Discussion: Ski-WOC in Sweden

Tomorrow Sunday 20 March will be the arrival day for competitors in Ski-WOC at Tänndalen in Sweden. Monday is Model Event and first competition day will be Tuesday when the Sprint is held.

You can follow what´s going on at Ski-WOC here. There will be both Web TV Live, Live Results and GPS tracking available. Time difference to the East Coast is five hours, so most events will be early to mid morning in US/Canada.

US Team members:
Nikolay Nachev (Cascade OC)
Adrian Owens (Green Mountain OC)
Scott Pleban (QOC)
Greg Walker (CSU)

Alexandra Jospé (CSU)
Alison Crocker (CSU)
Cristina Luis (Tucson OC)

Team Canada will consist of Nick Duca and Robbie Anderson.

Most of the US Team have arrived in Tänndalen and are getting settled in. We will be posting updates on the Team USA blog throughout the week, so check often for race reports, fun videos, pictures, and maps.

Haven't spotted any Canadians yet.

More video and today's map from the model event are up on the Team USA blog.

Tomorrow is the first day of competition, the sprint, starting at 10am local (5am EST, 2am PST) and viewable on the web at http://www.skiwoc2011.com/ . They haven't published start times yet, but those will on the web tonight.

Sprint starting times are now posted:

Men's Sprint (corrected) Start Times

Women's Sprint Start Times

The Women's start is 1000, the Men's 1030.

10am Sweden is:

5am NYC
2am LAX

8pm Sydney

Time Zone Calculator for STO/ARN, NYC, LAX, SYD

Other cities

I am impatient. Please work, radio controls.

But yay for 'excellent cross country skier' Alex Jospe who just started :)

Radio controls are working. Go Ali and Alex!

Finally working :)
Rather shaky broadcast - and quite a large gap between sound/picture and real time.
Just heard that Ali was leading when she passed the first radio control!

AliC just finished - currently 2d, 17 seconds back! Excellent race!!

Ok, Tove Alexandersson is amazing. I am understanding more and more why the Emilys seem to have a slight crush on her!

Wait, what happened? Now the video is ahead of the radio controls?

Yikes, that weather looks brutal. So I guess the last starters just have really awful conditions, eh? How is the start list drawn, anyways? It's not start blocks like at WOC. Roughly world ranking?

Nick just had some nice finish line camera shots.

Women's leader and apparent winner Tove Alexandersson - 15:11
Ali in 14th - 17:09
Alex 20th - 18:55
Cristina 43rd - 37:09
Great job !!!

Exciting race - nice to watch the streaming video - they are interspersing live shots with some GPS tracking analysis. Showed where Alexandersson pulled ahead of the 2d place finisher Helene Söderlund over the last 3 controls. Söderlund had a small bobble, then took a slightly longer route choice to the next to last control.

cjross>> I don´t know about the start draw, but my guess is that it is a mix of start blocks and world ranking.

Women´s result final (before protests?) - Ali in 18th place, Alex 24th, Cristina ~47-48th and being better than her expectations not being in last place :)

Go Cristina!

Bubo, hmm, I don't know, cause Robbie started in the last half of the start list, but this was his ski-o debut! Confusing :S

OK - I see your point...

The last 30 starters (top 30 in WRE) are split in 3 "red" groups of 10 starters. Each group of 10 is randomly drawn . Before those starters we the common folks were split in two draw groups that the teams submitted their racers for.

Results not quite up to date (three last starters still missing in the list) but it seems like the results for North Americans are:

Winner - Olli-Markus T, FIN 18:04 (?)
46) Robbie A 24:18
52) Greg W 25:22
55) Adrian O 26:25
56) Scott P 26:41
64) Nick D 34:10
(79 starters)

Also, 68) Nikolay Nachev,

Sorry Nikolay :(

My guess is that the three last starters still missing from my list will beat Nikolay so the final result most probably 65+3 = 68...

Great job everyone! Awesome races by Ali, Alex, Robbie, and Biggins. And a really good time by Cristina!!!

