Discussion: Results?

Any news from day 1 of US champs?

Ali had a big lead in F21 after day one. On day two, the red course was voided due to two missIng controls, so Ali is the Champ.

Will had a big lead in M21 after day 1. I did not see the day 2 results

Day 2 red course voided b/c 2 controls were collected on Saturday that should have been reused Sunday (hearsay). I threw in the towel on Red when I encountered #7 (one of the reused controls, that had been put *back* out into the woods) but did not find the water.

William Hawkins led M21 after Day 1. Sergei Zhyk won Day 2 and the medal.

just wait for results and maps Boris. very nice and challenging terrain. super impressed

I'm not sure how you can be impressed with two controls removed from a Classic Champs red course. I would have been mighty pissed had I chosen to travel.

I am impressed by the terrain and the amounts of similiar stuff that can be found in that area.

Two controls removed?

Two controls removed?

As I understand it, due to a mixup, two controls that were in the area that overlapped between the two days got picked up on Saturday evening, while the Day 1 controls were being retrieved. Those controls appeared on the Day 2 Red course. The organizers scrambled to fix the situation and get the controls back out there on Sunday as soon as they realized the problem, but too many competitors had been affected, and the Day 2 Red results had to be voided.

There was additionally an issue with the location of a control feature on the Brown and GreenX courses on Day 1 that sparked a prompted that resulted in those courses also having one day voided. However, despite those problems, the terrain was excellent, the map represented it well, and the courses were well designed. There were a number of nice touches that made the meet very enjoyable. I'm very glad I made the decision to attend, though I will note that (like most people), my courses were unaffected by problems.

Actually, from what I can see, most people were affected. According to the start list, 255 people had start times. Of those, 135, or 53%, were on courses that were impacted.

We had the exact same issue with an overeager Saturday control picker at the 2006 FLO event. Very fortunately, it did register in my brain that too many SPORTident units had showed up from the woods... and therefore there was a very early Sunday morning jog to place the controls and units.

Actually, from what I can see, most people were affected

I stand corrected. I was just guessing, I hadn't counted, and I guessed wrong.

I would be interested to know exactly what went wrong and resulted in the extra controls being picked up. Not because I want to 'pin' this on anyone, but because it is a not-uncommon problem and it would be good to understand where our procedures are going wrong, and perhaps fix them in the future.

Mark Dominie would be the man to ask, he has the most knowledge of what happened. But he won't respond here -- as he said to me yesterday, "I don't do that Facebook thing... or Attackpoint, ot whatever it's called...".

However relevant, what happened at our 2006 FLO event was someone went to pick up controls with his map from the course he had just run, without checking with the course setter. BAOC, for example, has very rigorous procedures for control pickup, which usually is one of the best-handled volunteer job sections of an A meet. We didn't have anything similar in place in 2006; another volunteer was rounding up control pickers as I, the course setter, was in the woods, and there wasn't a miscommunication—more like no communication.

We decided at Team Trials to bring everything in and put everything back out again. All points were checked three times, when hung, and a secondary check that night. A final check was done in the morning before competitors went out, and all units woken up. This enabled Sandy to check we'd punched all controls required for the day, and that everything was functioning. It took five people and a lot of hours, but I think it's the only way to ensure everything is present and correct. I am very grateful to the wonderful people who volunteered to help achieve that.

Simple task which suppose to be and must be in place for any A-meet - checkpoints existence check in the morning before the race starts. This procedure wasn't performed. But what is more interesting, Blue course reused several Red controls from Day 1 and these points still were in the woods, so, at least Blue runners had a full 2 days competition.

Yep, pre-runners is standard procedure to check controls and wake-up SI units in the morning of a race.

Sometimes you can go with as little as couple pre-runners by assigning 1/2 control course to each. We also require to carry one extra SI unit in case one needs replacement in woods.

One note is that these pre-runners should finish before first officail start so it can be delayed if neccessary to replace controls.

Following this procedure would avert problems with courses both days.

And, please, pLEASE, PLEASE, don't ever print this kind of detailed terrain at 1:15000. I had difficulties looking at this map with my giant magnifying glass even standing.

Just a different opinion on the 1:15: please, please do keep having races that are actually on 1:15000 scale! WOC long is at 1:15000, that is the standard for long races and we already have so little practice at that scale in the US...

So M/W21 should run on 1:15000, but maybe a second printing of the Red for the older age categories would be appreciated, not sure if it's ever done that way here...

I think a second printing of Red on older age categories really really really should happen. And frankly I'm hoping for 1:7500 at this point. It's so bad. One has no idea, until it happens to you, how annoying it is to lose the ability to see the map.

probably M/F 21 to have it at 1:15k, and another red course at 1:10k (usually there are 2 red courses if i am not wrong ).. and still impressed by terrain and map . courses were good too, not super but good ( and i understood that the course setters were still new at that task ).. i would travel again there..

one suggestion for organizers though-- when they realized there are another 2 hunting towers on the map near control 14 on blue ( and green courses ), if they can NOT re-print maps then POST PLEASE one map on the start line with the corrections so at least competitors are aware..i've seen it done before and its the least can be done.. but again impressed by terrain !!!

