Discussion: 2008 Sprint Series?

With the 2007 Sprint Series now concluded, it's time to think about plans for 2008. I have written up a summary of this year's operation, plus some thoughts for the future.

I'd be interested in getting feedback.

I'd also be interested in hearing from anyone willing to help with the work. Either post something here or contact me at pg@crocker.com

Concerning the 20 days notice of the sprints, how was the figure of 20 days arrived at?

No Canadian resident made the finals or no Canadian resident attended the event?

I think the reason was in 2005, that was a little further in advance than CSU could be bothered planning its schedule at that point. 20 days was a motivation to get us more organized...

Or maybe I just have a Boston-centric view of this.

20 days seemed a reasonable requirement, the point being that you wanted to give enough advance notice for people who might want to take part, but there was no need for much more notice. (And there is perhaps some truth to feet's comment as well.)

No Canadian resident attended the Finals. (Anyone could run all three sprints at the Finals, even if you hadn't run a sprint all year. The first two sprints were regular USOF sanctioned sprints, open to all. For the third, if you didn't make the top 6 men or women, you could still run the course afterwards in the "all-comers" sprint, as many did.)

i had high intentions to go to the finals, but i had no team mate(missing one ) for the relay (which was the main goal for that weekend). i think everything was great , maybe just the location ( for Canadians ) was bit far. even with the incentive of relay it seems ( for some ) a long drive for just short races. but one cannot help with everything. i think with the format like this- sprints and relay could be a great weekend.
maybe a suggestion is to have the 3 sprints in the morning-mid afternoon , and have the relay next day ( with a twist ) have 2 courses on saturday evening( with on emaybe half in the dark). i seen before in Europe ( one year tio-milla had 2 legs then a break and the rest later 2 hours or so ). it might be some night hawks willing to do another short race. ) definitely a team event ( maybe something like City cup challenge ).
also next year with NA in sept 22-23 maybe is easier to have this 2 weeks earlier to have people preparing with that type of terrain ( maybe around Rochester ) that ..for sure..will get some canadians ).

Except that there is no relevant terrain for North American champs in the Rochester area, at least in my opinion. (Mendon would be the closest thing, but that area really has a different flavor.) But there are some good potential sprint areas. It's an interesting suggestion.

Pinewood and maybe Letchworth West (which are both tentative locations for the April A-meet) might be close to some of the CNYO maps/terrain. Do they directly compare to the maps slated for the NA Champs? Well...I am not sure about that. However, filling a void in the schedule at accessible locations still makes it a worthwhile proposal.

If a date were set two weeks in front of the NA Champs wouldn't people struggle to choose one over the other and potentially detract form both events?

Ok, so a few things are getting worked out for the 2008 Series.

1. There will be a 2008 Sprint Series.

2. It will start on Saturday, October 20, with the sprint that is part of the Chicago A meet, the Big Blues Ramble. Also on the schedule is the US Sprint Champs, Friday, November 2, just south of Washington DC.

3. With the season opener set for October 20, the schedule is open for any additions. Notice needs to be sent at least 20 days prior to the sprint. For now, send the info (what, where, when, contact person, web address for more info) to me at pg@crocker.com. I'm lining up some help, but details here are still being worked out.

4. There will be some relatively minor changes to the point system, still to be finalized.

5. And there will be a few other changes, including, I hope, an All-Star Sprint in mid-season. I mean, the other major sports have their All-Star events, and all my fellow Commissioners have been telling me we should be doing the same.

Stay tuned....

This is probably as good a place as any to put a public service reminder that the standard rate for the Big Blues Ramble requires postmarking your entry by October 1.

Or should I not be reminding people so that I get a chance of taking an implausible lead in the series?

In expectation of a large influx of registrants now that we are the "kickoff" of the 2008 Sprint Series, we'll extend the Big Blues Ramble postmark deadline until this Friday.
- Ramble Registrar

We're glad to have the 2007 US Sprint Championships be a part of the Sprint Series. People will be able to sign-up right until the day of the event however late registration fees start on October 14th, and go up again on October 28th.

Right on! Thanks for all your hard work Peter... I will see to it that we get some Rocky Mountain Sprints in for the '08 season.

Many thanks for including the 2007 US Sprint Championships in next year's Sprint Series standings. I hope everyone enjoys the courses as much as I did designing them.

If the scoring rules are relatively stable at this point, it would make sense to:

1) Require a specific input format for results. Winsplits already does that as far as I know.

2) Create a way to upload the standard format data into a database. That's what Attackpoint does with all our input.

3) Create a front-end that will dynamically udate the scores each time a new set of results is uploaded.

