Discussion: Qualifying for WOC finals

I did a little of stats on 2006 WOC quals using WRE points assigned to 15th place:
Event Men Women
2006WOC Sprint Qual A 1109 960
2006WOC Sprint Qual B 1169 1035
2006WOC Sprint Qual C 1149 1045
2006WOC Middle Qual A 1208 1037
2006WOC Middle Qual B 1183 1096
2006WOC Middle Qual C 1200 1108
2006WOC Long Qual A 1100 1038
2006WOC Long Qual B 1138 1077
2006WOC Long Qual C 1108 1072
Sprint Mean 1142 1013
Middle Mean 1197 1080
Long Mean 1115 1062
Total Mean 1152 1052

I hope that would be helpful in motivation for some to be consistent 1200 (men) and 1100 (women) WRE pts athlete.

Train long, train hard and you might be there!

Another interesting stat would be to consider those same numbers in 2001, 03, 04, and 05, and see what the trend is. It seems more meaningful to compare WR points for the same discipline year over year, than different ones for the same year, because it's not entirely certain what "equivalence" is across disciplines and whether WR points correctly reflect it.

I would further modify Sergey's statement to be discipline-specific. Someone may be hard pressed to score 1000 in the Long, but can be consistendly 1200 in the Sprint.

I have been crunching the numbers for % behind winner for all WOC qualifiers since 87 (men only). I don't have all the data yet but it looks like that two of the three men's middle qual heats this year were the toughest to qualify for since WOC '93 short qual. In '93 there was a big difference in heat quality though with some heats requiring having a cutoff at 7 or 8% (don't have the data in front of me) behind the winner - while other heats were >20%. In '93 only the top 10 went to the final but fewer countries then. This year's % behind winner in the long was similar to other years.

You might look at more than just 15th place. Maybe you could pick some arbitrary range, such as 10th to 20th place (11 data points), or 12th-18th (7 points), or even 14th to 16th (3 points), and take the average of the range. This might smooth the data, and give a more reliable estimate.

WOC 93 short. not sure, but I think I was 3:30 back and did not qualify. if not for the (uncrossable) fence along the beach...

Good memory Joe.

http://www.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/~blair/orientee...

Hey Joe you beat the defending champion CZ Petr Kozak! Allen Mogrenson didn't make the final of the short?

The point is that right now best men NA elites are consistently in 900-1000 WRE pts range. Only Sam (USA) and Sandy (Canada) are approaching 1100 range on women side. I guess their training pays :)

I see that insufficient training process (read that as too short training time) plays major negative impact on the NA elites performance. The one must be in 500-600 training quality hrs/year group even to consider approaching world elite.

Look at Boris who improved tremendously last year! He is my hero! Boris, please continue this path for at least couple more years - you will definitely qualify for a WOC final!

>The point is that right now best men NA elites are consistently in 900-1000 WRE pts range. Only Sam (USA) and Sandy (Canada) are approaching 1100 range on women side. I guess their training pays :)

OK so I had to check that claim. It is almost correct. The only North Americans above an average of 1000 points for their top WRE races at the moment are:

Sandy: 1144
Mike S: 1064
Mike W: 1037
Sam: 1030

>one must be in 500-600 training quality hrs/year group even to consider approaching world elite.


Define World Elite....
Marc Lauenstein trained 475 hours last year and won WOC silver. His last 12 months are 470 and he won WOC silver again. That is pretty World Class performance eh!

Dangerous game, Hammer... checking claims, looking at evidence...

Yeah, I guess Marc just isn't "elite" enough if he doesn't conform to our expectations over here :)

And what about Swisscheese, his training is on AttackPoint, he is not nearly to 500-600 hours and still one of the best, even this year without competing much? And he is not an exception among world's elite. Luck of training hours is pure explanation of the position of US in world orienteering elite. I consider this discussion useless since everything on this topic has been said before: the long term work is on its way if we can improve by 2-3 % in average WOC performance each year, and that is realistic, some significant result may be seen in 3-5 years. The major problem right now is luck of next generation of juniors, hopefully Mike Sandstrom and Erin Schirm are going to stick with O, and some new names will pop up in next couple of years, but I have not seen them yet. The level of internal competition needs to rise too.

I see Hammer beat me to post first the same thoughts, so nothing is new, just like in the woods :-)

Most of the time I don't take Greg's spelling choices seriously, but the "Hummer" couldn't possible be an oversight. Some convoluted reference to Canadians and Kyoto, eh?

But Hammer is pro-Kyoto, even though our prime minister isn't.

No, j-man, I am not that smart, you should know it by now. (Sorry, Mike, error corrected)

Greg, in my eyes you totally won. The NA elite runners are on their right way... they do progress and want badly to become better. Now the point is, that one cannot do a jump in performance, it is an evolution. All they need is positive encouragement…
"The major problem right now is l(u)ck of next generation of juniors". I am baffled to see that people can pull each others hair out fighting about the amount of hours it takes to be at the top but not more worried about the offspring!!! Maybe this is a too scary subject… there the none-elite runners cannot just comment the lousiness of the situation, because then they might be asked to act!?!

About the training… with my 475 hours/year I am training a lot among the strong men in the Swiss team. For sure that is also because we are all pretty young. Without a doubt we are going to train more in the next years. But, interestingly the slower runners in the team are statistically training more! I think it shows that speed (and that is what we need in competitions) is much more correlated to quality training than to volume. One should train what he needs… I don’t go in a long jog tempo in my competitions. If someone wants to become strong, he should train to be fast, not to achieve a certain hours/year.

