Discussion: Should Canada return to colours for courses

Both the US and UK use colour (color) to differentiate between the various orienteering courses. Canada did for many years until sometime in the '80s when colours were dropped. The COF is revamping the officials program and I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a good time to re-introduce a bit of colour to Canadian courses. I for one, always found it easier to select a course, if I knew there was a yellow, green and a red course being offered rather than a course 1, 2, 3, which required added descriptions of each. With colour they were already pre-defined.

Without the added descriptions of colour courses an Englishman in New York may find himself surprised when he picks up his map...

be aware that UK and US have different systems. I will be running in M50+ class this weekend in UK on a short brown (only 8 km ! ) ......somewhat different from the US regular standard of brown (~ 4km )

There was an order to the original four Canadian colour-coded courses. It had something to do with the ordering of electrical wiring. However it didn't describe the course to the uninitiated. Adding more courses led to a jumble of colours.
It makes sense to number the courses: the higher the number the tougher the course.
However in Ottawa for our local meets the courses are named - Beginner, Intermediate, Short Advanced, Long Advanced. We're back to white, yellow, red and blue but the course names are much clearer now, little explanation needed.

When we installed the permanent courses at the Canmore Nordic Center, the CNC insisted we use color codes for the courses to make it easy for non-orienteers to pick which course to do.

Of course, they also insisted on the universal (?) codes of Green, Blue, and Black for beginner, intermediate, and advanced

The problem with numbers is that larger meets add courses, so the numbers increase, and the course that corresponds to a given class changes. In the US, M45 is always on Red. In Canada, it depends on how many courses there are. At one meet I might be on course 5, at another on course 12. I agree that the color system in the US is all mixed up and unhelpful, but something other than shifting numbers would seem to hold promise.

Jim, this is something that has really interested me over the years. I personally never liked the move to the course # approach because like JJ says the number of courses changes between races. (ie., the sprint has 5 courses, the long has 10, and in the case of our GLOF we only went with 8). But I don't think colour is ideal given the example that Gord mentioned (it got confusing) and colours mean different things in different countries and also different sports like AZ mentioned.

With that in mind I've always felt that the names of our courses should be able to expand/contract depending on the race to make it easier for newcomers to the sport. The colour scheme works well for this in that it can expand by just adding X and Y after it Red-X, Red-Y but again the colour terms has issues as mentioned above. Ottawa's terminology is a step in the right direction but it can get confusing to have 'Long Advanced' at a middle distance race (Long Advanced Middle?). Ugh.

I like the use of the following course names (similar to that used at barebones)

Novice, Beginner, Intermediate, Sport, Expert, Elite

These terms can be used at your local club event or regional event.
Novice, Beginner and Intermediate are the white, yellow and orange in the old colour scheme.

Of course at a championship we need more courses to keep the start draw smaller and to better match the length to the winning times. This means 'expanding' the Sport, Expert and Elite courses. The easiest way to do add courses to these is to split them into Men and Women. For example:

Men's Elite and Women's Elite
Men's Expert and Women's Expert, etc.

this works well for sprint and middle because there is so little difference in course length between some categories that it probably makes sense for several categories to race head-to-head.

The physical fitness differences really start to become apparent in the long distance courses so this where having even more courses is preferred to keep target winning times 'close-ish' for specific categories.

In my scheme it is then possible to expand to more courses yet again by adding for lack of a better term the term 'plus' to it.

Men's Elite
Men's Elite Plus

This is probably starting to get confusing so I will try to dig up the table I prepped a year or two ago and post shortly.

I introduce orienteering to many novices. They have no idea what the colors mean, and they would not correctly order Sport, Elite, and Expert (nor would I). Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced is about all you can expect to be understood.

here it is. Note that that this was my 'ideal' race/course structure so you will see I have 3 year age groups in the kids categories. Also note the winning times (numbers) are longer for the long and middle for some of the Sport and Expert categories.

I know it is a bit clumsy but I was looking for something that might make more sense to newbies instead of what we currently have. I also liked the idea that on the sprint and middle a junior man can run in their own category but also contend for medals in overall as well.

Una,
The terms Sport and Expert and Elite are used quite a lot in cycling in Canada but they might not be the best terms to use as you point out. Then again the problem with beg, int. and advanced is that you need more than three courses.

I like Hammer's categories as a basis to build on but there's one more category that belongs in some meets at least - maybe not A meets. For lack of a better name, I'll call it Long Easy - for people with good fitness who want to do a long run but aren't ready for advanced navigation, e.g. less experienced adventure racers.