One of the challenges with this is how you identify competitors. If you require everyone who will be doing sprints to register and get an ID number that will be included with the results, that would make it easy, but short of that, it would be difficult to make it automatic. And having ID numbers would bring its own headaches.

If the scoring rules are relatively stable at this point, ....

Well, I would certainly hope not. :-)

For example, the following changes are under consideration for 2008:

-- Keep the basic 30-40-50 plan. But there are 2-point gaps for the first five places for any 30-pointers, and the first 10 places for any 40- or 50-pointers.

So the points go 50-48-44-46-42-40-38-36-34-32-30-29-28....
Or 40-38-36-34-32-30-28-26-24-22-20-19-18....
Or 30-28-26-24-22-20-19-18....

This will give more reward to the top few, and also a few less places to score.

-- Any sprints with 10 or fewer participants (male and female combined) is a 20-pointer, even if advertised as a 30-pointer. The points will be 20-18-16-14-12-10-9-8.... Fewer points if not many people, and maybe an incentive to get more people to participate.

If there is more than one course at a sprint, probably in a case where this is at an A meet, and therefore a 40- or 50-pointer, only the primary course for men and the primary course for women get the higher points. Secondary courses are 30-pointers. There will be 7 courses at the US Sprint Champs at QOC. For men, the Blue course will be a 50-pointer and all others will be 30-pointers. For women, the Red course will be a 50-pointer and all others 30-pointers.

-- Up the bonus for a team fundraiser from 5 to 10 points.

-- Sprints must be held in the USA.

-- I think the 2 final 100-pointers worked really well. I?d anticipate trying to do that again, or something very similar.

-- I?d like to have an All-Star sprint in mid-season, maybe at the West Point A meet. Might be a 60-pointer. Various possibilities here.

(Oh, and how come when I paste some text into AP, the apostrophes turn into question marks, like in the previous two sentences?)

Oh, and how come when I paste some text into AP, the apostrophes turn into question marks, like in the previous two sentences?

Because your (presumably Microsoft-based as MS is the worst offender when it comes to web standards) word processor is using a non-standard character set. You can get around this by first exporting the file to text (check the "convert characters box" and then cutting and pasting out of something like notepad.

All those changes look good except that I don't know why we are excluding Canadian sprints. OK, none of them came to finals, but it still seems rude not to invite them.

>Sprints must be held in the USA.

Interesting.

I would view that as a step backwards for having more interaction between Canadian and US elite athlete development.

Care to share why that has been suggested?

Because the Canadians haven't been interested in representin'?

Because your (presumably Microsoft-based

Peter uses a Macintosh.

I (using Firefox) have also noticed that if I have a character like an em-dash — which I put in by using a funky code, that if I edit the entry, the character gets turned into a question mark.

>Because the Canadians haven't been interested in representin'?

Or because 1 CAD = 1 USD

Care to share why that has been suggested?

Sure.

At the end of a year it's common to look at what you've done, and see what has worked and what hasn't worked, and make changes accordingly. And despite the fact that one of the original goals of the Sprint Series was to do just as Hammer says, having more interaction between Canadian and US elite athlete development, and that worked the first year in 2005, the last two years it hasn't.

I'm not blaming anyone. If I'm looking for reasons, besides the distance/geography problem we're always stuck with, I'd say that top orienteers of both the USA and Canada have focussed on getting to European events when they travel, as opposed to going north or south. With annual WOCs and World Cups, this is to be expected. So there has been very little interaction this past year. I'm not just thinking about the Sprint Finals (and Relay Champs), also the Team Trials (and a WRE) on our side and the COCs (and 3 WREs) up north.

We've tried. We coordinated dates on the Sprint Finals. We paired it with the relays, which we thought would appeal to our friends up north also. It was on the schedule just about a year in advance. But the interaction didn't happen.

And if I look at 2008, and think about when/where we might hold the Sprint Finals, and I see the North American Champs in late September in upstate NY, I find it hard to imagine a scenario in which we get a significant number of top Canadians to participate. And it has not been trivial to try to include Canadian sprints in the series. And looking at 2008, if something hasn't worked, why continue doing it?

OK Hammer--are you suggesting that you should buy the SS trophy? As you know, the cash prizes are rarely denominated in dollars, so you shouldn't feel short-changed.

too bad to hear that canadian sprints won't be included. there was some interactions between us , but unfortunately not at NA sprints series. couple of years back worked well with the City Cup relay attached. I believe its a step back, but also understand PG reasons.
but then won't be a NA sprint series ? would foreigners be able to compete to the US sprint series , or we should join a US club for that matter ?

the U$C$(real) issue might be a trigger for a better attending , even though C$ @ par with U$

Hey Nick... if you join DVOA I'm sure we'll figure something out.