She'll do our relay proud! Thanks for following along, everyone!

Men´s results are now complete. All US/CAN placings stated above are one place better due to the disqualification of one top racer...

You can watch some bits of the recorded video here:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/skio

Those of you with iThings and no flash player should still be able to watch the next live broadcast (not online now) via the Ustream app...search for "skio" or "ofestivalen" (nevermind: "this show is not yet viewable on your device")

Some news articles from today´s sprint - in Swedish (for those few that can understand this):

SOFT
Alternativet

More video on the blog.

Tomorrow's the middle, no start times yet and we're all going to bed soon, so someone more westish will have to update that here. Same first starts as today (10am local, 5am EST, 2am PST).

We're expecting a fair amount of snow, especially during the race window, so it won't be particularly fast - the courses have been shortened. Thankfully, some of us come from places particularly well suited to training for blizzard conditions.

Start times are out, here they are in local time for all you enthusiastic early risers:

Cristina - 10:05
Alex - 10:55
Ali - 11:13

Nick (CAN) - 10:08
Nikolay - 10:10
Scott - 10:34
Adrian - 11:06
Robbie (CAN) - 11:20
Greg - 11:32

If you look at the entries, it seems that snow is only found in the northern hemisphere. So you must excuse this dumb question from the sunny south. I guess the courses are very weather-dependant. Do they have to be fluid until very close to the day? Do the maps have to be printed at the last minute and (given the IOF distaste for digital printing) how is that done?

There are many Ski-WOC posts at World of O.

As far as I understand (which isn't very far), there is a specific clause in the IOF rules pertaining to ski-o maps - they can be printed in just about any way you want. Which can lead to some shoddy print jobs, but here it seems pretty good. The print quality from the JWOC/EOC in Norway was pretty bad - contours were fuzzy. They shortened the courses for today on yesterday afternoon, so clearly they're printing here.

Women´s race now over.
Another great race by Ali - and another 18th place:

. 1 Polina Malchikova.....RUS 39:52
18 Alison Crocker..........USA 48:45
30 Alexandra Jospe.......USA 59:45
45 Cristina Luis.............USA 86:00
(52 starters)

Interesting to follow Ali on the GPS tracking [part1, part2] today. It seems like she had a solid race with only a few minor hesitations - plus unfortunately a 2:15 mistake on control #7. Without that mistake a 13th place would have been possible - so there´s definitely potential for moving up :)

It must have been really difficult out there - a lot of the competitors interviewed complained about how hard it was to actually see the tracks due to snow and strong winds.

PS. Weather may be a little bit better the next few days? At least there is some hope for some sunrays to come through...

Results from the Men´s race:

01 Staffan Tunis FIN............40:13
45 Robbie Anderson CAN....54:52
51 Greg Walker USA...........58:33
60 Scott Pleban USA..........62:57
62 Adrian Owens USA.........65:17
67 Nikolay Nachev USA.......69:49
68 Nick Duca CAN..............71:45
(78 starters)

Team USA Middle Recap:


Tomorrow is the Mixed Relay, with Ali and Greg battling it out for Team USA. Each country has one man and one woman each racing three short (10min EWT) sprint courses. It will be fast and exciting! The race starts at 3pm local, which means little excuse not to watch/listen to the live coverage! That's 10am EST and 7am PST (I think). The rest of us will be cheering ourselves hoarse, we'd appreciate company from a distance.

