Discussion: Rerun of a course from old days

Found at a Ukrainian site morient dot org dot ua,
At a recent national meet (autumn 2012) they offered for M21 the course from the match of Finland Army vs. USSR Army, which took place in 1980 near Kiev.
Link to the course:
Part 1
Part 2
Interesting to note that results of modern athletes are well below results from good old days. In 1980 1st place was 1:13 (FIN),...,3rd 1:17 (USSR), today's – 1st place was only 1:36.
I wonder if there are other instances of running an old course at official level.

I would run faster too if I had an army after me, especially if it was the Commies.

In 2006 at O-ringen the Elite runners got to rerun a course used for an Elite event in 1975. The 1975 race was a special "Clash of Champions" that was televised in Swedish TV.

In 1975 the winner was World Champion Bernt Frilén in 60.16
In 2006 the winner was Andrey Khramov of Russia in 60.59.

An interesting fact was that everyone knew well in advance that they would rerun this old course and had the opportunity to study the old maps. Slightly different approach which may have affected the results naturally.

The course was extremely fast in the open pine forest and made for some amazingly fast running. In 1975 the world record holder in 3000m steeplechase, Anders Gärderud, ran the first half in under 4:00/km but lost some time in the end.

The only time I can remember it being done in Australia was in 1991, when the 1976 Australian Championships course at Belanglo State Forest (of which more would be heard) was re-run on the original map. The 1991 times were faster but not by a huge amount (83 to 87 if I recall correctly). Obviously a lot depends on whether the forest has changed.

A variation on the theme is re-running a course you've done yourself. I did this a few years ago, re-running a course (in the Flinders Ranges) at 36 that I'd originally raced on as a 15-year-old. I was a little surprised to be significantly faster (~30 sec/km) over the course in 2007 than in 1986, given that my running speed (as evidence by 10km road times) was similar and I'd regarded the 1986 race as an outstanding run at the time.

In 1978 in the Gatineau Park we re-ran the first Canadian Orienteering Championships 'Blue Course' that had been won by British Olympian John Disley ten years earlier. As I recall Mak Adams won the re-run in a significantly faster time than Disley's despite having never seen the original map until race time.
i have urged the Ottawa OC to plan on staging another re-run in as part of an O-fest in 2017 (50th COC) or 2018 (50th anniversary of the first COC).
A 1998 ice storm caused a considerable vegetation thickening over much of the terrain but it is bouncing back nicely and should be ready by 2017.

The forest can change a lot over the years, especially if there is logging.

In 2009, Thierry Gueorgiou reran the middle course from the 1993 World Champs in Harriman and was a few seconds slower than the 1993 time. Someone else has the real numbers but the winner is 1993 was his old coach and Tero was trying to beat the time so it wasn't a casual training exercise. On the other hand, a world championship titile wasn't on the line either.

A few years ago, the first half (roughly) of the Hudson Highlander was the Men's Classic course from WOC93. (We've also discussed having a reenactment of the original 1979 Billgoat, but so far have not gotten around to it.)

There are have been several of these in Norway, both full courses and parts of them:

Several legs from the WOC 1978 H21 course near Kongsberg was given to competitors in the national Veterans Champs a few years ago, to the classes where the original WOC competitors were now competing.

Morten Berglia famously ran a brilliant leg at the national relay champs on Stord (an island outside Bergen on the west coast) in 1982, his team got the silver with a 4-man team of mostly juniors.

This leg has been attempted several times including by the Norwegian WOC team on a training camp, and afaik nobody has been even close.

Stord! Now that brings back great memories. I remember the entire island was mapped when I lived in Bergen as a kid in 1978-79. Fond memories of taking the ferry to the race with 100's of other orienteers.

Perhaps it is an 'urban legend' but I heard that a small trail had developed in the WOC'78 terrain in the year or two after the race since many Norwegians were re-running Egil Johansen's winning route. True?

We have re-run the 1986 World Cup course here in Hamilton many times over the last 25+ years. I personally re-ran it over 10 times between '86 and '99 and didn't come close to the winning time.

This should go in the "You know you are an orienteer..." thread.

There are other skill sports where the same course is used over and over again - golf, luge, skeleton, bobsled are first that come to my mind. Course records are noted but whoever was the best last time around usually considered current camp regardless how results compare to previous year or course record.

I was just thinking that that even couple days might make a difference how runnable orienteering course is even without vegetation change if there were heavy rain storms in between making ground just grade softer and just little bit harder to run on.

The old, year 1980, map with the course

I contacted V. Bortnik, the author of the new map with questions if the observed much “greener” new map is due to a dramatic change of runability over the last 30+ years period, but no, it is mainly due to changes in standards of showing runability. Also, the weather conditions and seasonal vegetation appear to be compatible. I have to conclude that much lower running speed in 2012 is due to decline in physical strength of orienteers and their level of motivation.

@Hammer: Trails along Egil J's winning WOC route?

I think this is an urban legend! There _might_ have been a very indistinct trail in a few places where many people would take the same micro-route choice, but I know that none of them have resulted in any new trails on the updated maps.

Last year I won H50 (beating Harald Thon by 7 seconds!) in the exact same area, we had the finish line in the forest ~50 m from the last control in the 1978 WOC.

BTW, those Kongsberg/Eiker WOC terrains have been my favorite for many decades, some of them are still using the 2.5 m contours generated back then, and they are so good that it is "impossible to miss". :-)