Discussion: Are head-to-head races the future?

Some of the most enjoyable orienteering races I've done here in North America are head-to-head races. Races like the Billygoat, Highlander, the US Sprint Series, and our THOMASS series and Salomon Dontgetlost.ca series here in southern Ontario.
Given that most other endurance sports in North America are head-to-head mass start or pursuit races I've often felt we should have more mass start orienteering races (including our Champs races).

So I find it interesting the discussions the articles that have popped up recently in WorldofO.com about the head-to-head racing.

http://news.worldofo.com/2010/06/23/wants-head-to-...

http://news.worldofo.com/2010/06/22/knockout-sprin...

Are head-to-head races the future?

YES!!!

I think they are on the right track by having no forking. Tactics then become as important as navigation.

@O-ing
I totally agree. There are a lot of tactics. From the 2nd link I posted above...

"From watching the TV broadcast, it looked like the runners were mostly following each other – the tactics for the one behind being to wait for a mistake from the one in front. It will be interesting to hear the opinons of more runners than the winner Hertner"

Google Translate has some trouble with Marianne Anderson's blog translation but she discusses strategy

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F...

Here is SImone's google 'translate'. Looks like her strategy was to get out in front but it is clear others were no simply following because she made a mistake near the end of the final and the others didn't make the mistake.

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F...

We are excited to hear the feedback on the naoc Thomass event. With a mass start of over 275 and a full handicap system, it will be all about tactics.

I have watched knock-out sprint TV broadcasts now - both were about as boring as it gets, lot worse than the regular TV format. You seem to easily end up shooting pigeons and hobos with your cameras, just some runners passing by every now and then. I guess it's difficult/expensive to make it work on TV, more cameras needed, using gps tracking to fill gaps between cameras is pointless and so on.

If you've seen only one or two broadcasted races you migth be impressed, but like Jagge, I've seen something like 20 and I thought the Stockholm race was crap.

Head-to-head races are interesting it there is something that forces you to chose tactics, be it differences in skill or physique, forking or simply very long races. But when you put a bunch of elite runners in a mass-startyou get pack running and mass-finishes and that is simply boring.

Yes, head-to-head races can be exciting but NO, they are not the solution to get orienteering on TV.

I would love to see more mass start events to draw in a more athletic element to the sport. Personally, I like the tactics involved in making split second decisions on whether to follow or navigate on you own. I would like to see the number and quality of the races expanded. New people would experience that "race vibe" thats fun that may be absent from traditional O'ing...

In cycling or running races outside stadiums they use cameras on bikes to follow the action, why does orienteering only use stationary cameras?

Perhaps it would not be ideal to see the backs of the runners but you would be able to follow the action all the way from start to finish...

I only ran the 1/4 of the World Cup in Stockholm, but what I can say about it and also what we discussed in our team:
1. Following the 1/2-final and final in the arena was exciting. The race setting and presentation for spectators was very good.
2. More camera coverage is needed!!!
3. No gafflings are ok only if the terrain is very fast and the top runners don't need to slow down to navigate. This way the group gets spread out. This worked out well in Gamla Stan.
4. Fast and "easy" terrain, yes, but lots of route choices are essential, again, this was very good at this WC. This way a runner slightly behind still has a chance if he reads the map and has own initiative.
5. A way to follow the runners during the race on the big screen would fill the empty time between the cameras. GPS is probably not accurate enough in town, but aren't there other possibilities to locate the runners on a small area? Radiosignals?
Easy to do: more controls with split times!
6. Not anymore futuristic: drone planes with a camera following the runners.
7. A technical tough qualification race is needed. So that pure runners are eliminated.

This is a very interesting topic for those who want to develop the sport.

I have taken part in mass start no forking races and found them surprisingly exciting, with route choice splitting up the field as well as running speed. Both in the forest and in urban terrain.

But mostly our efforts to create excitement and spectacle have involved a balanced loop system (cloverleaf, butterfly, Hagaby) with the loops intersecting at a highly visible point or common leg, preferably close to the start/finish. This dramatically reduces following, while letting spectators and participants see who is in front at the loop junction. Further interest is added with unforked loop(s) thrown into the mix.

I'd like to know whether to continue these developments, or whether the simpler mass-start unforked formula is OK. Of course there may be two answers - in terms of excitement for the participants, and interest for an audience (who might be potential participants, or not participants at all).