Not yet knowing who the different nations will be starting in the Sprint Relay I´ve looked into results from the individual Sprint and added the time for best Man and Woman for each nation. This will at least give a rough idea who´s going to battle it out for medals and other placings:

1) FIN.....33:28
2) SWE..33:38
3) NOR...34:24
4) RUS...34:30
5) SWI...35:30
6) KAZ...35:43
7) CZE...36:47
8) BUL...38:28
9) BLR...39:58
10) LTU...40:07
11) UKR..40:39
12) ITA.....42:13
13) USA..42:31
14) GER..44:40
15) AUT...44:54
16) JPN...47:05
17) HUN...53:26
18) ESP...64:31
19) GBR..67:35
20) KGZ..105:20

As far as I can see there are 20 possible starters - some of the totally 27 nations don´t have women for a mixed team. With these teams on the start line I´d say there is a realistic chance for a Top-10 finish for the US Team :)

Team Giggles has done it again! Great interviews :)

I like the idea of a Ski-WOC training camp in Tucson. Just think of the positive vibes you can get from being on the home grounds of this year´s most improved Ski-WOCer...

WOCer or Walker?

Apparently I was wrong in the count of nations starting the mixed relay.

Roumania (42:08), Slovakia (~45:42*) and New Zeeland (56:08) are also included in the start list.

*) Woman DNS in the sprint, time estimated from Middle result.

Middle Recap video

Captures some of the ambiance nicely. I'd have guessed March, even in Sweden, would be mellow with longer days as well. And that would be why the choice over a "dark & stormy" February which struck me as the month of choice for a WOC ski-O.
(recall 2010 winter Olympic weather challenges in Vancouver)

A blizzard adds an unexpected & creative (?) element to the racing.

It looks like the Mixed Relay starts at 1500 local time in Sweden.

That is:

10am NYC
7am LAX

1am Friday Sydney

First, everyone on the team over here would like to thank all of you cheering from home. It's really great to see so many people following along and offering support!

Preparations continue for this afternoon's Mixed Relay competition. The good news is that the weather in Tänndalen has improved after yesterday's blizzard. Here's a look at the practically spring-like morning conditions at the event HQ:



I'm pleased to report that the morning weather has allowed Ali and Greg to get in some HTFU practice. They are ready for whatever the Swedish weather gods throw at them this afternoon!

Another question from far away, aimed at those who are there. How's the touch-less punching going? I suppose you have to pass within X of a control box, what tells you that you have "punched"? What's the gossip about the equipment cost compared to the usual? Thinking it could have application to MTBO.

Oh and who makes the best mapholders? Is there a clear favourite or doesn't it matter much? Where do you carry your compass?

Interesting start with the guy with the headcam skiing along right behind Greg. He was evidently skiing in the pack as once in a while you could get glimpses of other skiers beside or behind the camera-skier.

@gruver
They might be using the ones with display(?) Correct me if im wrong.

grr... the video dropped out after the 1st leg leaders tagged off. Audio still coming through, with a fair bit of choppiness at times. So now it's like listening to a radio announcer.

Oh wait, as I was typing this the whole thing went down, as the 1st leg women leaders are starting to tag off. Hopefully that means they're rebooting it to get the video back.

USA in 10th place after 2 of 6 legs. Too bad the live broadcast is failing.

Yes! Audio and video both back now. Just in time to see Ali tag off to Greg!

Go Greg!
Go Ali!

touch free punching system:
http://www.skio2011.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01...

Greg has a magnificent hat.

Great race by Ali on the second leg! Moving up from 19th place with a couple of other teams close ahead and more behind.

Really cool when the headcam guy was skiing behind the leading Finn for over a minute!

So Greg is in, 14th now after 3 legs. Better than the 19th after his first leg.

Yeah that was very interesting. The video is pretty rough but it's fun following along. Obviously an experienced ski-orienteer. He stuck with him through the narrow tracks and the tight downhill turns, and then got dropped when they climbed that hill.

Finally got to see him on the other camera when he came through the exchange following the Finnish team tagoff.

Come on Ali!! Go Greg!!

Ali in after 4th leg, now in 12th.

And moved up several places from the radio control.

The camera man is a very skilled junior, Adam Karlsson - on the National Team - so yes, he´s good.

What's up with Norway's radio control times?

Frankly amazing. It's no simple feat to keep your head that steady when double-poling.

13th it is, some great skiing by Greg and Ali. Not far from the top ten.

