Discussion: Following WOC online

Doesn't seem like there is any way of following WOC live this year. There's no information about live results on the official web site. I guess we'll have to log in early each morning to see what the news is.

I asked the organisers about this. They replied to say:


for users who will follow WOC 2007 online we plan to provide such services as:
- online results (start, radio, spectators, finish results)
- live audio from speaker's tribune
- more or less fast uploading photos from arena
- after race we will provide 6 best route choices with interactive web system
(similar to TracTrac).

Link for WOC_Live will be provided on www.woc2007.org.ua next week.

Yep, there is now a link to live coverage on the WOC website.

can't see it..
hope they will provide link for live results.

Just scroll down - there is a "live" box bottom left

Okay, I got a bit of a late start but I have the excuse of time zones. Where's everyone else who's following along? The men's qual is over and we've got the women to cheer on!

Victoria Smith (CAN), Sandra and Hillary have already started. Fingers crossed.

Go USA. Go Canada. Sandra's in. Looks good but it's hard to know at this stage.

Sandra with a strong finish so far in B, and Hillary has a great spot at the spectator control in A.

This is where I insert raucous cheering.

sandra is going to be very close.

Could be...

looking better

Yessss!!

"That's uh 100 percent sure"

yes, sandra made it. congrats!

Congrats to Sandra!!

Cool to hear the cheering in the background when they announced Sandra making the final!

Wooowooooo!!!

Way to go Sandra!

I'm surprised how good the live coverage was! Perfect speaker sound (with Per Forsberg's "English" and a Ukrainian guy speaking Russian) and very fast live result updates + live comments. I hope the other races will be covered equally good.

Yeah, the coverage was pretty good, though it would be cool to be able to hear a bit (but just a bit) more ambient sound. More cheering! I want to feel more like I'm there, too. ;-)

And with respect to Per Forsberg's English, I'd say that it's really quite good. Better to call it Per-colored English than "English".

If I could get Per-colored paint, I'd redo my room in an instant :)

Yeah! Nice to know that you guys were following the US Team adventures on line! Thanks for all your support!

Hey, Spike, don't be dissin' Per -- we're buds now:

http://disorienteer.squarespace.com/display/ShowPi...

Here's my best guess for the time zone conversion for Monday's Middle Qualifier (opens in new tab/window).

Monday 9:30am Kyiv Local
Mon 7:30am London
Mon 2:30am New York City
Mon 4:30pm Sydney

The link above has a lot more cities.

WOC 2007 Live

I can't wait for the next round of live PDF updates!

Here's an article about Norwegian Olav Lundanes, who was chased by four stray dogs while training in the forests of Ukraine.

He eventually managed to scare them away by yelling at the top of his lungs.

Every time I hear about these stray dogs chasing people down in the woods, it reminds me of that one scene in the James Bond movie Moonraker. And then I wonder if there's some diabolical plan to unleash these same dogs on the orienteers....

Any NA'icans staying up late to follow the middle distance?
I am keen to do so to follow Pam's race, but am hesitant given my experience of the Middle-Q. Maybe I was not 'in the right place' or making the right connections - but I could not get the audio to work at all (would there have been any point - was any of it in english?); then the live results seemed 'horribly' out of date given that the live reports were reporting people that had finished, while their 'live' time was still ticking away; then it seemed like the whole thing just stopped altogether....
I believe the women's race starts at 11:30 PST, which is fine, but the men not until 1:10.

I had the same problems, but there is an apology on the WOC web site for satellite problems on Monday. Hopefully today will be better.
Should be very interesting for the Aussies. Hanny starts 2 mins behind Simone, who starts 2 mins behind Marianne Andersen. Julian Dent is sandwiched between O-Ringen winner Anders Nordberg and Holger Hott! And Jo Allison and Grace Elson have the familiar figure of Kiwi Tania Robinson sandwiched between them.

For the sprint, the audio was mostly in English.

The first woman has been out for 4 minutes now! Anybody else here?

It seems both the audio and live results are working much better this morning, at least for me anyway...

Very good here in CA as well.

Live results are working - but at least at the moment, it looks like people's 2nd radio times are going in column 1 and overwriting what was previously there, which is very confusing.

As soon as I posted that they've taken the radio 2 times off which means (I presume) that they're fixing the problem.

Looks like they finally fixed it.

Interesting, the audio is lagging behind the live results and commentaries by just a bit.

The French are the first to publish today's (men's) map.

I heard the problem with Monday's live internet updates was that a satellite uplink was lost. A satellite-based internet connection is apparently the most reliable one available to the organizers. There were no radio times on Monday for a different reason; there was a mix-up with the radio control crew who for some reason were not allowed into the forest. "Radio" times are commucated via cell phone, as I heard, so if a runner is missing a bib number, there is no time.