Just back from the third mass start sprint event for our season. It was a three race format, but rather than elimination, the result of one race gave you an additional time handicap for the next race. I had more fun today than I have had in quite some time. However, it was quite apparent that many of our normal contingent of recreational orienteers did not attend. Obviously this style of event is not to the taste of all orienteers.

The three events we have run are now annual and the different formats reflect the lessons we have learnt over the past few years. The main lessons are that people will not travel for one sprint race. So run three races, and don't have eliminations. These formats might give others a few ideas. And we might get some ideas from the discussion as well.

Event 1: Bendigo Orientshow. There are three mass start sprint races. The first race is unforked, with route choice,on many legs, particularly the first.The second race is a hagaby format with many variations and a last common loop. The last race is an orientshow format with a unique course for each runner (we haven't had more than 36 entrants yet). This year we changed the scale of the map between each race... 10,000, 5,000, 2,500.

Event 2: Bendigo Ironman- Four sprint races, but you only need to run three. Competitors start on a chasing start based on a handicap designed to get a mass finish. Of course, that goal has so far proved elusive. Result is based on best three placings. Times only used for future handicapping. We have run this format for a decade now, and experimented with hagaby forms. The conclusion is that it has been more fun with no course variations. This event really pushes all competitors to their limits. And almost anyone can win. Tactical racing is common.

Event 3 Bendigo Skins- Three sprint races. Mass start for first. The second half of the field start a minute behind the first half in the next race. The following race there are three start blocks and allocation is based upon the results of the second race. The result is much tactical running in the first two races to maximise return for energy expended. The last race is high intensity. No splits in the courses.

All these events are held on open gold mining terrain.

Gruver wrote: "This is a very interesting topic for those who want to develop the sport"

well that is why I started the thread. ;-)

We have found in Ontario that while many in our sport like the solitude of running alone in the forest (or walking in many cases too) the 'fear' if you will of navigating alone is a HUGE barrier to entry into the sport. Also people don't understand why age and sex should dictate what course they run. I can run any distances at the large trail running, triathlon, and road races here in the Golden Horseshoe. So the fewer course (sometimes one) and mass start race format in our events in GHO were designed not only to add excitement and to be logistically much simpler to host but designed to grow the sport.

our most common formats are

1) Long 25K un-forked team races (we call them Raids)
2) short 4-7K races that has a score-O section that splits up people based on handicap and if designed right a mass finish (THOMASS)
3) Hagaby method with 3-4 courses and some un-forked loops. We call it O-Cross.

Again we adopted mass start races to DEVELOP the sport. To reduce an entry barrier to the sport and to make it easier for clubs to organize. The interesting finding is that we also added a much needed improvement to the social atmosphere of the race experience. People arrive, register and start all at the same time. There is person vs. person strategies in the race. There is team work among friends and newcomers. It allows for more post race discussion and often a post race meal and reduces an individual's time commitment. How often have you been to a race with a long start window only to be arriving when others have raced and are leaving? That is completely foreign to other endurance sports athletes.

I found swisscheese's comments very interesting and look forward to see what format prevails as mass start races also add excitement (how many of us tune in to watch Tiomila and Jukola?).

Now that mass start races is at the World Cup stage when do we see the 'domestique' enter the race strategy?

If a country, club, team, etc has multiple people together in the middle to late in the race does one team member deliberately try to lose a group by making a mistake to allow another team mate to make a break?

If not why not?

Another interesting feature of the Thomass....
Since it is handicapped, ideally the best runners of all ages and genders should finish about the same time. If this happens, it is referred to as the magical "mass finish".

I enjoyed the format of todays ultra-sprint race, a low key event added in to a regional weekend to get people interested in the sprint race. This event used a complex, temporary maze (made of plastic stakes and red and white tape)

We each ran 2 heats, only of about 700m each, in either order, setting off at about 30 second intervals and the times for both were added together to give us a ranking for the final. These race were simple lines courses which went onto an enlarged section of map for the maze just before the finish.

When the times were added up, the quickest 4 runners were put into a head to head race (about 1km), with 2 forms of gaffling around the course; a loop which is done in opposite directions by 2 pairs, then another loop, so that the person going the same way round your loop is different from before, then a few long legs (in perspective to the course) then we went into the maze again, this time for a 4 way gaffled butterfly, so everbody went to the same controls, everybody did the same 2 loops, but nobody was running the same direction at any one time.

