Discussion: Nordic World Juniors

Warning: Non-Orienteering content!

At today's Nordic World Junior Ski Champs in Oberwiesenthal, Germany (which I hear is amazing), in the Junior Mens 4x5km Relay, USA and Canada went 1-2.
Note: I was going to just post on how awesome the Canadian result was and then saw who won. USA placed 2nd in the Jr Womens relay earlier this week.

Other random teams in the Mens Relay:
10. Norway
11. Finland
12. Sweden

Note: https://nordiqcanada.ca lost substantial government funding after the 2018 Olympics and also had a number of top skiers retire (ie Alex Harvey). This is really impressive. Props to member of their National Board Charlotte MacNaughton, long-time Orienteering mover/shaker.

Whatever the US is doing right in skiing it is very impressive!

Very impressive for both! And, evidently this makes 2 in a row for USA junior men.

Searching youtube for the race videos I found nordic combined but not xc. Also learned that there is a sport called Underwater Rugby. Who knew?

Ok, found them. Not immediately obvious:

Junior women relay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipkBt_GapIg
Junior men relay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzmQds8Y4ZA

Now to whip up some dinner before watching.

What should orienteering in both USA and Canada do to emulate these results?

Nevin, there actually is a link to orienteering. One of the relay team members Tom Stephen is from an orienteering family. His Mom Deanne was the coordinator of SOGO Adventure Running for a number of years.

Bizarre women's relay. USA was 4th across the line behind Poland, Germany, and Switzerland but Poland and Germany were disqualified. TV announcer was clueless about that even though US anchor leg knew about it during the race. My hunch is the Poland dsq is from where their first leg skier cut inside the course markers on a curve to pass several other teams. Not obvious what happened with Germany but their 3rd leg skier somehow made up a boat load of time on the leader while off camera.

Skate and classic courses were different but Ger and Pol didn't pay attention that 'tiny' detail so those two teams skied a shorter than the rest not to say they skied wrong. Ger managed to do it on both leg 3 and 4. It is unclear why they were allowed to continue ski the last leg. Pol only made that mistake on last leg.

Btw all jr races and u23 are live streamed and can be seen afterwards as well https://www.mdr.de/sport/ski-nordisch-junioren-wm/...

Gus Schumacher (and friends) won the High School O in Anchorage a few years ago. Luke Jager also ran in the High School O in 2014. All the local high school runners and skiers participate (300+ per year) in that event, so most of the skiing stars that grew up in Anchorage have probably done at least some orienteering.

https://oalaska.org/2016/08/karen-lias-high-school...

sberg asked what should Canadian and US O do to emulate this. Based on what I’m reading on this thread there is already some O and nordic skiing overlap so I’d argue that getting ARK/ARX (or equivalent) into nordic skiing clubs would be a good start.

One short cut for orienteering, as it is with many other North American national teams, to improved international performance would be to be there to 'pick up the pieces' when these great junior skiers perhaps fall short of their goal of getting on the national senior team.
Take the example of the US bobsled team. Their ranks are or were populated by US Track sprinters who did not quite make it to the Olympics.
Same could go for US rugby if they could attract graduating university football players who are not going to make it to the professional game. They have the physical base; they just need the skill training. A national rugby team made up of former NCAA linebackers and fullbacks would be awesome on the world stage in 15's, wide receivers and defensive backs could dominate the 7's game
So it could be for orienteering: entice the 20 something XC and XC ski stars who are short on making the national team. Find the ones with the skills to be orienteers and bring them in with a good program, a good social life and a chance to be on a national team they so much wanted. It might work; it might not but one thing for sure is that if ou don't invite them it will not work.

SBerg: how much does your home Sweden club care about TioMila results? I'm going to guess a lot?

Ah now, that's nothing compared to what the Irish are achieving. https://www.skijorcanada.com/skijordue-2020-result...
https://www.rte.ie/news/leinster/2020/0307/1120834...

The Tiomila relay is the main focus during the winter training for a lot of clubs and runners in Sweden. This year Tiomila celebrates the 75th running. https://www.10mila.se/index.php/en/641-10mila-2020

Would love to hear perspective from AliC, acjospe and BMay, but probably busy training.

From a Cdn perspective IMHO to ‘pick up the pieces’ would mean moving from a ‘convince us you are good enough’ selection process to an ‘encouragement’ recruitment model. Not sure that will be easy for some to adopt.

Tiomila is _the_ spring event even in Norway. NSK have entered at least 4 mens teams, plus a bunch of womens and youths.

Hammer makes a great point. In the Boston area there is a very strong junior Nordic ski program (both for primary/middle and for high school aged kids). Wendy Johnecheck and Pia Kivisakk have been working hard on the NEOC junior program, and reaching out to the Nordic ski folks. There has been a fair amount of interest, as the sports have some great similarities: the whole family can do it, and you spend lots of time outside. The junior Nordic programs also rely heavily on volunteers, so these folks are used to pitching in and helping out. It is definitely a connection that is worth cultivating, and can produce new orienteers.

As to the challenges ... generally speaking, you only need one ski area in a fairly large geographic area, and the athletes can train at the same place every day of the week. For orienteering, ideally you need multiple areas.

Maybe more on this later, but we need a *much* broader base of the pyramid before you can start to see truly competitive results at the international stage. A large piece of the current American jr/sr success (IMHO) is the hype and the confidence, but you need the thousands of hours of training to back that up.

Also, Hammer is on to something - there is a whole lot of available structure for young nordies as they discover the sport, fall in love with it, learn to compete, and eventually choose to pursue to the highest level. Youth programs, middle school and high school teams, travel clubs, regional and national competitions, collegiate NCAA teams, collegiate Division 3 teams, professional teams, and of course an umbrella NGB that pulls in a lot of cash from the other skiing sports and a broad base of mandatory membership.

Not saying American orienteering can't mimic that, but the numbers of key movers and shakers involved make it very difficult to achieve something similar.

You could look back further, too, to the creation of the New England Nordic Ski Association, and how it rose grassroots style in defiance of the way USSA was running things, and that drove a lot of youth and junior development around the country as other regions responded with their own regional alliances.

Terje: how serious is the competition to make the top NSK team? Or are they all recreational teams? ;)

ndobbs, that vintage tractor training method reminds me of the method for practicing downhill speed skiing without mountains or snow
https://www.mtv.fi/sarja/kymmenen-uutiset-1983-330...

:-(
Pahoittelut! Tämä ohjelma on ohjelmaoikeuksista johtuen katsottavissa vain Suomessa. Mikäli kuitenkin olet Suomessa, ota yhteys asiakaspalveluun, niin selvitetään mistä kiikastaa

And since my Finnish is very rusty (OK, non-existent) Google translate says:
Regrets! Due to program rights, this program is only available in Finland. However, if you are in Finland, contact customer service to find out what's going on

damn restrictions... here is a still photo, it isn't just quite the same as video from 80's.
https://twitter.com/Silodrome/status/1074635576395...

What purpose do the poles serve in that event?

@Nev: NSK top womens team is a winning candidate, with 3-5 runners from last year's WOC. Top mens team will have a similar number of Norwegian and international WOC participants, this is sufficient to fight for a top 10 position but probably not consistent enough to win.
I'm trying to qualify for the veteran's team.

Disqualification of Ger and Pol
The track of the classic course was so wide, that you easy can skate there. Therefore the Ger Team take this way. Both courses were about the same length, only the altitude difference was different.
Note: I know it so exactly, because I was there as volunteer and workt at this day in the cross-country arena.

Meanwhile in Siberia:
https://youtu.be/2VZX0a1oILU