Yay, well done both of you! (Also, impressed with bubo's prediction!)

Exciting to watch the live web-TV and live results. Now we´re eagerly awaiting the report from Team Giggles ;)

Very nice with the live headcam video stuff. Does anyone know what kind of camera/setup is used for it? And what kind of quality might be achievable?

Moved up to 12th, Italy is listed as DQ.

I almost wrote a post last night comparing Cristina and Alex's headcam video to the sprint online coverage (and how boring it is to "put the camera in the arena").

I'm really looking forward to watching this tonight---I can't get the tv or even the radio results to work on this computer...

Well this is odd. Is it just me or is everyone seeing significant lag in the live video? I just saw Lithuania and Ukraine finish, and the announcer is still anticipating the next few teams to finish? Here comes Romania.

The interesting thing is everytime there is a dropout and the video freezes, when it finally starts going again, there are no lost sylables in the audio. So maybe it's just buffering and every time I lose a few packets my "live" video gets farther and farther behind. Ali still not finished yet on my screen...

Towards the end, the video was at least 10 minutes behind the results...

The video just got farther and farther behind, very weird. If you wanted to see what was happening, the live results was the place.

Yeah, same here. Everyone once and a while it jumps forward and catches up though.

Well, it actually caught up during the sprint and there seemed to be at least once today when it jumped forward at least a bit.

I had the same experience following the individual sprint where my estimate was that it was roughly a 15 minute lag.

So what you can do is choose between if you want "very live" results and disregard the excitement of the video - or just watch the video and look at results from an earlier leg... It´s still news when you haven´t seen it yet even if it´s 15 minutes old ;)

But the best would of course be if real life and broadcast were synchronized.

Yea, I just followed the online results from earlier legs and watched/listened to the video. I didn't allow myself to look at the final results until after the first 3 teams had finished on the video. I wish I could apply that kind of discipline to other areas of my life. :-)

Great finish, team USA!

Wow, you are way more disciplined than I am. I just sat waiting for the results screen to update!

Friday is a rest day. The last two competitions are Saturday and Sunday:

10am local Saturday: Long distance mass start

10am local Sunday: Relay mass start

That is (again):

5am NYC
2am LAX

8pm Sydney

Mixed Relay 2011: Team USA/Aliggins

I like those special ski-O bib numbers. Much nicer looking and probably more comfortable than having tyvek numbers pinned to the legs. But it must be an interesting exercise in getting it on over the mapholder! Maybe a subject for a rest-day video?

And how do the maps work in the relay? When do they get the map for next leg of the relay and how much time is there to get it in the map holder? These guys make it look so easy!

I guess I will attempt to answer some of these questions, but keep in mind that i am the least experienced ski-oer.

The bibs have a belly button hole for the map holder, the bottom of which is kept together with Velcro. So you put on the map holder first, then the bib, attaching the bib together underneath the map holder.

In yesterday's relay each skier picked up their map from a numbered stick after they had been tagged. They then had to unroll the map and stick it in their map holder, preferably while continuing to ski. Ali assures us that this is not easy to do, especially in high winds...

In the staggered start races we were given 15 seconds during the pre-start to flip our maps over and secure them in the holder. It was enough time, even for a newbie like me, but it's not like I had tons of time to look at the map before time started.

Gruver, regarding compass: a lot of people have a little compass glued to a corner of their map holder. Some of the Americans don't use a compass at all, though I'm not sure how common that is. I have been using the silva compass that straps over the base of my thumb, which works okay for me, I think.

Have you all been using kick wax for classic or just glide wax for skating?

Start for the long distance Saturday March 26th will be at 12:00

Because of snowing and strong wind the last days, the organiser have to prepare all tracks once again. To complete this, the organiser has decided to change the program 2 hours forward. That means that the mass start for women will be at 12:00 and for men 12:20.

Carl, everyone is skating.

Mass start tomorrow, and two hours later than the middle and sprint, totally late enough for everyone to follow online!