This kind of terrain at 1:15000 used to be completely normal 20 years ago. Pawtuckaway was originally 1:15000 for all courses (in 1992), and likewise for other detailed areas.

(Now, maybe the international long races should switch to using 1:10000, but that's a different discussion...)

The current IOF rule for the Long is 1:15000. All of our national team and high performance athletes will face this challenge at JWOC, WOC, World Cups, WREs etc. We need to give our athletes exposure to this scale in important competitions! Please help educate and encourage race organizers that M/W21E and M/W20 need 1:15000 for the Long. All other classes can use 1:10000 (or even lower for that matter).

I disagree with this encouragement :). Or rather, I agree that athletes running the long at WOC need practice on 1:15 because of the IOF rule, but terrain and terrain alone (and rarely, hardware restrictions) should dictate the scale of a map, not some notion that 1:15 is "harder to read" therefore the elites deserve the punishment, or because "the long has always been 1:15." Necessity is the mother of invention, not the other way around. The 1:15 IOF imposition is antiquated and we should be lobbying the IOF to drop this requirement. The primary reason I haven't requested a long qual start at WOC the past few years is because of the 1:15 scale. Not being able to read the information that's there is just no fun.

If you do existence checks the morning of the event, it is unlikely for this to happen.

I thought that was a SOP at US A-events.

Pre-runs are nice, but it is a different animal, and not a substitute.

Are the results posted somewhere? I haven't found anything on the CNYO page; the only result data seem to be Valerie's RouteGadget, and that only includes day 1.

The current rule is 1:15000 for Long. Our athletes have to produce results at international events on 1:15000. We need our athletes to practice at competitions at this scale. You may work through official channels to lobby for a change of the rule, if you are so inclined, but in the meantime we should give our elite runners 1:15000 at the Long if at all possible.

At the recent O-Ringen, I marvelled (along with the H18 whose map it was) how many rock features were inside the circle on the 1/15 scale on one particular venue/control. Seemed near impossible to deal with - he agreed, even with his young eyes. In the photo taken from his map, move the #12 circle east to one of the boulders or triangles (which was exactly the case when I didn't have a camera handy). Keep in mind, this is magnified appreciably! Eddie is right - time for IOF revolution:-). Sure, if one has to do it, one will. But that's not the best/right approach.

1/15 detail

one of the things that seems to separate a pretty good orienteer from a very good orienteer is that the better orienteer seems to deal very well with vague or poorly mapped situations, including map detail that is too small to see clearly.

Even if the rule does get changed to 1:10 for long, I suggest that those serious about improving their map reading skills, train some with 1:15. That way, 1:10 will seem easy to read.

Just to be absolutely clear, I wouldn't advocate changing the rule to 1:10, but rather relax the *requirement* of 1:15. Make it optional to adapt to what's appropriate for the terrain. This is the way the USOF rule is written now for the long.

Are the results posted anywhere?

It is for reason that all courses at WMOCs printed at 1:10000 or lower scale. At my 50 (almost) I and most of older folks just can not see details of 1:15000 map especially that detailed.

1:15000 for M/F-20-21 is encouraged but for younger and older ages 1:10000 is appropriate.

And I thought we already had this discussion here at Attackpoint :)

BTW, I liked second day red course more than first day one. Congratulations to course designer - he did nice job. Unfortunately, all was spoiled by missing control(s).

We did have this discussion before. It led to the USOF rules change mentioned above.

Is there any hope of ever seeing splits from the Champs?

You can get splits from Splitanalyzer off of vmeyer's Routegadget page, linked above (iansmith's post)

Is there any hope of ever seeing splits from the Champs?

So best as I can figure things out, here we are Tuesday evening following National Classic Championships over the weekend, and if you want to know what happened, you can do the following:

If you want results, you can (1) go to the Buffalo OC's website and look in their results archive, though there seems to be no mention of the presence of the results on any other Buffalo page (and why on the Buffalo site, for a CNYO event?), or (2) go look in the results section of the OUSA site, where Janet has added a link to the Buffalo page (but there is nothing on the front page of the OUSA site), or (3), see the link to the Buffalo page in this discussion, if you happen to read it.

But nothing on the main page for the whole Canal Cities event, nothing on the CNYO site, nothing on the front page of the OUSA site. For a national championships.

And that's just results. Press releases or stories or anything at all about what happened? Nothing that I can find. It almost has me believing there is a concerted effort to make the Classic Champs just fade away.

I hate to be critical because it usually doesn't help, plus the club has already taken a blow with the courses being thrown out. And I thought the map and terrain and the courses that I ran were all great. But if we are going to have championships of any sort, then we need to organize them as such, and that means not just stuff that needs to be done before the event and during the event, but also after the event.

And splits, an expected feature these days -- well, they are already posted for the Monday and Tuesday events at the Convention. What's the problem with the weekend?

Sadly, whatever sympathy I had for their problems with the courses is slowly draining away.

On 08/02/2011 at 14:32 EDT, I updated the CNYO Event Results web page with the Overall Results. When I receive files with the split times, I shall update the CNYO web page accordingly.

Robert Buraczynski

It almost has me believing there is a concerted effort to make the Classic Champs just fade away

One would think the organizers are the ones who believe the most in the viability of the format, and would be one of its most ardent supporters, no? Hard to think there's an outside conspiracy. The time has come, the walrus said (that's what I seem to hear).