Maybe this deserves its own thread but one of the keys has to be the lack of competition NA orienteers get. I was talking with a Norwegian master last year at WMOC in Edmonton - this fellow lived in Alberta for many years before moving back to Norway. Maybe he's an Attack Pointer and can confirm this, but if I recall correctly he said he had about 80 starts the season before. I remember thinking (being stuck in this northern backwater) - crikey that's 10 years worth for me!
500 hours of the highest quality, orienteering specific training isn't going to get you there if you aren't getting enough competitions in.

That is another very good point!
Remembering my year in the US, I hardly raced 1/month a high quality orienteering event.
I heard that John F. and Ross S. are planing to organize almost weekly events (mainly sprints) with Sport Ident in the Boston region... this would be something very beneficial!

Here are some stats for last 4 WOCs.
Men WOC WRE Cutoff 2003 2004 2005 2006 Mean of Mean
Sprint Qual A 1048 1107 1109 1088
Sprint Qual B 1021 932 1169 1040.666667
Sprint Qual C 1058 1138 1149 1115
Middle Qual A 1072 1074 1093 1208 1111.75
Middle Qual B 1060 1015 1075 1183 1083.25
Middle Qual C 1064 1059 1120 1200 1110.75
Long Qual A 1074 1095 1076 1100 1086.25
Long Qual B 1015 1020 1090 1138 1065.75
Long Qual C 1063 1067 1026 1108 1066
Sprint Mean 1042 1059 1142 1081.222222
Middle Mean 1065 1049 1096 1197 1101.916667
Long Mean 1051 1061 1064 1115 1072.666667
Total Mean 1058 1051 1073 1152 1083.333333


Women WOC WRE Cutoff 2003 2004 2005 2006 Mean of Mean
Sprint Qual A 956 952 960 956
Sprint Qual B 998 946 1035 993
Sprint Qual C 968 1001 1045 1004.666667
Middle Qual A 1037 921 969 1037 991
Middle Qual B 971 1085 939 1096 1022.75
Middle Qual C 1027 1014 950 1108 1024.75
Long Qual A 921 1030 912 1038 975.25
Long Qual B 1085 825 912 1077 974.75
Long Qual C 945 1025 967 1072 1002.25
Sprint Mean 974 966 1013 984.5555556
Middle Mean 1012 1007 953 1080 1012.833333
Long Mean 984 960 930 1062 984.0833333
Total Mean 998 980 950 1052 994.9166667

Well, 1100 for men and 1000 for women is the cutoff. Statistical variations, of course, quite possible :)

This year WOC was most intense!

One thing everyone has overlooked is the fact that WOC gets a greater loading than any other event (1.1, versus say 1.05 for a national champs- someone correct me if i'm wrong). So the WRE score in WOC are always going to look high. Remove this loading and you will have a more realistic comparision to other WRE's.

According to published WRE rules:
For WOC individual race Finals, IP is raised to 1.05.

So only for WOC finals WRE score is raised 5%. All other races don't have any corrections.

I think NSW Stinger is thinking of the weightings from the Australian ranking scheme, which is like the WRE scheme but does have a more complex weighting system.

Best NA men in WRE list (I took 2 from each country):
Mike Smith (CAN) - 208th
Mike Waddington (CAN) - 218th
Eric Bone (USA) - 264th
Boris Granovskiy (USA) - 287th

Best women:
Louise Oram (CAN) - 139th
Sandy Hott Johansen (CAN) - 181th
Sam Saeger (USA) - 130th
Pavlina Brautigam (USA) - 152th

It is worth to note that 4400 WRE man is 169th.

And 4000 WRE woman is 134th.

I think there is a 5% bonus for WOC quals and a 10% bonus for WOC Finals (new Rules; look for "IP = " in the results). It used to be no bonus for WOC quals, and a 5% bonus for the Finals. So, I think Sergey's pre-2006 numbers need to be adjusted 5% up to have a fair comparison.

In that case, it strikes me as more useful to deduct 5% from the 2006 WOC Qualifier numbers in order to determine how many points you have to score consistently in typical WREs in order to expect to qualify for a WOC final.

OK - same numbers with 5% deducted from 2006 WOC quals.
Men WOC WRE Cutoff 2003 2004 2005 2006 Mean of Mean
Sprint Qual A 1048 1107 1053.55 1069.516667
Sprint Qual B 1021 932 1110.55 1021.183333
Sprint Qual C 1058 1138 1091.55 1095.85
Middle Qual A 1072 1074 1093 1147.6 1096.65
Middle Qual B 1060 1015 1075 1123.85 1068.4625
Middle Qual C 1064 1059 1120 1140 1095.75
Long Qual A 1074 1095 1076 1045 1072.5
Long Qual B 1015 1020 1090 1081.1 1051.525
Long Qual C 1063 1067 1026 1052.6 1052.15
Sprint Mean 1042 1059 1085 1062.183333
Middle Mean 1065 1049 1096 1137 1086.954167
Long Mean 1051 1061 1064 1060 1058.725
Total Mean 1058 1051 1073 1094 1068.938889

Women WOC WRE Cutoff 2003 2004 2005 2006 Mean of Mean
Sprint Qual A 956 952 912 940
Sprint Qual B 998 946 983.25 975.75
Sprint Qual C 968 1001 992.75 987.25
Middle Qual A 1037 921 969 985.15 978.0375
Middle Qual B 971 1085 939 1041.2 1009.05
Middle Qual C 1027 1014 950 1052.6 1010.9
Long Qual A 921 1030 912 986.1 962.275
Long Qual B 1085 825 912 1023.15 961.2875
Long Qual C 945 1025 967 1018.4 988.85
Sprint Mean 974 966 963 967.6666667
Middle Mean 1012 1007 953 1026 999.3291667
Long Mean 984 960 930 1009 970.8041667
Total Mean 998 980 950 999 981.7666667

1070 for men and 980 for women.
I would round it up to 1100 and 1000 to have safe margin :)