Re mass start comment, I'll most likely be at the starting line....

This am I drove to work more animated than I would have otherwise (eg, a bit over speed limit) having viewed the Mixed Relay 5:40 am video. It provided a view, of sorts, of a "Breakfast of/for Champions" though the falling flakes were not Wheaties.

Thinking of the imagery of high-octane athleticism/endeavor, "Chariots of Fire" comes to mind but, figuratively speaking, is at odds with the in-need-of cold WOC ski environment. It does look cold and sparse of spectators.

I am planning to follow the Ski WOC race tomorrow, so I set up a LiveBlog to get some interesting discussions & more fun while watching. Hope some will join in. And I hope the GPS tracking is up tomorrow. Note the delayed start - 12:00 CET is start for the women and 12:20 CET for the men.

http://www.coveritlive.com/index2.php/option=com_a...

Except you've got to finish quickly Cristina, because we're mostly at the awesome WCOC training camp! Sure this is too late now, but good luck!

Great start by Ali!
6th at the first TV control.

YAY!! Ali is #6 at the first intermediate control.

Grr... I wish the live video was working as well as Ali is today!

6th at the 1st radio control! Go Ali!

Yeehaa Ali!!! You are so awesome! Op op op!!

Wish the camera focus was better....

All that horizontal-blowing snow!

Oh that's brilliant. Ali skis consistently in the top 20 through the first 3 days and they don't give her a GPS for the long! :(

...and 4th at the map-change! Amazing :)

Superb effort by Ali - any news on Alex?

Alex was #20 at first intermediate...7:01 back

4th awesome and yes! But even better Ali is putting in a good gap on the others in the top 10. I wonder what the forking is like? Go go go

Helene Soderlund lost a minute to Tatyana Kozlova on the 2nd half of the first lap, coming through the lap 5 seconds behind Ali. Now she's caught back up to Tatyana. If Ali managed to stay with her on that climb, she may well be in the lead group. We should know shortly!

Ali is still there!!! #7!!!

Several in front of her in striking distance . Nice gaps developing behind her. Nice.

Less than 4k to go on this lap - is that right?

Ali finishes #8!!

GO ALI!!!!!!

Ali is 8th! excellent 4:51 back.

#8, yow, top 10 !!!

NICE RACE ALI!!! Well done girl! :-D

WOW!!!! So exciting !!

What a champ!!

Truly impressive! Well done!

Robbie has a nice race going on the men's side, running about 25% back so far!

Nice race for Alex also! Really really tough looking orienteering and skiing. Well done ladies!!

Fantastic race Ali!
So fun to watch!
You may even have just inspired one of the next generation of US Ski Orienteers ...
Alex - another great race!

Alright Alex! Well done.

Less than 3 minutes from a medal!

Worrying about Adrian. He was in good position at the 1st radio but then never showed up at the 2nd.

He's showing up at the 3rd though as first USA.

Ah, yes. Good, so they just didn't record him at the 2nd. That's a lot better than some of the alternative possibilities!

Showing up in the finish results as DNF :(

Robbie finished 40th place. Great result!

Great job, Robbie!

Roughly 30% back on a very physical long course. That's not easy at all!

So thanks all for long-distance cheering! =) I'm super-duper psyched with 8th, 7th was in reach, but had a mistake into the last-before-bridge control. Think I had the shorter forkings on the first loop and longer ones on the second loop, although was also getting tired, so that might also explain dropping a few places!

Adrian unfortunately broke a ski out on the course, got a replacement at the equipment station, but had already lost too much time to make it much fun, decided to save himself for the relay.

congrats!

Hot off the presses! Interview with Ali after the Long:

Way to go US!! Fantastic result, Ali--we knew you could do it!

Great to see a happy face after a fantastic race!

"What´s next...?" Well, Ali forgot to mention that there is a race tomorrow as well...

excellent Ali !

go Robbie ! just seen him crossing the bridge- while surfing in Arlanda airport

A good start for the US team in Women´s realy:

Ali 6th, 3 minutes behind but ahead of Sweden
Alex 5th at the exchange just under 7 minutes behind
Cristina now out on the thrid leg - still in 7th position. Losing some time but with a good chance of making top ten.