Orienteering USA does not (and has not had for some time) a PR person to write up reports like this. Anyone here want the job?

[Side note: PG has done an excellent job in the past with WOC writeups -- thanks!!]

Host-club members are frequently burned out after the event ends and/or not qualified to write a decent summary, especially with a small club like CNYO.

I am happy to post reports from the event if they are sent to me, but I'm not trained in PR and have low confidence in my reporting skills. As for nothing on the OUSA Home page/Featured News, I got the results and champions pages updated shortly before I needed to prepare dinner, and just got back to my computer.

One would think the organizers are the ones who believe the most in the viability of the format

Or maybe the 247 people who were interested in signing up to participate.

The time has come, the walrus said

(Shoes? Ships? Sealing wax? Cabbages? Kings? Ocean temperatures? OCIN A-meets? Hmm?)

Yes. Cabbages.

...from what I can see, most people were affected....135, or 53%, were on courses that were impacted...

Control Pick-up procedures: I'd have thought with so many people impacted, we'd be discussing control pick-up procedures a bit more.

OUSA "Rules" and Course Setters' Guidelines contain little information on this phase of the meet. From my experience, control pick up is often left as a hurried afterthought, by stragglers and well-intentioned volunteers, without much planning or guidance.

I prefer to draft up "Pick-up Maps" and associated clue sheets during the course planning phase. In other words, try to give control pick-up some planning in advance. These Pick-up Maps can also be successfully used for control setting too.

After the meet, when everyone is exhausted, the meet director can simply hand out the Pick-up Maps with clue sheets. And as the volunteers return from the forest with controls in hand, the Meet Director can use a second copy of the Pick-up cluesheet to check off the controls to make sure all of the designated controls were actually recovered...no more; no less.

This is an idea I received from long-time CAOC course setter Steve Mallot many years ago. Making a whole second set of maps and cluesheets may sound like doubling the amount of work. But with OCAD it is very easy. And since it is done IN ADVANCE, it is an enjoyable extra step that adds to the Meet Director's peace of mind as meet day approaches.

Just a summary what went wrong with USA Champs from my own perspective:

1. All controls should be checked and waked-up by experienced pre-runners early morning before the actual starts. Thus no voided courses due to misplaced or missing controls.
2. Printing at 1:10000 for all other groups but M/F-20-21 would be appropriate. Young and old eyes can not comprehend 1:15000 scale for this kind of detailed terrain. Usage of 1:5000 or 1:7500 blowouts of some most detailed areas is encouraged.
3. Never print on glossy paper.
4. Publish finish results including splits right at the finish area on on-going basis.

I hope that this constructive critisism will help with future national meet organization and foster more enjoyment of competitive orienteering.

I think we've probably offered enough criticism of this event that it will be a very long time before CNYO makes the effort to allow us to enjoy their wonderful terrain, maps and hospitality again. I would like to thank our hosts for putting on this event and recognize the tremendous amount of volunteer effort they put into making it happen at all. Some unfortunate things happened and we should learn from them, but let's thank them for all the things they did right rather than point out how they might have done things differently.

I want to mention the good courses for blue runners! The transition from simple to tricky terrain that required change in speed and diligent compass work was a great practice. Also, this year courses were ~20min longer than from the last year thus, adding an additional challenge to already tough courses. I would happily return to these and '08 NAOC maps in the future.

As would I. I am sorry I missed this opportunity.

They're not unfortunate errors. At a National Championships, over half the runners lost a whole day of competition due to entirely avoidable errors. This is not good enough, for an event of that expense or stature.

If the sport wants to be taken seriously, then these things need to be addressed. Yes, we're volunteers, yes it's hard work, but when a lot of people are travelling a lot of distance for a championship event, they deserve better.

I'm glad I went and sympathetic regarding the difficulties of getting everything right but I'm with Becks on this - a national event, let alone a championship, should feature more layers of defence against problems such as occurred than this one did. The truly sad thing is that, people's feelings about map scales aside, CNYO came so close to pulling off a thoroughly excellent event - given the amount of effort involved in producing the map and designing the courses, this was very much the kingdom being lost for want of a nail.

Only 3 Americans finished both days of M21 at a US Champs!? Too many champs? Bad time
of year? Lack of interest in two day classic?

What the walrus said.

goo goo g'joob

Until US orienteers are willing to bear the costs of an independent controller for national championship events, the risk of situations such as those which occurred at the US Two-Day Classic Championships will remain high. These costs would have to be covered by higher meet fees and/or dues and also include a higher "volunteer cost". I would be (pleasantly) surprised if the OUSA membership would support significantly higher costs to assure event quality.

I'm not sure an independent controller would have prevented the glitches that occurred. After all, he has only two eyes to follow the actions of dozens of volunteers during the event weekend.

Despite significant OUSA payroll increases over the past couple of years i don't believe OUSA-sanctioned meets are any better quality. Most of OUSA's efforts have been to expand the number of starts. But are the host clubs and course setters receiving any better guidance and oversight?

