Discussion: NSW Stinger weak at Orienteering?

Just had a quick glance to see how nswstinger and his race partner are going at the Alps to Ocean" Adventure race and was a little amused to read the following after they took out the prologue section of the event.

"The Silva Stingers team of Richard Mountstephens and Rob Preston showed they were a team to be reckoned with this year taking out the Stage 1 Prologue. Fifth overall in last years Keen Adventure Race - Great Ocean Road, they went away and trained on their weakness in orienteering"

Who is writing this? Don't they know these guys are elite orienteers? Don't know how much better they can possibly get.

Wasn't last year's race the one where they lost all that time due to inadequacies of the map and a control location? The records would just show them screwing up on the navigation/orienteering.

So they needed to practice adding some random variation to their navigation.

Perhaps they should be preparing for these weaknesses by doing more Rogaining :-)

Oxoman

I think you're talking about the XPD in Queensland where that occured. Or does this occur in all adventure races?

_______

Perhaps second guessing where a setter may have misplaced a control might be good practice.

Bruce,
He mightn't do as much rogaining as he used to, but doesn't RP still hold the runner up title from the last World Rogaining Champs?

I read that and thought it was hilarious. And he is our National Coach!!! I called him (after the prologue) and he thought it was hilarious too.

Oxoman you are right, he lost 8 hours looking for a waterfall along the Great Ocean Road race.

Hey Fat Rat ... We lost 4 hours looking for a waterfall at Geo !!! Must be a difference between Orienteering Nav and AR Nav. Still a funny report though and I got an amusing SMS from Rob last night.

haha, yer very true.

orienteering nav you read the map, AR nav you go in the general direction and hope alot.

a quick update-
yes very funny report. I think it may have come about from my comment at the finish line "All I've been doing for 3 weeks is Orienteering and I couldn't find any bloody control".
Had some trouble finding a lot of the flags that were a little hidden, but made up for it by passing the top 2 teams (including world rogaining champ Chris Forne) at the 3rd last control when they all made a mistake.
And yes we did lose 5hrs last year looking for a waterfall- but that was our mistake not the map. Losing more than that in XPD WAS due to crappy maps etc.

Clearly competitors have a different (lower) expectation of course setting in 'adventure' races. Compare with the protest and course cancellation at Easter. Is it
1/ A belief that guessing where a course setter might have gone wrong is one of the skills of the game.
or
2/ A belief that the luck of the seach is part of the sport. This is certainly a belief of quite a few rogainers.
or
3/ No experience of anything better.

_______ - could be that misplaced controls have happened so often and courses have never been cancelled in ARs so you just accept it and move on?? Certainly is very frustrating when it negates the significant advantage you expect to have from good navigation skills though...

That's a funny story about the Silva Stingers' "weakness".

Fat Rat: orienteering nav you read the map, AR nav you go in the general direction and hope alot

_________: A belief that the luck of the seach is part of the sport.

Well said on both counts.

From a navigation standpoint, 21st century adventure racing ~= mid-20th century orienteering.

Although I give more credit to some AR organizers, who seem to understand how to set a course within the limitations of the map.

I think ebone is right. The history of orienteering was a tussle between those who first modified standard maps and later drew special-purpose maps; and traditionalists who felt these advances were taking something away from the sport.

You can perhaps see the difference today between orienteers and rogainers. While it's quite possible to set controls within the limits of a topo map (in my country 1:50,000/20m contours) rogaining is moving to modified maps just as orienteering did. Will AR follow this path? One would think there would be pressure from teams who miss out on prize money to do so.

There is a 6 hour rogaine next weekend in Victoria on a map composed of 5 stitched together orienteering maps and 4 street maps. I'm sure it will upset some "traditionalists". Make your way to Bendigo.

update- the reporter was very embarrissed when I told her I was the national coach, and prompted changed the reports retrospectively :-)

3rd place - well done!

If WOC ever introduces cave orienteering though, you might want to consider a separate specialist coach.

I was no worse than any one else!!!

nswstinger - did you know you were on TV Sunday lunchtime?

1 hour program on the Mark Webber challenge?

I never saw it but a colleague at work was asking if I knew you as she had watched it.

Ill concede that a cave is as fun a place as any to get lost.

at least few people will see that you are lost.