>And if I look at 2008, and think about when/where we might hold the Sprint >Finals, and I see the North American Champs in late September in upstate >NY, I find it hard to imagine a scenario in which we get a significant >number of top Canadians to participate.

GHO was considering bidding/requesting to host the sprint series finals in the Niagara Falls area as part of our Raid the Hammer weekend next year.

That would have been a pretty darn good scenario for Canadian participation eh!

I, in particular, built my season around getting to Connecticut but personal reasons (not distance etc) prevented three of us from Ottawa making the trip. I'm curious. How many resident Canadian individuals attending the sprint series finals '07 would have been enough to make Canadian inclusion in '08 worthwhile??? In other words, what numbers might change opinions for '09?

I imagine dfelitsky is right about US orienteers in the Pacific Northwest and perhaps some others elsewhere in the country.

I think it's a bit sad to give up on the "North American" aspect of the series out of a combination of feeling it's not worth the result crunching effort and possible recognition of geographic realities, which I'll concede are particularly a problem when most Canadian elites will already be adding a trip to the North Americans next year to whatever orienteering they'll be doing within Canada and abroad. I don't know how labour-intensive the process Boris has been following has been but, even if it's already efficient in terms of manual data entry, I can't see why the work couldn't be spread among more people to make the burden more tolerable as an alternative to excluding Canadian races.

Regardless, assuming Peter doesn't reconsider and depending on when next year's sprint series finals end up on the schedule, my fellow Canadians have almost or perhaps more than a year in which to get to US sprints. Come to the US Champs, come to the next US Sprint Champs at Flying Pig, come to West Point and come to the US Team Trials and you'll be two thirds of the way there. Five sixths if the finals end up after the North Americans. A tall order for the western part of Canada, as for most Americans outside the Northeast, but certainly doable for people living in the regions my memory says the bulk of the Canadians at the 2005 finals hailed from.

I think removing the Canadian sprints could also hurt US participants from more isolated clubs who have to travel quite far to pick up sprint series points (especially 40+ pointers). A lot of the Canadian A-meets have sprints wrapped into them and would help a lot in this regard.

I represent that remark. Barring Canadian sprint events from the series would sharply curtail the sprints available to me and my clubmates. I know it can be hard to notice what happens way out West, but much of my best competition comes from my friends North of the border. Just look at the start list for the Western Canadian Championships this weekend!

Also, I don't see the upside, besides easing the scoring burden, which could be addressed by recruiting more members to the illustrious Organizing Committee. [Whoops...did I just volunteer myself for something?]

Anyway, the cross-border interaction may be small, but I think it's tremendously valuable, and the Sprint Series can continue to help promote it.

Is there a reason why the final can't _be_ the North American sprint champs?

One of the reasons we get low attendance per championship is that there are too many essentially indistinguishable championships. So why make the problem worse by having (in 2008 at least) basically four separate championships (US, Canada, North American, sprint series finals)? Combine the razzamatazz of the sprint finals with the North American champs, and you'll have a sure-fire winner. One sprint everybody can enter (with age-groups), followed, once everyone is finished, by one all-star final for spectators to enjoy (same as at this year's finals). NA champs to be determined at the open race, sprint series checks to be decided by the all-star race which series points would qualify you for. Plus that would certainly guarantee Canadian (and US) participation.

well if canadians have to travel for sprints to US then on the all-star final will be less canadians ( simply because we cannot achieve enough points ).. that's for sure. but for sure thissuggestion could go well

Can't say that I like the idea of having only the Blue sprint at US Champs worth 50 and all the others worth 30. Seems a bit unfair to those who would normally run the blue sprint but are running in their age group because of the championships. I expect some fierce competition on the Red and Green courses, much more than a normal 30 point sprint.
Are the courses distinct enough that we can sign up to run more than one sprint?

Careful readers will have noticed the followed sentence prefacing my list of changes for the 2008 Sprint Series:

"For example, the following changes are under consideration for 2008:"

I'm enjoying hearing the comments. Who knows exactly where we will end up with this, but this is a useful forum to explore options. And one of the first things they teach you at Commissioner's School is that you tend to do better if you don't piss off everybody. :-)

so sly...

No, just trying to figure things out so we end up with something that makes sense, and hopefully is fun too. At some point this process is a democracy, and at some point it is a dictatorship. Right now we're still in the democracy stage... :-)

so very sly....!

Hello Peter.