Before hiring yet another paid OUSA employee, why shouldn't existing OUSA staff attempt to do a better job of educating and guiding the host-club volunteers? In other words, why not put some effort into improving the QUALITY of the product while attempting to expand its QUANTITY?

The "significant OUSA payroll increases" have not been directed at improving quality of sanctioned meets. The Executive Director was hired for his marketing and development skills, not to oversee the technical aspects of our sport. Quality assurance is still the responsibility of volunteers (led by the VP Competition and including the Sanctioning Committee, course consultants and sometimes event consultants).

I wouldn't expect controllers to be paid employees of OUSA, but rather follow the model of IOF controllers. IOF controllers are volunteers who have (some of) their expenses paid by the Federation. Their role is to assure that the rules are being followed, not to "watch the volunteers".

I've been trying to ignore this thread for several days, but it just keeps going and going. All I can say is, if you have an idea for a better system and are willing to work to implement it, the sanctioning committee would be pleased to hear from you. Nobody thinks that having multiple courses voided at a national championship is a good thing. However, at the end of the day, this is going to remain up to the host clubs. Having external controllers has been suggested repeatedly, but there is no money for it as GlenT says, and it might well not have solved this problem anyway.

And Becks / Clark / Sergey, it's all very well mouthing off on Attackpoint, but you should realize that it doesn't achieve anything. There is no system to ensure that things learned at one meet get remembered at the next, so posting handy lists of what you think went wrong may be enjoyable for you, but it's a total waste of time. If you have the time or interest to do something constructive (like overhauling the sanctioning package with its suggestions for event organizers, or volunteering as a consultant for a meet, or anything else you have in mind beyond complaining on Attackpoint), I (sanctioning chair), GlenT (course consultant chair), Clare (VP competition), or Peter Goodwin will be delighted to hear from you.

One constructive thing you can do is let Glen know of your willingness to act as a course or event consultant. If we had more willing volunteers here, we might actually be able to assign event consultants to more events as the rules require. We do not do this because nobody volunteers. (And there is no funding for this, as Glen says.)

Another one is volunteer to rewrite the sanctioning package. Everyone knows this needs doing. Nobody does it. I look forward to hearing from volunteers for this.

...The Executive Director was hired for his marketing and development skills, not to oversee the technical aspects of our sport...

Well that's my beef....why shouldn't the Executive Director also have some responsibility for monitoring the QUALITY of orienteering in the US? Or else why not just call him a Marketing Director?

And acting as a controller for sanctioned events would give him more club contact, and a chance to work with some of the key volunteers on the local scene...which wouldn't hurt his promotional efforts either.

And BTW feet, I wrote letters to both Glen and smittyo with these thoughts when I sent in my check, even before the ED was hired.

Just to clarify: GlenT(ryson) is the coordinator for course consultants, "reporting to" the VP Competition (who is now Clare Durand = smittyo, and was until very recently Peter Goodwin). Glen Schorr is the OUSA Executive Director, and is possibly the person to whom chitownclark wrote.
Edit - VP Competition for 2011-2012 is Pete Dady.

Typo fixed.

Sorry feet, that's a bit rude, I already did volunteer to ensure the controls were correctly out in the forest at the very last minute (the Tuesday before) for an equally important meet. Aside from the wrong side of a boulder clearly visible from the correct side, which I was upset about, they were.

Eric and I talked a lot that weekend about how there was a big lack in the regulations here for big competitions, and that something akin to the UK controller was required. The controller back home would advise on the course design, ensure planning rules were followed, and basic fairness tasks (similar numbers on similar close features) were followed. Perhaps more importantly, they would check every tagged site in the forest, and then ether check the sites once the controls were out themselves on the morning of the event (If they were fit enough to do so) or gather a small team of trusted volunteers to do it with them. This way there would be no getting to what you think is the site, and finding two tapes, neither on the correct feature the day before the race. Eric did this for day 2 of the Team Trials, and it was wonderfully easy to put controls out, compared to day 1 where multiple versions of the planning were tagged out in the woods.

The controller is a difficult and time consuming task, but not a paid job back at home. Travel expenses etc. would of course be paid. A controller must be trained at home, although this could be done by mentoring rather than a course with the smaller numbers here. At home they must be from an independent club, but with the larger land mass covered by clubs here, this could be relaxed. Having a controller alone does not increase the cost of a competition. After all, it's one of the most important things going. Does it matter if there are enough people foreseeing the start, processing results, or working on aid stations if the basic tools of our trade, the controls, are not in the forest? I think not.

I would happily put this in writing, but I am worried that it is ground that has been covered before I arrived in the country. Old arguments seem to run deep here. AP is therefore the perfect place to sound out ideas for me, before suggesting something needs changing. And it does. Why not get the opinions of the movers and shakers in the sport before committing it to paper?

thanks CNYO for the event, I was lucky enough to run blue and have good courses and terrain. and thanks feet for your comment ( not the very last one - but the lengthy one ) .. i enjoyed the orienteering there. THANKS.. the weather , the black flies not so much. and i would gladly attend events in terrain like that even if 6h driving away

feet,
http://orienteeringusa.org/rules#C

http://orienteeringusa.org/event-organizers/standa...
III.C.2. Courses: Early on the day of the meet, you will want to have competitors who have agreed to run the course "as is" and report any missing or misplaced controls. They should run the courses using competition maps, clue sheets and punch cards to insure the other competitors have error-free courses. A field supervisor in charge should be prepared to delay the start to give time for any problems to be corrected

http://orienteeringusa.org/sites/default/files/Org...
http://orienteeringusa.org/sites/default/files/Sam...

