maybe even countries placings).

They MUST include F/M35 and whoever else ran their age category on the same courses. We all registered that way "in good faith" on the word from the IOF rep that it would be so. How can they not? (esp. given the recent situation re. awarding WRE points in the Swiss races - 'exceptional circumstances'.)

Appearently if we lived in Switzerland this problem would already be fixed...

I don't think you understand that the IOF often changes the results incorporated in the rankings when official results appear. They harvest unofficial results off the web in an attempt to keep up to date, but they then incorporate official results when they arrive. I'm sure this situation is fixable. Whether you want it fixed is another question, and I'd claim it will make the problem in the next paragraph even worse than before.

Incidentally, the points are kind of disappointing, and that is hard to fix. The problem is that the standard deviation of North American runners' scores is unrealistically small, partly because so many scores were gained in the sprint on Friday. A 1000-point performance in the middle on Saturday in M21 would have required a time of 26:21, a 1200-point performance would have needed around 16:35, and 1400 would have required 6:49. In the long, 1000 needed 71:15, 1200 needed about 44:40, and 1400 needed about 18:04.* Clearly these are ridiculous. So if in future you want high individual scores and not lots of scores, you might want to consider not having rankings mostly earned on sprints, where the standard deviation of points earned is low. Now that this is the situation with the ranking distribution in North America, it's likely to continue for a long time, unfortunately - an 1000 in North America is now a lot harder to earn than an 1000 in Europe.

* = These are what an additional previously unranked runner would have needed. The calculation is a little different if we change the time of someone who was already in the race, but not much, and the change is probably for the worse.

Another example to show the situation is silly: if Katta had scored the same scores in the men's races that she did in the women's races, she would have run 17:57 in the middle. What's worse, she scored about 170 points less on Sunday that Saturday, and the main reason is that the addition of more low scores from Saturday reduced the average ranking of the ranked women as the number of ranked women increased from 5 to 8 (the other reason is that lots of women ran badly on Saturday and that increases the scores of those that ran well). So even to achieve on Sunday the same score she achieved on Saturday, Katta would have had to run 61:59.

Stupid question. You seem to have more than infered how the IOF ranking scheme works. Are you using the actual algorithm? Is it posted somewhere?

Here is a question (not being a mathematician...)- will the WRE points awarded for the Saturday and Sunday events change if (when?) the points for the Friday sprint are changed?

My understanding of the rankings system is that the points won't change, because none of the currently un-ranked runners in the sprint had ranking points before, so no one else's points will change. And, since those people didn't run the WRE classes the next two days, no change in those events, either.

Actually, some of them did run elite classes on Saturday and maybe Sunday but not on Friday since it was announced that they didn't have to to be part of the WRE. In principle, fixing Friday should force a recalculation of points for Saturday and Sunday, though I doubt if anyone could say for sure how that would affect those points without actually running the numbers (or having experience with similar situations in the past).

I believe all the relevant formulae are easily accessible on the WRE web site.

I know Spike, Joe, Nick, and I did, so that would change the points (very little). I don't think the women's points would change, other than, as with the men, more people getting points.

Details of WRE

Whoops, so there were people who ran elite classes on Sat and Sun but not Fri? That does mean that Sat and Sun numbers could change, but my hunch is not by much.

Thanks. I guess feet may not be as big of a genius as I thought when I gave him credit for reverse engineering the top secret WRE black box. And I am likely less--espcially as I didn't figure out how to find a web page.

The only way for NA elites to get good WRE points is to compete against world elites, preferably at WOCs and WCs where you get extra multiplication factor.

Or stage schemes where selected few would be allowed to win with big margins :)

Yes, agreed that the change will be small. My guess (too lazy to check) is

j-man, the WRE scores are linear in times if the number of ranked runners is at least 20, so you actually don't need to know anything more than linear extrapolation / regression to do the men's scores. (Different fomulae apply for small fields; for less than 10 ranked runners in the field, only the mean time matters, and this is the source of the problem - the small standard deviation of Friday's times led the 'small number of ranked runners' system to impute that all North American male orienteers are about as good as each other, so that when the standard deviation of times is larger on Saturday and Sunday, it must be because big differences in times don't mean much.)

