Discussion: The WOC promotion and relegation contests

I've now done the points calculations for the long (caveat: at this point these are all unofficial - last year Bjorn Persson and I did the calculations independently and then reconciled them, which revealed that both of us had made a minor slip or two). Points given are for all 2013 races plus the 2014 long.

Current status:

Men Div 1/Div 2 (minimum 1 up, 1 down):

Relegation: Latvia 377, Czech Republic 400, Finland 423. Everyone else is safe (next lowest Norway 561). Bertuks' DNF hurt Latvia badly but they can get right back in the mix if he gets a good result tomorrow.

Promotion: Ukraine 360, Estonia 334. Seems to be between those two unless Lithuania (281) does something miraculous in the relay.

Women Div 1/Div 2 (minimum 1 up, 1 down)

Relegation: Looks a two-way fight between Denmark (343) and Great Britain (348). Czech Republic (465) are safe unless they don't finish in the relay (and even so, it would probably need the other two to be on the podium).

(Note that Great Britain have a guaranteed 3 runners next year regardless as hosts).

Promotion: Latvia (327) have the inside running, next closest are Lithuania (299). France (280) and Australia (255) could get into the mix, especially if they have a big relay. There's also an outside chance that the second placegetter could overhaul both Great Britain and Denmark, which would mean they would also go up.

Men Div 2/Div 3 (minimum 2 up, 2 down)

Relegation: Portugal (96) and Poland (121) look to be in deep trouble, especially as neither look to have good teams this year. If either of them manage to recover, next in line are Spain (156) and Germany (162).

Promotion: Ireland (116) and Australia (90) have the inside running here. Next are Romania (71) and Israel (69), but neither have relay teams (and Zinca's not running the middle so neither have much opportunity to get more points). If there's to be a challenge to the top two, it's likely to come from New Zealand (44), Belgium (42) or maybe Slovakia (41), with Belgium perhaps the most likely of those three to do something special in the relay.

Women Div 2/Div 3 (minimum 2 up, 2 down)

Relegation: Hungary (67) look doomed, but any one of Germany (155), Spain (164), Poland (176), Italy (182) or USA (185) could join them.

Promotion: New Zealand (91) look certain to go up, but there's a battle with some local rivalry for the second spot - China (50) and Japan (49). Also chances are Bulgaria (43) and perhaps Ireland (30), Belarus (28) and Belgium (28), though Bulgaria and Belgium will have to get their points tomorrow because they don't appear to have relay teams.

Okay - personally I find this really exciting stuff. Great analysis by Blair, too, explaining the whys & wherefores and giving a reason to see who does best between, say, the Chinese / Japanese women (first time I will ever have been interested in that ;-)

Thanks Blair - (and sorry, I didn't mean to suggest in an early posting that I thought YOU should do this work)

Do you have the full (unofficial) table that we could peruse (to see where Canada stands & what they have to do to get into the promotion fights)

An athlete has to finish in the top 60 to get points. A relay team has to finish in the top 30 to get points.

I understand a number of runners jumped on the Thierry train during the Long.
Did that ride help any of them to significant results and did that in turn help their team toward promotion?

@gordhun. He passed Rollier (7th) Nikolov(9th) Zinca (12th) Omdal (16th) and Novikov (24th), but it wasn't an easy train to stay on board.

There was no train. Only Nikolov managed to stay with him for more than couple of controls, and he got dropped during the phi.

I only have the numbers on paper at this stage. (Doing the calculations is, in fact, effectively an official responsibility of mine, but I don't consider the numbers official until cross-comparing with Bjorn, who has other things to worry about this week).

I'm with AZ, it does make it interesting in an additional way to normal.

+1

thanks blair!

Can someone explain what this is all about? I searched Attackpoint for "relegation" and all I got were discussions about football.

Quickie answer:

Starting this year at WOC, every nation gets to run in the Middle and Long Finals. But some countries only get 1 spot in each (eg: USA Men), some get 2 spots (eg: USA Women), and some get 3 spots (eg: Sweden, Switzerland).

How many spots you get at WOC 2015 is determined by how your runners do at WOC 2014. So there are countries trying to get more spots for next year (promotion), and others trying to avoid losing spots (relegation).

This thread is following the scoring which will decide which countries get more or less spots next year.

A little more on it, but still not definitive...
All the countries are divided into divisions (male & female separately). So for the Men there are Div 1, Div 2, and Div 3 countries. Same for the women.

Div 1 countries get 3 runners in the Middle/Long final, Div 2 get 2, and Div 3 get 1.