USA Orineteering has some rules and procedures in place already. It is duty of organizing club(s) to follow them to insure high quality championship events.

I personally lost upward of $900 for this almost useless (for me) competition.

It is pitty that such nice maps, good courses, and all the hard work of organizers went into doom area for 1/2 of competitors because someone decided to cut corners.

I hope that future A-meet organizers (many on this board) are learning on bad examples. We are trying to be constructive.

I do volunteer for course consulting given close proximity to my home turf and my willingness not to compete. Peace :)

I think it may make sense also to post at USA Orienteering web site under Event Organizers a list of examples what went wrong and why at certain events. And also have a short summary of this misfortunes as a part of sanctioning packet to guarantee that potential meet organizers do not follow similar route.

If you need a volunteer to type first summary I may do it. Let me know.

I personally lost upward of $900

I feel your pain, fellow west coast orienteer.

There are no membership or starts to be gained from dissatisfied customers, so feet, I urge the Sanctioning Committee to consider the issue instead of blowing it off. In particular, there are certain rules on the books that were written for a particular purpose. The mechanism works well in the rest of the world. If the organizers charge a bit more in entry fees to buy the Consultant a plane ticket and a nice dinner, perhaps there will be no shortage of willing Consultants.

The very common attitude that we the organizers have been doing this for 30 years, we don't need no stinking consultants or IOF guidance, and you all should worship us because without us there will be no events, cannot be possibly productive to the sport. It it this attitude that is the source of the problems, not the customers. It's easy to see how this attitude flows out of the general we-for-us vibe, but it's worse than we-for-us, since on top of not attracting any of "them", it also manages to p*** off half of "us".

There is no system to ensure that things learned at one meet get remembered at the next

Surely an Event Consultant would have brought up this?

1. You are collectively right that CNYO will now struggle to get further meets through sanctioning without an event consultant being assigned. The process is history-dependent. However, resources are low enough that we assign event consultants to hardly any meets. In the absence of the ability to supervise most meets properly, we rely on reputation. CNYO now has a reputation for misplaced and missing controls, and will be watched for this in the future. But we haven't got the volunteer resources to watch this for everyone all the time.

2. If you think OUSA should care about this, please take it up with the BOD, because I have given up on any improvement on event quality with the current prioritization of it (low). Randy gave up before me. There are obvious ways to fix things if people care to fund them (like providing funding through sanctioning fees for event consulting) but except in weeks when things go wrong (like this one) nobody seems to think this is important.

3. Any substantially expanded sanctioning role will not be taken up by me; I am not willing to do more than the essentially secretarial role I perform as sanctioning chair now. If you would like to volunteer to replace me because you have more energy for this task than I do, then please feel free to suggest yourself to the VP Competition. I will be delighted to be replaced.

While I admire the sentiments to fix the problem, I don't see that Sanctioning - or indeed any entity other than the host club - can feasibly prevent problems such as this. The missing controls episode is unfortunate, but consider the scale of the error - as I understand it, a small number of control pickup volunteers were misinformed about which controls to retrieve. That scale of error is unlikely to be caught by any amount of oversight. Unless the Event Consultant is prepared to go out the morning of each race and explicitly verify the presence of each control, this sort of problem will be possible. Retrieving controls is at first glance trivial; there are so many ways for an error to be introduced into an event like an A-meet that trying to oversee such an operation externally is unlikely to be successful.

It does seem clear that there are a number of "best practices" to be followed, including speedy volunteers who can quickly verify the presence of all controls for each race. This information should be better circulated as a warning to groups that might dismiss certain practices as trivial and unnecessary. However, the onus for a quality event must fall upon the organizing club.

No, it is an external issue. Having an external pair of eyes to remind the club of best practices is important.

Ian - I can think of multiple times that the error could have been checked. The three simplest are:
1) Someone should have been keeping track of what came in, and asked what the extra two controls were.
2) All controls for Day 2 were put out after Day 1 were brought it - this depends on how fit your volunteers are. Days are longer up there though, right? We chose this at Team Trials to avoid exactly this happening. More time consuming, but a lot less brain power required.
3) All controls were checked the morning of the event.

An external person could have ensured that all three of these were done correctly.

It all still requires having a great bunch of volunteers, but it's way more satisfying for them too if it's all done right. I'm still very grateful for the fantastic and well humoured bunch I had at Team Trials.

Also, for far reaching clubs - perhaps someone not able to qualify for the Champs could pre run the courses in exchange for a free run? If I could still appear on the results, that would be tempting. Do free runs actually cost the organising club much, other than an extra map print?

Unless the Event Consultant is prepared to go out the morning of each race and explicitly verify the presence of each control

There were about seven of us running around the evening of the day before, during the night, and the morning of each day of the 2004 U.S. Individual Championships in Wisconsin. As in, seven independent visits to each control before the first runner; this included me the IOF Adviser. A similar mechanism was in place for the 2010 North American Champs. I went for a run at 6 am as an extra set of eyes, and found small armies of people busy waking up controls in the woods. The Adviser was one of the people checking things in the field.