Men´s team in 17th place after two legs - still in 7th on the first intermediate control on third leg.

Canada starting with Robbie A finished 18th a couple of minutes ahead of USA in 20th.

Nice run Alex and Ali!

Top 10 ladies! Way to go!!!

Final results:

Women 8th
Men 15th

great performance for USA ladies team.. 2 times 8th place..congrats !

Men: 5 minutes out of 12th place. Top 10 within reach next time!

We're all pretty psyched here with an 8th place finish - it certainly make me feel like it was worth coming out to give us a complete relay team. No full write-ups yet, but photos on the blog.

Impressive result considering Cristina only started her ski-O career about a month ago! Now you know what to train for next time.

Awesome results! So proud of all of you!

Great job USA!

Great skiing everyone. So impressive to see how well we can do.

Awesome job everyone! It was inspiring to watch you all! 8th is amazing!

The impressive results of the Ski-O team have dropped off the top line of Attack Point. This should not happen so quickly. Each skier skied better than they ever had before and the results were so much better than any other result at the Ski-O WOC. If you have read the commentary, you must realize that the results were amazing and often under blizzard conditions making seeing the small trails difficult and the skiing hard work. There were broken skis, horrible crashes and just plain problems dealing with the weather. With a few less broken skis, crashes and being able to see enough to make route choices, the results (while spectacular) could have been better. Our team was superlative!

I can give another GREAT JOB! :)

I posted this at biggins' log, but it probably belongs here:

IOF Ski-O Rankings for North America

For you who haven't got enough of ski-o video via vimeo yet, here are links to recorded live Long and Relay:

Long: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13573728 US team @: minutes Ali(bib 127) 4, 17, 58 and 1:03. 1:31 has Andrev Grigoryev taking wrong track and turning around. But he still won!

Relay: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13596853 US team @: minutes Ali(38): 10, 20, 23 Alex(38): 40 Greg(11) 40

And of course more hurrahs for entire Ski-O Team USA!

It would be really great if OUSA seized upon the success of the Ski-O Team in every way possible... both for short term marketing cred and long term athlete development investment.

One last (or maybe not?) post on the blog with some photos from the Long distance and the relay, from the organizer. Bloggity blog.

Thanks for all your support, and excitement. It was fun to represent our country and know we had fans back home!

So the headcam guy had a GoPro with some sort of video transmitter?

Just pointing out that we now have an article on fasterskier.com, the biggest xc skiing website in the US. The same one is on NENSA, the New England Nordic Ski Association that Ali and Adrian and I ski for.

Wow, awesome! Great job Alex getting an excellent article out there that non-orienteers will read and be able to appreciate. You rock.

Hey Alex, any chance you could get that posted also to the Canadian "skifaster.net" site? They've had one or two ski orienteering posts and this one might help light some competitive minds. It should be an appropriate post as far as I can tell.

Just to clarify--Alex, are you responsible for those?

Does OUSA also do publicity like this?

In any case, thank you very much.

Well, it said "Written by Alexandra Jospe", so I just assumed...

Great article Alex; you really do write well....

It's articles like this that get the word out and eventually, will generate interest. Thanks for making the effort and taking the time.

Yup, Alex is awesome and responsible for both, she totally rocks! =) Before even I found them posted, guys in my noontime-running group posted the link and were bantering about ski-o, awesome stuff!

Adrian, send me some contact info, or maybe send them an email and copy me asking if they'll run the article. Sorry it doesn't say anything about the Canadians... =)

That's an easy addendum for one of the Canadians to post at the bottom ;)

Great article - explaining many of the unknowm components of Ski-O to non-experts. As is mentioned above - this is the kind of publicity that will eventually give results.

Nice article, Alex. Good to get the news out while it's still current. Thanks!