USA & Canada Men are both in Div 3 (and want to move up into Div 2).
USA & Canada Women are both in Div 2 (and want to move up into Div 1, and desperately want to avoid relegation to Div 3).

The countries were put into these division based on historical results (can't remember exactly, but perhaps from the previous two WOCs).

Each year the top team from Div 2 is promoted into Div 1, and correspondingly the bottom team in Div 1 is relegated to Div 2.

Also the bottom two teams in Div 2 are relegated to Div 3, and the top two countries in Div 3 are promoted.

What it means to be the "top team" or "bottom team" is unfortunately a little bit complex, and so we rely on Blair to do the calculations for us and keep us up to date

(in a perfect world the LIVE RESULTS would also show a real-time standing for the countries in each division)

The allocations into divisions for 2014 were based on results from WOC 2012 and 2013. Here are the calculations for 2014 WOC for women and for men.

And here is the current version of the rules for calculating the point. Until they are changed…. :-)

For coming up with the allocations for WOC 2015, toss out the 2012 numbers and add in the 2014 numbers. Ought to be straightforward.

Like newly-promoted teams are at a disadvantage, with one fewer person scoring the previous years...

I hope they revert before long. Qualies make the finals.

Update after today:

Men Div 1/Div 2:

Relegation: Latvia (424) virtually certain to go down - probably need to win to stay up. Next in line Czech Republic (526) and Finland (529),

Promotion: Ukraine (450) likely to be promoted. Estonia (408) would need to beat Ukraine by 11 places (unless they come 5th or better, in which case the required margin shrinks - e.g. if they're 3rd, Ukraine need to be 8th). No-one else has a chance barring a gold medal or a Ukraine DNF.

Women Div 1/Div 2:

Relegation: Great Britain (458) almost certain to go down - would probably need to win a medal to have a chance (though as hosts they'll get 3 places regardless). Denmark (523) improved their position greatly today.

Promotion: Latvia (385) in the box seat - Lithuania (356) would need to beat them by 8 places (or be 5th or better for more favourable combinations). Needing a minor miracle are Ukraine (322), France (318), Australia (307) and Canada (304).

Men Div 2/Div 3:

Relegation: Portugal (107) in very deep trouble - even if Spain fail to score they would still need to come 8th to have any chance. Poland (168) in the second relegation spot, needing to beat Spain (196) by 7 places or Belarus (200) by 8. Bulgaria (222), Hungary (230) and Italy (256) are probably safe as long as they finish.

Promotion: Australia (126) and Ireland (116) are looking pretty good as long as they finish. Slovakia (77) would need to beat Ireland by 10 places, Belgium (64) by 13, and New Zealand (47) by 18. Romania and Israel (both 71) don't have relay teams.

Women Div 2/Div 3:

Relegation: Hungary (114) would need a top-ten result and a Spanish or US DNF to survive. Germany (179) are in the second slot, and to stay up need to beat Spain (193) by 4 places, or the US (207) by 7. Possibly at risk with a non-finish are Poland (228), Italy (235) and Austria (243).

Promotion: NZ (132) virtually certain (even if they DNF, for them to miss out both China and Japan would need to be top-ten). Bulgaria are next on 57 but don't have a relay team, which makes the second spot a straight first-across-the-line fight between China (50) and Japan (49), unless Belarus (31) beat both by 5 places or something else comes out of left field.

Thanks for all this analysis Blair - it's actually the thing I've found most interesting thus far this WOC. It must take you a while!

Thanks for the explanations. I thought it was something like that. American sports teams don't have this setup, or the Chicago Cubs would be playing in the AA division.

And, if you want to play along during the Relay tomorrow, I have put my totally unofficial spreadsheet here.

It has been doubled checked and should line up with what Blair has posted, but it is no way official.

The Relay points that teams can earn are under one of the Relay tabs.

Note in the fine print (or not even mentioned), if I read things correctly --

1. For the calculation of the points earned at the 2014 WOC, 4th runners for a country because of an extra slot for a defending world champ don't count, but if that world champ was for a division 2 country (which now had 2 plus 1 runners), then all three would count.

2. For the calculation for 2015, when there will be extra places for regional champs, that will not increase the number of runners that count for that country. So if a division two country (normally 2 runners) has a regional champs, then they get to start 3, but only the best two count.

3. Ties give equal points to all at the higher level.

4. There is still the disadvantage of a team moving up for the following year in that they will have a year with one less runner in each individual event as part of the next calculations.