The quickest 4 runners from each sex were set off as a spectator event, so the rest of the runners there (about 70 others) could watch the action as it unfolded, this worked well because the park was so open. The 4 finalists were the top 4, then after everybody else had run, the times were put together to form the results, even if the finalists were slower, they were still ranked 1, 2, 3 and 4, because they had got into the final.

The other runners were free to group into 4's, but they ended up lining up in pretty much the order of ranking, then set off in 4's at a 30 second interval again.

This format seems to have worked really well and most of the people taking part seemed to enjoy it, especially watching the top 4 running through the maze at the end. The top 4 were only separated by 32 seconds in the end, which was mostly down to running speed. If the event had not clashed with the British Junior Inter regionals, then the competition would probably have been a lot higher and a lot more closer racing. The fact that the sprint event in this country is completely disregarded as a runners event seems to have affected the event, but it proved that the fastest runners don't always win. It was a very interesting race.

Sprint orienteering is as much about the running as the ability to read the map quickly and make snap decisions so as not to lose time.

Is there a THOMASS manual? Any tips how to achieve mass finish?

In our handicap event we keep a database of recent performances in previous events. Handicaps are time rather than point based. I have tried to use some simple regression and scale analysis. But tweaking based on gut feel is unavoidable. The handicap for easy, moderate and hard courses is different. Likewise the handicap for hagaby vs courses with no variation has to be different. I suppose this is a quantification of the advantages of being able to follow.

Several of us use a system of distance ratios when designing Thomass courses and have been fairly successful in achieving a mix of handicaps in the top 10 finishers. For example, a 50-year-old woman runs about 60% as far as the male elites. These numbers are based on some standard statistics on relative running speeds based on age/gender. We find that as the course gets more physically difficult, which in our case often means greater snow depth, the balance tilts toward lower handicaps (e.g. male elite) and the course might need to be adjusted accordingly. The same thing is true of serious elevation gain and other challenges, so the designer will often consider more than just distance. We don't have a manual but Phatty developed a very cool Thomass design spreadsheet this year!

Can you give us some more detail about the THOMASS format (or point to where it has been described)?

I heard that it stands for Thierry, Omar, Ashley and Simone, but I fear it might not work in some countries because of associations with old-fashioned steam engines...

Yes, please. I can find directions to THOMASS events onthe web site, but no information about the format. Sounds very interesting, and perhaps easier to handicap.

As the founder of the THOMASS race series here is some brief info. It was started as a training event series in winter as a fundraiser of the Ontario Junior team I was coaching. Named after Thomas the Orienteer video prepared by Swedish O Federation. Stands for Toronto Hamilton Oakville Milton Adventure Snow Series although Oshawa and Mississauga have been used as substitutes.

All races mass start. Everybody is given a handicap according to age and gender. See link below for handicap rules at middle part of web site.

The course is point to point but includes at least one 'box' of score orienteering. The box will normally consist of 7 checkpoints that people can visit in any order. The box is where people can also skip checkpoints according to their handicap and so this is where the different course lengths come in as Bash has mentioned above. A nice rule to add splitting and race strategy to the box is to require racers to return to a common checkpoint after getting a max of 2 checkpoints in the box. This does the job of setting up mini butterfly loops and if that common checkpoint is near the start/finish makes for great spectating. So if a box has 7 checkpoints a 12 year old girl with a handicap of 6 only needs to take 1 checkpoint in the box while an elite male must take all 7.

The courses in the link below are last year's Thomass race hosted by GHO and set by AP'er Tiny. The box is between checkpoint 6 and 7 in both races.

http://www.dontgetlost.ca/index.php?option=com_con...

we have been doing these races (6-8 per winter) for the last 16 or so years in southern Ontario. Former GHO member Oivind Naess has organized similar races formats in Chicago, there was a Thomass race in Alberta last year and now the largest ever race using this format will be this week in BC.

Personally I would rather people just call theses races orienteering events with a handicap system in place. One could be more clever to allow for people to have their own personal handicap like in golf but I don't think we have the numbers to make this happen.

that looks like a really cool format

Tank you!