It would be disappointing to see Canadian sprints excluded from the sprint series. I know of many Canadians who are interested in the sprint series and plan which races they will enter accordingly. I have heard of numerous orienteers who have been quite motivated by watching their improvement in the rankings. I don't feel that a low turn-out at the sprint finals is indicative of non-interest by Canadians.
I see the actual sprint series and the finals as somewhat distinct - and low participation in the finals is most likely due to back to school/work timing, lack of financial resources, many ?championship? events to attend, etc. but certainly not because of dis-interest in the sprint series itself which I feel does a great job of motivating Canadian orienteers to attend/enjoy/excel at sprint races.

I'd like to add my voice to those that think it would be a shame to make the Sprint Series smaller by removing Canadian events.

Probably our club has not expressed its appreciation enough to the organizers. Sprint racing in Calgary is hugely popular. We hold our own mini sprint series, with a sprint race on the first Wednesday of every month. We also held a weekend Sprint Training camp in the spring with 10 sessions in two and a half days. After each race, when the NASS standing are updated we send an email to the club highlighting notable performances. This leads most club members to check the official NASS page - everyone is doing it - from our top runners to 75 year olds who are checking their point standings and taking part in more events to 'get more points' in the NASS standings. And wasn't that the intent?

As I remember the main purposes of the NASS were to encourage clubs to hold more sprint races and to promote the sprint discipline across north america. I think almost everyone would say this has been tremendously succesful - I think our club is just one example.

I don't remember a major goal being to have lots of people come to the sprint final. It would be 'nice' if we had a great big Sprint Final each year with representatives from all over - but I wouldn't have thought that was a major objective of the NASS (but I could be completety wrong). In fact I would guess that the vast majority of orienteers in North America would have little if any interest in attending such an event.

The Sprint Series is great - a huge success. The Final I find less compelling. Maybe it would be an idea to drop the final?!

Dang if you drop the Canadians out of the sprint series I'll have to slash my wrists open.
That would be sad, real sad.

Adrian wrote: "The Final I find less compelling. Maybe it would be an idea to drop the final?!"

I've only been to one Sprint Series Final (2005, Pawtuckaway), but it was one of the most fun events I've ever been to. No way should that be dropped!!

On the other hand, it's really nice to see Canadians speak up here about keeping their events in the Sprint Series! Good to know I didn't spend all those hours entering data from the myriad FWOC events for nothing. :)
Maybe we can even get some Canadian volunteers to take over some of the tasks involved in administering the series?

Without Canadian races (and administrative assistance) the NASS would just be ASS!

Haha, love it Hammer! Good one!
No seriously, I love the sprint series so much that every year I do consider coming out to the Final. It just hasn't happened but it's not from lack of interest but more lack of holiday. Maybe the sprint final should become a WRE ;-)

Agreed. It's fun to check our standings throughout the season, and I know lots of Canadians who keep an eye out for events where points will be awarded in the Sprint Series. It's also fun to watch how other people are doing in the standings - it helps us get to know our fellow orienteers across the continent. I'm told that the main reason our top Canadian sprinters don't compete in the finals is to avoid embarrassing those nice Americans who gave us the Sprint Series in the first place. ;-)

I have to say, I like feet's suggestion of combining the NA sprint champs with the Sprint Series Finals. Makes sense in theory, at least. Would it be possible to add the Sprint Series Finals to the 2008 NA Champs?

I'm less sure having the SS Finals at the North Americans would be so good - if the format were similar to this year, how many people would want to run the finals sprint after the actual final if they were going to have to wake up the next day and run another North American Championship event. Also, it would be asking a fair bit of the host club, whose plans are presumably fairly well formed.

Personally, I hope GHO goes ahead and bids to combine the finals with Raid the Hammer next fall. I've never, due to distance and limited travel budgets, been to one of their adventure runs but the word of mouth is great and it would certainly add up to a lot of orienteering bang for the buck over two days.

P.S. Might as well go on the record as saying the small changes Peter says are under consideration, other than shrinking the geographic scope of the series, all sound unobjectionable.

Would it be possible to add the Sprint Series Finals to the 2008 NA Champs?

Well, the last North Americans included a North American Sprint Championship (and a Middle and a Long), so there's precedent. (Dunno whether there's organizer enthusiasm or not, which is more key.) Even if it weren't the formal NASOC, perhaps due to the time available for formal USOF changes, which is short, people might not care whether the sprint at the NAOC was the NASOC or the NASS Final. Those keen to do one are probably interested in the other.

There were a lot of Calgary NASS sprints, keenly attended, when I was there, and always some talk but never action about attending the finals. But then again, talk of Jukola went on for a few years before present and former western Canadians (honourary Calgarians for the night) put together a team this year.