...found small armies of people...in the woods...

As Meet Director, that would make me very nervous, on the morning of a national meet. Here's why:

In the last A-meet I directed, we had a control marked on a single-contour hilltop on the preprinted Green X course. 100m to the east there was a similar hilltop. Since the event was also a WRE, we had many experienced orienteers pre-running all courses. And flagging tape ended up on each hilltop.

On the morning of the meet, the experienced pre-runner navigated directly to the control, but failed to confirm that it was on the correct western hilltop. Unfortunately it was not. The course was protested, and thrown out. My lesson: one careful pre-run is worth more than an "army" of well-meaning volunteers.

I don't exactly understand: so the control was on the wrong hilltop? How's that a failure of the morning checking mechanism? It's a failure of your course setter, and of her/his advance placement/vetting. This should have been caught up well in advance, and it's the course setter who should have made the event director nervous, not multiple checking of the site.

BTW, there was one another "problematic" control on red course Sunday. #12.

It was within the circle but in the wrong location. Description and center of circle were at edge of marsh, however, control was something like 15-20m on the edge of field separated by grass of my height. Totally unfair for early runners. I spent, for example, around 2 minutes there before saying enough is enough and stambling upon the control bag on the way to finish.

Having controller and pre-runners would avoid it too.

For example, when I come to Flying Pigs each year I don't expect these kind of misfortunes. And for reason we always enjoy competition on OCIN turf. Maybe Mike can write an essay on how to prepare and run national meets. I am certain that competitive orienteering in the USA would benefit from reflection of 10+ years of Flying Pig legacy experience and solid following it creates.

While I agree with the sentiment behind Sergey's statement that you need to prerun each course, I think this reliance on prerunning is part of the problem. It's a halfway solution to quality control.

More often than not, prerunners are merely sacrificial competitors. They are still trying to compete though. So if a problem comes up, they often return too late to fix the issue, and they didn't spend enough time out there to fully resolve it. If you really take quality control seriously, you don't send out sacrificial competitors. You send out a team of event volunteers, whose sole job is to check the presence of each control, that was placed by a different person the day before. Each person carries a phone or radio with them, and if they have a problem, they call back to the course setter to confirm. They should carry a spare bag and spare control unit with them it fix the problem. And they should be scheduled to return before the first start. If anything seems wrong, you delay the starts for that course until the problem is resolved. THAT is how you do quality control.

Yup. In full agreement with blegg.

What Ben described is what I saw/was part of at the two Championship events I just mentioned. Not what Clark described.

On the morning of the meet, the experienced pre-runner navigated directly to the control, but failed to confirm that it was on the correct western hilltop. Unfortunately it was not. The course was protested, and thrown out.

This is exactly why small armies of volunteers who are methodically checking control locations is superior to depending on a pre-runner who is focused on running (and for whom quality control is secondary).

A pre-runner is better than nothing. But I don't think it's the best.

TD - Did those events go well? Clearly, you can still make mistakes in either setup.

I believe most participants agreed that the 2004 U.S. Individual Champs in Wisconsin and the 2010 North American Champs in Cranbrook went very well.

Morning vetting of control locations is a long established practice in this area. Usually nothing is found amiss but sometimes a wrong location is picked up at the last minute, sometimes we have to replace a stolen control or one destroyed by bears, deer or other wildlife.
But never was vetting more important in Ottawa than at last year's COC's. The club had borrowed ten SI units from Toronto and they needed to be renumbered. Temporary numbers were glued to the units and the units were put in place in the woods.
Overnight it rained but it was still a surprise to the vetter that the numbers slid around on the unit when touched. One came off on his hand. A non-waterproof glue had beeen used. If this problem hadn't been caught every course would have had to be voided as for sure the control numbers would have gone missing.
Fortunately there was a supply of clear tape nearby. The numbers were re-secured and the event proceeded on time with the participants none the wiser for the problem that had been averted.
(It is also a good idea for the vetters to download their splits so it can be confirmed that the right codes have been entered.)
Pre-running a course or block vetting? I prefer the latter so as to not overly tax the volunteers.

Well that's my beef....why shouldn't the Executive Director also have some responsibility for monitoring the QUALITY of orienteering in the US? Or else why not just call him a Marketing Director?

Cheers Clark! I think this is the first thing you have ever posted that I've agreed with. Of course those who are costing six figures in salary and expenses are accountable for the quality of the premiere event the federation produces. Duh. Refreshing to see a break from the "blame the volunteers, give the paid staff a pass" mentality.

As for the comment suggesting "hired for other purposes rather than event quality" or somesuch, what other purposes?

Starts? Memberships? Grants? Sponsorships? Not a single quota met for 2010, and, based on the evidence I've seen, not a single quota to be met for 2011 either. (And they are pretty modest quotas; even if met, the sport remains a fringe sport, and the initiative isn't even close to paying for itself (and you don't have to take my word for it, the math is simple if you have Excel and know how to use it))

But hey, lets keep bashing the volunteers and giving the paid staff a continual pass (Heck, I took more heat for missing the WT at my sprint at Lehigh by 3 minutes than the paid staff is taking for continuing to miss these material quotas, but perspective isn't part of the playbook either). Anyway, this lack of accountability attitude seems to have worked so far in terms of starts, memberships, grants, and sponsorships; maybe this accountability mentality will work for failed meet quality as well. (And this group wants to host a WOC -- ROTFL!).