On this chart, I'm assuming that "Sport" = Short Advanced. I think the U.S. calls this Brown? If that's not the intent of "Sport", then another category would be needed for the most experienced navigators at the meet.

another category would be needed for the most experienced navigators

I seem to recall Canada's old colour system included a Grey course. The nice thing about that one is it works regardless of whether you're using colours or descriptors...

Round here (and also in Sweden I think) colours have been used solely for technical difficulty (since length and climb are easily described by measurable numbers, or estimated winning times). Colours replaced terms such as "easy" etc and have had a major influence on consistency of standard.

The problem with "easy" is that everyone (thinks) they know what it means. The advantage of "white" is that it has no a priori meaning and you have to go and look up the definition. We used to have a lot of trouble with demon courses for young kids courses.

I know there's a practical difficulty in that USA uses colour for combinations of difficulty and distance. Well you don't need to use colour for difficulty, you could use Roman numerals, makes of car, varieties of roses, anything that has absolutely nothing to do with orienteering.

The course setting software I use, Condes, sorts the courses by name, so it has:

Blue Brown Green Orange Red White Yellow

In Condes, it's easy to jump back-and-forth between courses that are adjacent in that list, so I can quickly compare Red with White, for example, or Blue with Brown. But I usually want to compare Red with Blue, or Green with Brown.

If I add Green-X and Green-Y (or Green-Long and Green-Short), it gets even worse---I'm more confused, and more likely to screw it up.

So, for my sanity when I want to jump back-and-forth between adjacent courses, and to keep track of X's and Y's, I always end up numbering them:

1 White
2 Yellow
3 Orange
4 Brown
5 Green
6 Red
7 Blue

When I started doing this, I'd delete the numbers before printing maps. But a few years ago, in the heat of preparing for the A-meet, I didn't get around to it, and the maps got printed with the numbers still in there. And people noticed it, and actually seemed to like it, so now I do it more-or-less on purpose.

For an A-meet, there will often be multiple Browns, Greens, and even Yellows and Oranges (say for Interscholastics), and I just add more numbers, much like the Canadians. I usually end up with 8 or 9 courses for the average A-meet day. I'm careful to keep the longer Green or Brown with a higher number. For interscholastics, we had some unusual course names, such as ISJV-M.

Here's the thing. I prefer this. My event director seems prefers it. Visiting Canadians seem to understand it. The start crew seems to like it. It helps for SI, and for registration. At this year's Interscholastics it did cause a few issues with students who thought they were on Orange, but were really on ISJV-M. But mostly I got the impression the course numbers are less confusing, especially to beginners.

So if you're asking if you should switch from something simple and easy to something that is confusing and requires significant understanding of the sport to explain, I'd recommend keeping the numbers and adding the colors, rather than eliminating the numbers and using just the colors.

Are these to be used at Races or at a Meet?

Probably at Events.

'eh' meets

I think this needs to be looked at at 3 different points, and I see people are alluding to that above. Local Meets, B - Meets and A- meets(including championships)

Local meets:
Many new participants
Usually 3-4 courses

Here I think the designation of beginner, intermediate expert, or something similar is needed. It is also important for clubs to include descriptions for the new orienteers, including distances. eg. Short(2 km) easy navigation, intermediate(5 km) easy navigation(for beginners who want a longer run), advanced(5 km) some off trail nav, expert(9 km) advanced navigation

B - meets

More 'initiated' orienteers
should resemble A meets to some extent
normally more courses than local meets

this is where the colour or number designation needs to be made, but both could be included to help people choose the right course(this would be more important if the decision is to go back to colours). It takes so little work to add a number to a course(or a colour) and I think the benefit for newer orienteers moving up the course levels would be huge. Most people would associate that as the numbers increase so does the difficulty.

A - meets

mostly 'initiated' orienteers
maximum courses
courses generally defined by age class anyways

Here you need to make sure everything is clear, but the naming/numbering of courses is to keep maps straight and have people pick up the map for their course. I think most people will run their age category(correct me if I am wrong) and anyone running an open category is likely a beginner and someone should guide them to the right course anyways.
It is also important to think about how to add and remove courses, courses 1A, 1B or even 1S or 1L makes as much, or more sense to me than blue A, blue 1. And both would have specific requirements anyways.
The advantage of numbers is that they have a much more logical progression.