I would guess that there is no guarantee this system will stay the same out in the future, nor a guarantee it will change. Who knows. May depend on whose ox is gored and what sort of clout they have.

Peter, regarding item 2...

Would a Division 1 country get a 4th runner from winning a regional? If so, would it be possible for a Division 1 country to have 5 runners? Standard 3 + defending WOC champ + regional champ (who would be a different runner than the WOC champ).

Like, if Emily had done a little better and finished first today. And if Louise wins the NAOC regionals in the Fall. Then at WOC 2015 it seems right that Canada would have four women running, right? You'd have to check the rules closely, but I think it makes sense that it would be this way - the "personal places" are in addition to the "country places"

This year, SUI had the opportunity to have 5 runners in the Long distance, having 3 places, as well as Niggli having a personal place (WOC Champion), and Judith Wyder also having a personal place (EOC Champion).
Niggli however (being retired), did not run.

Great thread. Good info. Thanks.

Do Relay team members know that they need to go to all the correct checkpoints, or else next year they or some of their friends may not get to run? I don't think this is a stupid question.

If I were Simone, I would have shown up, started, and done something ridiculous like spell something out with my GPS track.

...and probably still made the podium.

(intended as a compliment to her, and in no way as an insult to the other top women)

Relay team members ALWAYS need to punch all the controls. This year does not change the importance of that in any way. So yes i think that is a stupid question or in this case should be made more general at least to every event. Ali mp in the long woc in france (2011) would have costed the team a spot if that was counting. Alex sprint 2013. Ethan this year sprint relay and TG in middle yesterday. It happens you never forget it and one learns.

Team usa mp for this year is out of the way :)

Trivia: at what World Championship Orienteering did all three members of one relay team mispunch?

Presumably it was since electronic punching was introduced, because prior to that it would not have been called 'mp'.

And it must have been since teams of 3 (rather than 4) were introduced.

2003 was the first year of teams of 3, and probably punching was electronic by then. NB While the individuals may have 'mp', a team where all members 'mp' would still be described in the results as 'dsq'.

Since I don't know, I will guess 2005.

Very tight now for the last relegation spot - Germany need to beat Spain by four places and they currently lead by three.

Looks like Germany stays in Div 2 and Spain is relegated.

And, Japan is making it interesting on Leg 3...

GBR gaming the system, better off being relegated this year...

Looks like LAT up and GBR down for Div 1/2, NZL/JPN up and HUN/ESP down for Div 2/3.

Late twist in men - POL need to beat ESP by 7 places and Kowalski has come through his pack. ESP now need not to be at the back of their pack, and they're only 8 seconds ahead of Jules at the radio...

That's looking like 7 places...

Looks like Poland have survived by the narrowest possible margin, so Spain are relegated in both men's and women's (probably not something which will cause as much national angst as their first-round World Cup exit).

That's a shame for Spain, they are a fast-developing country with bright prospects, and could do with a second spot. But hey, they're only a peripheral European country.

Aus/Irl on the way up, hopefully for more than one year, despite the rules.

@ndobbs. Not gaming the system, just increasing participation opportunities for our Danish friends in 2015 :)
But yes, GBR women will really struggle to avoid promotion in 2015 :). Unless blair changes the rules :(

This year does not change the importance of that

If you mispunch in an individual race, your country is out of one person's points (and there are no points after 60th, so e.g. for U.S. men it wouldn't matter). If you mispunch in a relay, the whole team loses points, and there are more points to be had in the Relay per participant, and points go down to 30th team; there are usually fewer than 30 teams in the Women's Relay. So, the introduction of divisions abd points made it disproportionally critical to not mispunch in the Relay.

Before, a mispunch didn't cost much in terms of next year's participation, and now a Division 2 Relay team that mispunches destines its country for almost certain relegation and loss of participation slots.

That's probably an exaggeration, but certainly for a team in the bottom half of Division 2 a mispunch would place them in serious danger. (On the other side of the coin, fielding even a token relay team would have given Bulgaria a good shot of promotion in the women's).

Thanks again Blair. i really appreciate all of the effort you (and Bjorn?) have put into this,. I know that adding excitement to the spectating was never the primary goal, but this promotion/relegation aspect added a lot of interest to WOC this year, for me and it sounds like for others too. As more athletes, coaches, spectators learn and understand it better I imagine it will increase in prominence.

(thanks also to Val for the spreadsheet)

@graeme of course team GBR might have a slightly different composition if team SCO enters the fray in 2016...

More than slightly! None of the GBR relay squad members live in South_Britain/RUK.