BTW, the big magic formula on the page directly linked to by PG is only used if there are 20+ Ranked runners entering the race (never the case last weekend.)

http://www.orienteering.org/footo/spec2001.htm has details on the little hacks they use when there are <10, or 10 to 20 'Ranked' runners. (Then <10 case boils down basically to 10% less time than average ranked runner in the race => 180 points more than average ranked runner in the race (assuming ~800 points for the average ranked runner entering).)

Wyatt, read my previous post. And note that there were >20 ranked runners in the men's field for Saturday and Sunday because of Friday's race producing rankings for lots of runners.

Thanks -- I never really bothered to look at this before. I had thought that the points awarded were not linear, although I did believe that the sd was incorporated somewhere.

I recalculated the scores for Saturday assuming that Friday's race had not yet been run. In that case only eight ranked runners from Friday entered and finished within 50% of the winner and so the small number ranking scheme applies, so you can compute your own 'would have been' score according to
score = 2600 - (race time in seconds)*0.8438 (roughly)

That gives at the top:
John Frederickson, 1110
William Hawkins 1066
Brian May 1013
Wil Smith 972
...

Case rested.

(OK, I just realised I didn't check for the rankings of those who ran M21 on Saturday but not on Friday, so these scores are very slightly off, but not by much.)

We need officially void NAOC sprint WRE results?

Would it be more beneficial for our countries to include more runners results, or to boost the individual point scores? I personally don't give a crap about my world ranking, but I do care about my country's ranking because it may determine whether or not I will be able to compete in future World Cups or even WOCs.

Oh, and before we forget about the awesome ass-kicking dished out by the Canadians this weekend, I want to congratulate them on taking home the trophy once again. The high level of competition that they have consistently brought to each NA champs over the past several years (it is more than I am able to count anyway) has been truly impressive. It is this kind of competition, more than anything else, that we need to make Orienteering in NA successful. Now I am on a mission to get that cup back in 2 years time, so hopefully with tons more trash-talking we can get an even more competitive field at the next NAOCs and continue to raise the competition levels at NA meets.

This is the kind of competition that I live and train for, so my hat is off to the Canadians for bringing the heat and showing us all who the best O-country is in NA, this year.

Note that "linear" is not the same as "inversely proportional" (which is how the USOF rankings work).

Is a runner's mean point value determined from all of their WRE results, or just their top 4?

Brendan: It is the mean of all points excluding zero scores.

None, IOF calculated the points once the results went up on the NAOC web site.

Oh, that might explain it. I had inquired with David May, the official IOF contact for world rankings questions, before NAOC announced that 35 and 17-19. David indicated that the IOF would only rank the elite category, and needed results showing just the elite category, but that the results could be listed locally broken down by age category if desired, or used for national rankings by age category. (In fact, he says he discovered that he had received WRE points for running M55 in a Middle distance event in Britain. All categories had been put on the same course, and reported to the IOF as elite results (which he says is fine), but posted locally by age category.)

Maybe NAOC should just send the official results to the IOF, with one list for the entire elite Sprint course.

re: NAOC Sprint WRE points...
Vladimir and I are looking into this...

updates with NAOC sprint points are available on IOF page.
with a lot of people scoring ( from 35 and under 20 classes) Canada and USA got into the zone of ..almost more then one. too bad some people do not have all 4 events with points ) we woke up a bit too late. therefore for next year the extra 3 WRE should be used in NA.
Ontario gang- what about adding one - two WRE before or after Detroit _trials_WRE( early may-conflict with Tio_milla?? ). I can start planning for 1 event ( new map ). for that we need interest from the O-community. suggestions ??

Note that the American men are now in 20th place, which would qualify for 2 World Cup slots if they're there at year end...306 points from the position that qualifies for 3. The Canadian men are in 24th, within 500 points of the position that qualifies for 2 slots.

The Canadian women are in 18th (3 slots if they remain there), and the American women 23rd, 308 points from the position that qualifies for 2 slots. (But, due to Sam and Pavlina's rankings, likely will qualify for 3 slots anyway.)

Clearly qualifying for World Cup slots is feasible (even if the system has flaws).

Maybe North American orienteers are better than they think they are.

We are putting the final touches on an article for O-Today and are looking for magazine quality photos of the NAOC race winners in the elite categories (Katta, Wil, Patrick, John F.). If you have a good photo please contact me at: raid at dontgetlost.ca

Anybody have a photo of Wil holding the BK Trophy?

Thanks!