Translation: IF you are willing to pay six figures in external expenses, THEN you can afford to get a US champs right. IF NOT, you are mis-allocating resources, and have your priorities in the wrong place.

No doubt I'll once again be vilified for my opinions. I may even be called names by USOF board members in front of my friends at at local meets for them. That doesn't make them any less valid.

Starts are up 21%, memberships are down more than 10%, and the organization is no longer bleeding red ink. Sponsorship targets are being met for 2011. The ED is still not paying for himself, but it's getting close. And pardon for calling your BS, Randy, the ED had nothing to do with the U.S. Classic Champs, and the organizers would have made the exact same errors whether there had been an ED or not. They made the same errors in 2008 when there was no ED, and haven't learned since. Help and advice were available to them in 2008 when they had a chance for WREs and an Adviser; they declined. So take your ED bashing to a different thread.

I want to redirect this thread back to its original purpose, results from the event.

Its been nearly a week now and there still are not acceptable results posted. The results posted on the CNYO page are just overall times. Splits are not available, and the results posted show overtime people as OT rather than listing their time. Not acceptable for post race analysis.

If you have issues at your event, at least try to follow up the event with prompt results and info! Not posting splits just gives us one more thing to complain about.

Randy agrees with you Clark - repent now while you still can :)

Seriously, guys, Glen (Schorr) isn't qualified to be accountable for the technical quality of a major orienteering event. If we gave him nominal responsibility for that, he'd just have to delegate virtually all of the actual responsibility to someone else.

I again wish Randy had consulted the 2011 numbers, because they ain't anything like 2010 numbers, and most of the budgeted goals are being met, and even some of the Stategic Plan goals. But here's an update: there are indeed different standards. The standard for putting controls in the right place was set oh, 40 years ago. The controls should be, well, in the right place. The ED is not to blame for the failures of people who think they know better than to accept outside consulting and help, nor for a toothless Sanctioning Committee, nor for a chain of laissez-faire VP Comps who made it a policy to ignore the organization's own Rules of Competition.

The standards are different because the ED is attempting to do what not Randy, nor I, not anyone else has been able to do, nor has the ability, desire, or qualification to do. Putting controls in the right place is something lots of us have the ability to do. It has been done a few thousand times. Getting prompt results has been done hundreds of times. Getting the winning time straight is also a doable and routine task.

Growing an association of amateurs in a niche activity that is soaked in amateurism and lack of business acumen is something that has rarely been done, and never in this particular sport in this particular country. And as to hosting the WOC, this group has hosted one. It was, by the accounts of just about anyone I talked to outside this group, the most memorable one in that decade.

Well, that might be an unfair comparison, Vlad. It's not every WOC that Joe Brautigam gets married at.

Randy agrees with you Clark - repent now while you still can :)

I'm still in shock. One of us must be mellowing with age. And with World Car-Free Day fast approaching, I hesitate to rock the boat.

Yet Jon I must disagree with your second statement: an "executive" in any organization doesn't necessarily have to have deep technical expertise in order to manage that organization. He just has to ask the right questions, stay in frequent contact, and be willing to hold feet to the fire when needed...no pun intended. :-)

re:edwarddes, splits available at Valerie's RG site, click on Splitalyzer and there's an option to get the spilt table http://www.vmeyer.net/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi

CNYO site could point out that splits are available there, but they are at least linking to it!

Splits have been posted to Attackpoint
http://attackpoint.org/eventdetail.jsp/event_7454

WinSplits
http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/default.a...
http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/default.a...
http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/default.a...
http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/default.a...

A couple of notes:
If you were OT, DNF, or MP then you'll only find your splits on WinSplits.
For the voided courses , I put a time in for the missing splits equal to the last control you visited. You are welcome to edit your AP splits to enter sometime which better approximates your time at these controls.

Thank you Valerie!

Having been on the firing line from every angle, I don't think more bureaucratic structure around this event would have been helpful. Good courses, a good map, challenging and enjoyable terrain, and a very good set up all tell me that the club has the expertise to put on events like this. The vetting lapses tell me that the horsepower to pull the event off reliably is lacking. Unless we (the orienteering community) are willing to give up good courses on good maps using terrific terrain in these cases, we will have to pitch in and help in this respect - and the host club has to be willing to ask. Recall Wisconsin two years ago and the outside help there.

Hm, dare I weigh in with my opinion? My opinion about using controllers, that is. Both feet & francish seem to consider them as an expense and additional bureaucracy that adds marginal if any value. They could be right. But being one myself, I really think we controllers are getting a tough rap here. Here's how I think a controller would have been able to reduce the chance of this hiccup - told as a fictional account based on many similar encounters I have had as a controller.