None of the participants in the Carol's Team sprints this year attended the finals, but I can certainly say that without the NASS, there wouldn't have been a Third Thursday Sprint Series here.

Ok, so let's move ahead a little....

We'll continue to include sprints in the North America, so Canadians (and Mexicans) can relax. (Actually, thanks for all the feedback.)

We'll use 2-point gaps for the first 10 places of 40- and 50-point sprints and for the first 5 places of 30-pointers.

For sprints at major meets where the primary course for each gender is a 50-pointer, then the next course will be a 40-pointer if there is good competition on it. Otherwise it and any remaining courses will be 30-pointers. If the primary course is a 40-pointer, then any remaining courses will be 30-pointers. For the US Sprint Champs, it is assumed that the secondary courses (red for the men, green for the women) will be 40-pointers.

Still mulling over a few other things, plus checking on the feasibility of combining the Sprint Finals with the NA Champs sprint. But we are making progress.

Peter

Note -- keep in mind the final rule for the 2007 Series, which will certainly be the final rule for the 2008 Series -- Rules may be added, changed, or deleted at any time by the Commissioner. :-)

whoever s/he may be...

yay . long live the king !!
i'll congratulate the mexicans potential O_runners. and as hammer said "NASS" sounds better then...

We'll use 2-point gaps for the first 10 places of 40- and 50-point sprints and for the first 5 places of 30-pointers.

Perhaps I'm speaking too late if this has already been decided, but I think it would be more appropriate for the point spacing to reflect attendance. In theory the field is bigger and deeper at higher-valued events, but that's not always the case. If the spacing were, say, (max point value)/(number attendees) then the winner still get's their promised points, but there aren't nearly so many default points awarded. This would provide some way to balance the effect of the attendance difference between, say, the 40pt OCIN New Years sprints that only 15 men ran in and the 40pt Flying Pig Sprints that 42 men ran in.

I can see how someone manually calculating these scores would complain, so I will volunteer my number crunching services if such a point scheme is adopted.

I'd argue that the status quo (or PG's modification of it) already gives the right incentives. Sometimes there are very competitive sprints with a small field. The Sage Stomp Sprints (#1 & #2) this Spring in Kamloops are a good example. 7 women and 8 men raced in the Elite category, including several national squad members. I placed 5th in the first race and 3rd in the second, and due to the strength of the field, I think it's fitting that I earned more than 20 and 30 points for these races. If a slower orienteer can hit the jackpot by finishing last in such a field, then kudos to them for showing up. Maybe the prospect of big points will help bring more people to the most competitive events, which is a good thing.

The only way to truly adjust for the quality of the field would be to have a ranking system similar to the USOF rankings. But that would be a huge and (I think) tragic departure from the current system. On the other hand, the current system seems to me too coarse an approximation and can be improved upon. There will always be anomalies.

If you think you deserved more than 20 or 30 points maybe you should have won :) Seriously though, is it a bad thing to have a high premium for winning?

So let's take another step forward --

I've posted the rules for 2008 for the Regular season. Still working on the Finals....

Note the couple of main changes from the 2007 Sprint Series:

-- Team fundraisers are given a bonus 10 points (up from 5 in 2007). These fundraisers are important for our teams and it seems worthwhile to make them a little more attractive.

-- There are 2-point gaps for the first 10 finishers in 50- and 40-point sprints, and for the first 5 finishers in 30-point sprints. This increases the value of winning (or taking one of the top few places).

I'm dropping the idea of making 30-point sprints into 20-pointers if they attract less than 10 people.

-------------------------

To add a sprint to the schedule, send the following information to Kris Beecroft (krisbeecroft@msn.com) at least 20 days prior to the event:

Date
Location, preferably map name as well
Any course info that you care to provide
If it is a team fundraiser
Contact person and e-mail address
Web address for more information

We'll get the schedule up and running shortly. It may be at a different web page, we'll let you know. And there will always be a link to it from the existing web page for the series.

----------------------------------

This is actually quite amazing progress in the last 2 weeks, going from wondering if there would be a 2008 series at all to having something up and running and the first event scheduled in 2 weeks. Thanks to many of you for suggestions and a special few of you for stepping up to help big time.

And a final acknowledgment to Boris for all his work the past three years.

Brendan, the focus from day 1 of the SS has been to keep it as simple as possible, even if that was at the expense of greater accuracy. Your suggestion is well taken, but for now I think it's better to not go down that road.

Ok.

Your suggestion is well taken, but for now I think it's better to not go down that road.

Ok.

Wow.

Imagine how much nicer this world would be if this were the well-mannered way that people usually conducted discourse.