I heard more about the last-minute announcement of the live updates, which, as we now find out, are indeed quite good. The whole set-up was a result of some last-minute, high-intensity planning, and the organizers did not want to announce its availability until they were 100% sure they were going to pull it off. They reached that 100% sure point on the Friday before the first qualifier.

It will be a hard day's work today - not only because of the length but because of the heat. The forecast is 36 and I think that's quite realistic (and I'm less confident than the organisers that it will cool down by Saturday).

can anyone get the audio for the long distance to work? windows player is telling me the url is wrong
"Windows Media Player cannot play the file because the specified protocol is not supported. If you typed a URL in the Open URL dialog box, try using a different transport protocol (for example, "mms:")."

never mind.. its a problem with my computer that ive fixed

First Forsbergism of the day: 'she is very late' (with reference to Dana Brozkova at the first radio).

Marc Lauenstein and Jani Lakanen are not starting (stomach problem for Marc, don't know why for Jani).

Go Hanny GO!

Jani was just interviewed and is having achilles problems.

So sad about SwissCheese not running!

Hanny should end up in the top 10, maybe on the podium depending on what happens from here. Anna Sheldon's also on a solid run - could make the top 30 if she finishes off well.

Heli and Minna just TIED for gold!

According to the live report: "Two Finns and may Finnish specs hug each other. Great Finnish celebrations at the banquet tonight!"

Tie for the gold between Heli Jukkola and Minna Kauppi. Simone Niggli 3rd. Hanny 6th. Anna will probably be 30th but needs to wait for the last couple of finishers.

Well done, now Finns will have 5 girls in next WOC long...

I believe Jani had calf problems.

Hyvä Suomi! It's 2:30 am here in CA and I'm glad I'm not losing sleep for nothing!

Enjoyed the coverage. I think it is interesting that the internet allows a sport to create a real time broadcast between the ticker tap updates, the live score board and the internet radio pretty effective and interesting coverage.

I just saw the middle results.

Gueorgiou! Wow. That must be the biggest percent margin of victory in a men's WOC for some time. He said the 'streak' of WOC&EOC middle titles would start again....but do that by winning by 2 minutes. Encroyable!

What was the 19th control (56) on the men's course like? Splits show either 1 minite or 7 minutes consistantly, with the winner taking the longer choice. Am I reading the splits correct on the 15th control, where about half the runners punched the wrong control? Some 53 other 54, including 1st and second place? Or was there forking on the course? (Be kind, newbee)

This is a forked control (or rather, part of a long forked section). You can see from the control code sequence (in parentheses after the split times) that there are four two-way splits, leading to 16 possible orders of controls to be taken. (I haven't checked to see they've all actually been used, though.)

Edited later to add: oops... I can't believe I wrote that. There are only four possible sequences, not 16 (since the control you have to go to the second time through the butterfly isn't independent of the one you took the first time...). And yes, they were all used. It was pretty tempting to erase the first calculation above...

The sequence is ... - 59 - {53 or 54} - 62 - {63 or no control} - 55 - 66 - 56 - 57 - 58- 59 - {53 or 54} - 62 - {63 or no control} - 55 - ... which is an interesting forking pattern. It'll be interesting to see it on the maps.

(Note that this is fair since everyone runs the same legs, just in a different order. It's intended to break up packs running together.)

I was looking at the Men's routes from today's long distance and it definitely appears as if Khramov crossed an uncrossable fence on his way to control 14. I recall that last year in Denmark some of Canadians had problems with fences in the forest and definitely some people were disqualified in the sprint for crossing an "uncrossable" fence (reportedly about 2 feet tall).

Crossing uncrossable fences is specifically outlawed in the sprint - not sure what the rules are for other distances?

It's only outlawed in the sprint - on a standard map it is a 'high' fence and you can make the choice whether you're going to cross it or not... generally based on what it looks like if/when you see it!

From ISOM 2000:

524 High fence: A boarded or wire fence higher than ca 1.5 m, not crossable to the average orienteer, eg. deer fence.

I am not a big fan of this kind of course setting: lots of extra controls, visiting same controls multiple times (here three controls twice), several simple short legs. Almost half of the controls was used for these tricks. It started at #14 and there was 28 controls.

This forking was so late it didn't help much either. After booming #1 - #3 you could follow most of the race. Maybe competitors didn't know where the forking will be, but I don't think it was so difficult to guess.

