Running 35:00 [1] 4.39 km (7:58 / km)
Run rehab project.
20 minutes of 2 min run / 1 min walk.
Regressed. *sigh*
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This new sprint format doesn't really appeal to me.
Its MORE complicated. Its MORE confusing. Its MORE difficult to organize and make fair.
At WOC, the biggest problem I have with this is the line "and shall include a qualification race with possibility for broad participation".
What's been clear over the last few years is that the "qualification" races have been trivial orienteering races. A 3000m time trial would save a lot of time and money and practically achieve an identical outcome. This year's WOC Q was the least interesting sprint I did this year. And I tell ya, EVERY Finnish town looks and is designed the same way. So I've experienced boring.
By narrowing down the possibility to even participate in the interesting races to only 36 people, this decisively further limits broad participation, since fewer get people to participate. Not unlike sprint relays this is going to be a discipline that people outside of Europe will literally never do except at World Champs.
Or, at least, it will take a long time for them to happen. I remember sprinting in XC skiing starting out in Canada, it was an organizational disaster for years.
Why not just have two sprints and a sprint relay? Make one 12 minutes and another 20 minutes, where the longer one allows 2 runners from every country to compete in the final, no qualifier. Do it 70% in park/foresty terrain to solve traffic issues.
For all the poor countries that always have to travel the furthest to get to a WOC, only getting to do qualification races is an exceedingly bad investment of their time and money. Even the proposal document has that "no one really cares about the qualifier anyway so do whatever you want" tone to it.
Great format for the Swiss, though. These are the same guys that wanted the Swiss to always have 4 WOC sports, after all.