(I don't like "former-UK" for the southerners- after independence we'll all be FUK'ed)

With the removal of Scotland wouldn't Great Britain become something like Lesser Britain (or LBR)?

Rump United Kingdom.

LBR - Lower bottom right?

They would still be UK. It would just stand for Ununited Kingdom.

But seriously I hope the IOF soon dumps this overly complicated and discouraging system of entries for WOC.
The answer to a successful WOC formula that recognizes the best AND is inclusive of the rest is right in front of them every year at the World Masters Orienteering Championships.
For both sprint and long allow each country four entries to be divided in to four different heats. Take the top 12 to 15 to the A final, the rest to B,C and D finals.
Sprint on one day, then the mixed Sprint Relay. Long Qualifying the next then a rest day before Long finals.
Then each country gets to put their best three in the relay final.
Yes I know relays are not party of WMOC but they belong in WOC.
What about the Middle? Who needs it? Drop it. It stands in the way of too many countries sending full teams to WOC.
If you want the forest clear for the Long A final run the B, C and D finals together in the morning while the A finalists are embargoed.

I thought you were being serious until that bit about dropping the middle.

One of the things I was hoping to achieve with the promotion/relegation system was to add interest to the midfield relay battles, but the information doesn't seem to have been used or known widely enough to achieve its full potential (I sent Per the scenarios on Friday night but he doesn't seem to have used them). Kowalski's final-leg charge to save Poland by one place was a story well worth telling (as, perhaps, was the last-leg blowout of the Latvian women which almost cost them what had seemed comfortable promotion to Division 1).

I've also had an initial look at the points from 2014 which will be carried forward into 2015, especially for the newly promoted teams. Ireland's men and Japan's women will be warm favourites to go straight back down, but the Australian men and NZ women both have more points from 2014 (even with fewer runners) than one other 2014 Division 2 team, so have a decent chance of staying up if their 2015 performances are similar or better, and of course they will have more point-scoring opportunities in 2015 than 2014. (Both might also have an extra runner through the Oceania Championships, which would give them room to drop a bad result). Something else of note is that the Latvian men (relegated from Division 1 to 2) crashed so badly this year that a repeat performance in 2015 would see them at some risk of going down to Division 3, although surely Bertuks can't have another week like this one?

Blair, just wondering if you see any signs that the current promotion/relegation system might be changed in any way in the next year? Same question for the WRE system. Or is the foot-O commission happy to let things sit as is for a while?

Thanks by the way for posting all the calculations and updates and possible scenarios here on AP. Much appreciated.

"One of the things I was hoping to achieve with the promotion/relegation system was to add interest to the midfield relay battles, but the information doesn't seem to have been used or known widely enough to achieve its full potential (I sent Per the scenarios on Friday night but he doesn't seem to have used them)"

seriously? It's too complex as it stands to be in any way interesting. It took me a few minutes to understand the text in your first post in this thread. If you want it to be taken seriously it needs to be very well presented and much more immediately available, no waiting until the few people in the know have mashed their napkin maths together. With the new 'livecenter' concept surely you can find some lovely person to write a bit of software to calculate it and present it real-time? If it's too complex to be worthwhile to do that then the calculation itself is too complex.

If you want interest in this league system, you need to (get Per to) concentrate on who won. For publicity, it would make sense to base this on one year rather than two.

If there's no interest in who won Division 1, nobody will care about Division 2 either.

BTW - who did win?

Yet an other alternative 8 day WOC schedule with qualification race re-introduced.

1. sprint Q & F
2. sprint relay
3. [rest, move from sprint arena to long arena]
4. qualification race
5. long final (personal places based on the qualification race)
6. [rest, move from long arena to middle relay arena]
7. middle final (national places based on 70% this year's and 30% previous year's qualification race result)
8. relay

@Blair - I agree with the idea that the promotion / relegation battles add a lot more interest to the middle and lower countries. I followed them a lot, along with many of the other Irish, but I do think that many teams don't know very much about it.

Did the Japanese and Chinese women know that they were fighting for 2 spots next year? Any good coach should have made sure they knew.

I think it will grow a bit more, but it will take a bit of time for people to get used to it. Once your country gets promoted or (even more importantly) relegated, countries will start to look into why that happened, and get the info out more I think.

I do think that @andrewd has definitely got a good point / idea. This information should be readily available, everyone should know what's happening if it's going to be more exciting. It would be quite easy I imagine to write a bit of "As it stands" software, so they could display on the WOC website every teams position.
But this could also be used on the WOC coverage. In the arena you could have little pop up tables on the screen showing what team will finish where in the divisions if the relay places remain as they are. That sort of stuff is regularly used in football and other sports to indicate where teams will finish if the match remains as it is.