One other thing about this kind of forking:
Splits from the radio controls looked a bit strange depending on which forking the runners had. Of course they all ran to the same controls in the end so final results were correct, but it made it harder for the public to follow (and understand why things changed so quickly)...
You could actually get the impression that some runners made fantastic splits and others hade made mistakes (to the finish) while they only ran normal runs.

The WOC long final was covered on the local sports news last night!

Jagge, I am very sympathetic to your course design comment. I think forking inevitably compromises course design, and it is a shame to see this on the biggest stage. Still, there is the following/teaming-up problem, and if the course setters are asked to address this, I thought this system and application was at least an improvement over a butterfly, which I strongly dislike. At least this produces better forking. Four is much better than two (feet's 16 :-) would be amazing), and the differences/seperations were greater. Was the O value (legs) better? Close call, at least it wasn't worse. I haven't looked at the impact on pack formation.

How about the long leg(s), almost certainly the longest WOC leg ever for men and women!? Besides the sheer length, I love the surprise element of the urban O. Judging by the varied routes of the leading men, this was a successful leg. However one concern- at 1:15,000, the small passageways (or lack thereof) within the OB "settlement" areas are very difficult to read for the runners, and difficult to enforce (for the officials. If this was my leg, I'd have been one nervous course setter. Were there any problems? At the very least I give the course setter credit for creativity and risk taking.

While we're on course design, how about the Middle terrain and courses? (qualifier and final)?! This looks and sounds like the most technical WOC event(s) ever. I think the spread of results is the best indicator as long as there are no "unfair" issues, and I haven't heard any. Has anybody compared the spread of these results to last year's French World Cup event?

The Relay starts in just a few hours. Time zone conversion.

Saturday 9:30am Kyiv Local
Saturday 7:30am London
Saturday 2:30am New York City
Saturday 4:30pm Sydney

The link above has a lot more cities.

WOC 2007 Live

And that would be 11:30pm for those of us on (or nearer) the left coast who are going to "watch" the US triumph over Canada in the relay.

According to my calculations, teams are probably trying to navigate their way through the Kiev transport system now, hopefully arriving at the Start/Finish area in time to hear the start shot.

Re crossing fences: impassable water and marshes are also not outlawed in long or middle (as they are in sprint), but unless your name was Ian Thorpe or Kermit you probably wouldn't think of crossing them.

is anyone else having trouble connecting to the server to listen to the relay commentary???
its been fine for the other events but today its seems to have shat itself

Problem for me too.

I can't listen in either. The live report log page seems to be working fine for the moment, however.

ok i guess that will have to do for now...hope the radio controls work...though it seems the first one has a big delay

Audio is working for me now.

I've got the live audio stream working now!

yep seems to be back on for me too

nice! it's so much more exciting with the sounds on!

Actually, one could also pass this greenish-yellow private area without getting DQ-d. It is only forbidden if the map is in sprint symbols or if the organizer has said so in the bulletin. The same goes for the cliffs, walls, fences and impassable marches. If sprint symbols are not being used and the organizer has not specifically forbid passing these features, then it is allowed according to IOF.

I think they only turn the stream on when the big 4 scandinavians are going through radio or spectator controls.

Woohoo, Sandra is catching Indre!!!

okay, I might have jixed that

and does anyone know why Heather seems to not have a time for the second radio? Go Canada!

ah this audio is bullshit

I'd guess they're running into bandwidth problems - probably more interest given it's a weekend.

It's pretty good on this side of the world ev ;)

No it's not. Weather is also a problem for the satellite

This audio is so cool--just like being there! Go Boris Go!

Mike is in to the 2nd control point.

25 Mike Smith Canada 01:48:35
27 Boris Granovskiy USA 01:50:58
At 3rd radio control

"And now Novikov is late. It's clear. He is late"

Mike at prewarning! 01:59:24

All right! Mike and Boris both in, still 25 and 27, respectively, ~2.5 min between them. GO EDDIE!

"Russia is running to Gold once again! Valentin Novikov"

And at the prewarning Sweden Emil Wingsted. In 3rd Tero For at the prewarning.

Yeah Eddie! Caught ~20 sec to Brent at first radio control. Go EDDIE Go!

A Belorussian runner Andrei Zhuravlev apparently had a daughter born, while he was running a relay!

It looks like the radio controls 2 and 4 on the men's course are functioning only intermittently, or stopped working after the leaders. Go Eddie and Brent! Almost there!

Brent is at the 3rd radio control! It looks like Eddie lost about 4 min to Brent between Radio 1 and Radio 2.

Brent is in! Great job Brent: 26,. 02:43:46. Go Eddie!!!!!!

"Japan, Portugal and USA, What a finish!"

Awesome job!!!

The weather appeared to be a much more effective pack-breaker at this WOC's Long than forking.