So my suggestion is to stay with numbers. Have proper definitions for each course type, but allow for the addition or subtraction of courses.
Say using a long meet for example, with 10 defined courses. Lets say you are expecting a delegation such that requires multiple course 10's (maybe elites and elites plus) and not as many courses in the middle and a long and short course one(maybe a running club is coming out). So you publish a course list like so:

1S
1L
2
3
4(5)
6(7)
8
9A
9B
10A
10B

So 1S is obviously the shorter course one, 1L the longer, the technical abilities on both course would be the same. 2, 3 and 8 are self explanatory. But you decided to not set a course 5, but you think that most people that normally run course 5 will be fine on course 4(you would also set the age categories normally on 5, on 4) and you can label the course as 5 and as 4. Same with 6(7). Courses 9 am 10 will both have a lot of competitors and needed to be split, so the M21 and the open could run on 10B and the M21Elites on M21A.

Back in the UK all all courses are planned to technical difficulty standards, ranging from 1 - simple course, all on trails, control at every decision point, to 5, which is difficult. I never understood why when we rehashed all the colours a year or so ago, we didn't just go for Technical Difficult (TD) plus length. The lengths only need to be an estimate. I think this is by far the easiest to understand: the TDs don't change so a newcomer always knows what to expect, but you can choose a length that suits you. The only extra complication is making sure people race the right courses at big meets - but it's easy to make a table suggesting that that's where the competition is to be had on certain courses. The UK now has all kinds of long reds, light greens and dark browns, which is just stupid. The system below gives you flexibility for all event levels in NA - not sure if Canada gets bigger numbers. In the UK you would revert to age classes for the largest competitions. An average local UK event would look something like this:

TD1 - 1.5
TD2 - 2
TD3 - 3 or 7
TD4 - 4
TD5 - 5, 7, 9

Very simple. You can have leaflets available that even tells newcomers exactly what to expect standards wise at each level.

(Edit: this is very similar to Hammer's suggestion I think, but with numbered levels instead of named levels)

Whatever system is used: the event information, description cards, and map lines / map boxes at the start should all be clearly labeled not just with the color or number, but also with the classes on that partuicular course.

This can be frustrating and confusing to competitors under both the number system and the "X" and "Y" often used on some more popular courses at larger US events. Often event organizers seem to forget to tell you if a particular class (say M50) is on the X oy Y on that particular day (or in the Canadian case whether it is on 5, 6 or 7). And volunteers at the start line can't be relied upon to know with certainty.

Colours, numbers- neither is going to communicate anything meaningful to someone new to the sport or even someone new to a region's particular conventions. Having never used course colours, the concept is meaningless to me. There is no avoiding the need for an information sheet to interpret course labels. So we should only ever treat course labels as labels rather than communication tools carrying some cryptic message. Even the concept of advanced can be misleading. Many new arrivals believe they can navigate until they come up against a challenging orienteering course.

This is so frustrating in NA orienteering! Why should I, as a participant, need to know anything about the internal course structure of the event? I want to register for a class and pick up a map labeled with my class, no confusion. The event information can explain what the technical difficulty and lengths of the classes are, no need to explain the internal course structure.

I realize that at smaller local events it's overkill to use age classes, but even if you only have 3 courses internally, the offered classes should have proper names, not related to the course structure. E.g. you have a "Beginner", "Sport" and "Elite" class, which internally is a White/Course 1, Green/Course 4 and Blue/Course 8 in the US/Canadian system respectively.

This thread is making me think that we should adopt new language for our local meets. Similar to pi's suggestion, for our typical local meets I think I'd go with:

Beginner (white)
Advanced beginner (yellow)
Sport (orange)
Advanced (green)
Elite (red)

We usually tell newcomers that orange is "intermediate", which is true, but I think calling is "sport" might make the hardcore triathletes/ultrarunners/adventure racers with little navigation experience feel less wimpy for doing it.

This is so frustrating in NA orienteering! Why should I, as a participant, need to know anything about the internal course structure of the event? I want to register for a class and pick up a map labeled with my class, no confusion.

Really.

I've been to over 100 races in outside North America, in many case in countries were I could barely manage a few words of the local language. Without fail, this is the system used. You grab the map with your class on it. Its that simple.

No need to know or learn the Latvian or Portuguese word for "red", or read thru meet notes in the Cyrillic alphabet, or wonder about the bizarre "X" and "Y" business at some North American A meets, which is more or less random. (When I was at my first A meet, I thought that referred to "female" and "male", but of course I was wrong -- it was just some random thing someone somewhere thought was a good idea, (and someone else thought was worth copying, rather than looking at European convention), but which turns out to be a confusing (and hence bad), idea).

If you want to have beginner words for beginners, fine, but that problem should go away as they become "intermediate", where hopefully they have learned the sport is based on a class system. So, the problem of how to name things past "beginner" goes away, but I still think you can name maps M10, W10, and so on, and people will get it after 3 seconds of explanation.

(and yes, it is possible to name a map M35,M40,M45, or M35-45. I've even seen this. Far better than labeling it punane or crvena:))