Note first a few points:
1. I do not think the problem was so much the spotty vetting, as the fact that the controls were picked up in the first place ;-) The vetting should have caught the mistake, but would not have avoided it.
2. I know how easy it is to pick up the wrong controls (see how many times it shows up in "Errors we have made" on www.barebones.ca
3. I know how much pain the organizers feel when some relatively minor oversight is made that has drastic consequences

Okay, so here is what a fictional controller might have to say at some fictional future event.

"Hey, course planner, what are your plans for using SI punches? How many do you have? What numbers are they? When do you get your grubby hands on them? When do you put them in the forest? Who turns them on in the morning?" and so on.

The point is that by simply asking these questions - and then discussing the answers - we're going to avoid a lot of errors. I could continue this fictional story down various responses given by the course planner. But the gist is that, having a little bit of experience in these matters, the controller would probably suggest that the answers should be: "I have more SI units available than I have need for", and "I get them more than two weeks before this big event", and so on. If these weren't the answers then the controller would perhaps pursue the issue, pointing out the potential dangers and offering alternative suggestions (eg: "if you have to pick up controls because you need to use them on the second day, then is it possible to borrow more SI units?")

And if the course planner told me he (or she) was going to pick up controls after the first day I would go a little bananas and ask another twenty questions or so.

So I hope I have painted a picture of a potentially useful controller who isn't that expensive or adding red tape, but that helps reduce the chance of errors for the benefit not only of the competitors, but also to the vast benefit of the organizers themselves. And does so not with the weight of some sanctioning body behind him, but instead based on some solid background of experience and pain

AZ probably the most sensible contribution thus far, so it is as well that you 'dared' to make it.

Here's my dare: 'Event Consultant' implies 'optional' - and that's what seems to occur in the US, at least it did for this event. Why not start calling them 'Event Controller' like most other national associations, making them compulsory for all national and regional events, and instituting a rigorous national training and accreditation process?

Which is exactly what I suggested days ago and was declared too expensive and too much hassle. Works very well back at home though.

I don't think national training and accreditation should/work here with the numbers involved. But a handbook and years of experience (which many, like AZ have) are plentiful.

Oz (OA) probably wouldn't have many more numbers than OUSA and we have controller training and accreditation. And it is largely voluntary, so I don't see why it would be too expensive.

This was my first experience of a major US event and so it was rather disappointing that both my wife's (Green X) and my own (Red) courses were affected. Not that it spoilt our enjoyment of the weekend too much since the courses and terrain were good and testing and resulted in me making early mistakes on both days. As a national level controller in the UK I'm confident that the errors would have been picked up had such a person been in place. Three of the recent multi-event championships that I've been involved with (as Setter , Controller and Organiser) have each involved controls on overlapping areas and in each case a very clear plan was made as to which controls could be collected in and when and confirmed with the controller. As we got off our bus on the Saturday a lady appeared out of the forest clearly concerned about the location of a control - which was probably the problematic one. An official(?) in a brightly coloured shirt followed her back in (I thought at that stage that it would have been sensible to take a spare kite with them). I don't know what happened next, perhaps the setter's view prevailed. Volunteers are hard to come by but in my experience mistakes happen more often when someone's view is biased eg the setter or controller also mapped the area. In such cases an independent eye is essential.

A correction to the M-16 results should be noted...

Anthony Knarr, listed as not being US Champs eligible, was, in fact, eligible. Therefore, he took 2nd place US, and overall.

No need for the organizers to worry about US Champs medals, though; the kids took care of that among themselves. Kudos to Michael Laraia and Zach Lyons for immediately giving up their 3rd and 2nd place medals upon learning about the eligibility error.

One point of, perhaps, interest is that for the last 7 A-Meets including National and North American Championships, CNYO has run, they have had a perfect record of courses being perfect. Great maps and good times..... well my times weren't always good but I had fun in the woods.

No they don't. As already linked in this thread, there were misplaced controls (not protested) at the NAOC. Link.

FYI. This is the procedure my Swedish club (Lunds OK) strictly uses during normal events (comparable in size with the US champs but only with local participants) to minimize the risk of misplaced/missing controls:

Afternoon on day before event: Placement of the control stands (with control code numbers on them) and the bags - by experienced orienteers who were not involved in the course setting or vetting. They are specifically asked to verify the streamered control locations and the clue sheet. Most serious issues are thus caught the day before the event - with plenty of time to fix.

Morning before event: Placement of the "snap on" SI units (also numbered to match the stands) by other people than those who put out the bags and stands (could be the same people switching control areas with each other). These (also experienced) people double check the locations again AND punches each unit with their SI card AFTER placing them. These control setters' SI cards are then verified with a printer back at the competition center to match each person's oral description of the order in which he/she put out the controls. First start does not take place before this verification has been completed and any issues have been straightened out.

After event (and before starting preparations for second day's event in case of two-day event): All controls (SI units, stands and bags) are collected from the forest - i.e. no placement of controls for more than one day in advance.

Mistakes will always be made, and control placement will always be debated, but I think the above described procedure significantly reduces the risk of "destroyed" events. It guarantees that no controls will be completely missing in the morning before the event - and any misplaced control will have been confirmed as correct by at least 3 experienced orienteers (course setter and/or vetter - stand/bag placer - SI unit placer) independently. Given that correctly placed controls are the very core of any more serious event, I think strictly following this procedure is well worth the effort.