@blair One final point / question which I'm sure you'll have heard before, but how does this system account for a promoted team comparing 1 runner against other teams in that same division having 2 runners.
E.g. the Japanese women next year will be counting 1 Middle & Long runner from 2014 & 2 from 2015, while most of the other teams count 2 from 2014 & 2 also from 2015 - this puts the Japanese at a clear disadvantage.

I have tried to come with some possible solutions to this problem, and I think I have 1 or 2 which could work, but is there any intention to account for this at all?
Otherwise I think we could see a lot of teams just getting promoted divisions and suddenly going straight back down.

Also, after relegation it should in theory be relatively easy to get back up again since you had two runners in the previous year.

E.g. The Spanish men next year will have roughly a 20 point advantage (who knows if my calculations are correct!!) over the other teams in division 3. If you only count their best runs in the middle and long from this year they would be 20 points less well off.

Newly relegated teams (and others who have more runners than their quota, through having regional/world champions, or host countries that aren't in division 1, like Italy this year) can only count their best N runners (where N is their divisional quota), so only the best Spanish runner from 2014 will count in their 2014-15 scores. Unfortunately this can't be done in reverse since you can't create additional runners who don't exist.

You can't count a second runner but you could count their one runner twice. Or would that give them too much of an advantage counting one strong runner twice rather than a strong runner and a weaker runner?

Or you could exempt them from the possibility of relegation for one year, i.e. until they have the right number of scores to compete fairly with the rest of the division.

Or only count N-2 runners from the previous year for all teams.
Or only count the best 12/8 (for div 1/2) scores over two years.

This would be somewhat more forgiving of mp. or dnf.

If these rankings of country teams is important and the implications certainly are, then finding the status of a team should be easily accessible, perhaps on the IOF site. A quick look there reveals the ranking of individual competitors. If there is a reference to the Team Rankings, it was not obvious. The methodology appears to be buried in the Rules per the posting by PG above but should be more accessible.

This discussion on AP seems to be the most available reference and probably little recognized by those affected.

Just looked at Valery's chart. Excellent. Should be on the IOF site.

While it's an excellent chart for someone who understands it (i.e. orienteers who care about the particulars), whatever goes on the IOF site needs to be way more simple.

Sure - should be like the FA club lists highlighting the various divisions. Those on top and those on the bottom know exactly where they are.

It would need someone to be specifically responsible for doing that job (preferably someone whose responsibilities don`t also include TV commentary and going to IOF meetings...)

At what point do the relegations/advancements become settled? Now at the end of WOC, the end of the year, just before the next WOC? How are Federations and their teams advised of their status?

Perhaps in the Rules but requires sifting into that document except via this Discussion and the PG link.

Ps - answer to trivia question above: 2006 - Australia in the WMTBO. (Simmo picked up 2 of the three clues).

@What Graeme said. I already said that after introduction of promotion/relegation system. If the system tend to be fair it needs to be fair with no disadvantage or advantage for countries in higher division. As long the system promotes inequality (favors countries in a higher division) the system not need additional media attention. div1=10 best results, div2=6 and div3=4 in two years period + 2x relay.

What I would also see as an improvement of the present system...: This year we had 84 runners in Men's Long and this number will change from WOC to WOC so it would be fair to say what is the maximum number. National teams should have a clear information if there are free spots and countries with 2 or 1 runner can enter additional runners based on WR or IOF could have some wild cards.

More countries would have a chance to do the same:
"Both might also have an extra runner through the Oceania Championships, which would give them room to drop a bad result"

In this way IOF could also promote WR, otherwise WR is dead forever. The only real important reason why someone should collect WR points was start order at WOC (at least it was). Exotic countries don't need them (they can enter 1 runner without points), 2nd/3rd division countries don't need them (no chances to have third/second runner based on WR), best runners don't need them (no awards for the best, no media attention).

WR as it is is not part of competitive orienteering. It is just a lot of work and $$$ for nothing.

does anyone know if GBR ladies would have stayed up if Hollie's DSQ had been reinstated?

No - they were 97 points behind the next team so she would have needed gold or silver for it to make a difference. (Nor will it affect their chances of going up next year since, as a newly relegated team, only their best 2 out of 3 runners will count towards the 2014 component of the scores).

well at least that's something to come from it!

We pretty much decided to get relegated by not sending a full team in 2013.

not the only country to have some selection issues: http://mogd001.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/woc-2014/