Discussion: New rules and other stuff from IOF

Here is the Foot O Commission's latest "Newsletter for Event Advisors"

Some interesting points (kindof - if you're a rules geek I suppose):
* it is now okay to remove legs from a course, if specified in advance - this is to handle road crossings, for example
* ruling to not DSQ someone that crosses out of bounds by accident, realizes the error and backtracks - since competitor will gain no advantage. I'm not in favor of this personally, because I think the main reason to use OOB should be to respect private property.
* measuring of distance between "too close controls" is as the crow flies (not as the orienteer runs).
* IOF event advisor clinic to be held in Canada in 2014 (with NAOC event in Ottawa I believe)

Yeah but the OOB example in the newsletter was an artificial barrier Adrian, a temporary fence in a sprint designed to make the course more interesting. A victimless "crime".

Yeah, good point. In fact in the newsletter they explicitly state that they expect more of this type of artificial barrier in future to create challenging Sprint orienteering in otherwise a-little-bit-boring sprint terrain.

meanwhile we now have the unintended(?) consequence in the non-artificial case of having a rule that says two wrongs do make a right. Does this rule also apply to olive green gardens on sprint maps? Run through garden, oops my bad, run back through garden again, there all better.

only if you don't trample the flowers

It appears to be a ruling, not a rule. I don't think the precedent would apply to the case of a runner who tramples flowers.

Two thoughts on this:
1. If the runner was able to hop the fence twice and it wasn't fencing off an area where orienteers shouldn't be then perhaps it should have been mapped as passable? Or was said runner particularly tall?

2. Should the in and back out in the same direction resulting in time loss instead of disqualification apply only for symbol 409 and not for olive green and other forbidden features?

I think the only reason is that IOF want to ensure that also weak orienteers get final result because this is important for them, WOC, IOC. They don't want to have half of the runners in the WOC final result list listed as DSQ.

The non-DSQ being talked about is not a rule, it's a jury ruling on the appropriate penalty for the breaking of a rule (the rules merely say that a competitor who breaks a rule "may" be disqualified). While that does create something of a precedent, another jury would be quite free to make a different ruling in different circumstances.

The fences at WOC were artificial ones put in to create route choices in otherwise fairly uninteresting sprint terrain, and I don't think they were particularly high.

How about the interesting rule (24.15) that allows the removal of a leg from a course, if the leg is specified in advance. This is a quite practical solution to the problem occasionally encountered in getting runners across a busy road. We faced this problem at the Canadian Champs a few years ago in Fundy Park - the natural finish arena was on the "wrong" side of a highway. We could have finished the course in the forest, but it would have been anticlimatic. Instead we put a control on both sides of the road and removed up to one minute from that split for every runner. Then we were able to have a glorious finish arena, overlooking the Bay of Fundy. I think the Rules committee should be applauded for this very practical update.

Regarding this rule - we were worried that runners would "game" the system and take several minutes to recover in order to have a strong final burst. However none of them did - I think the feeling was that they didn't want to interrupt their "flow". So we had a one minute limit, but there is no such limit in the Rule 24.15

I think there needs to be a limit specified per event (but not a hard one in the rules, as different needs would call for different limits).

There was a road crossing at the Scottish 6-Day this year and for the 90m leg there was a 5 minute limit on the time that would be removed. Most people did this leg in less that a minute, but I know one person who timed this to within a few seconds to maximize recovery, to study the remaining legs and make route-choices.

I think that's a fair approach and probably safer than any other option when there's a potentially dangerous road crossing involved. I think most people would not take the max time, as there's something to be said for staying focused (says the person who took an extra ~30 seconds to look at the map on that S6D removed leg and proceeded to screw up the next leg).

I have thought about trying something similar to shuttle people across a river by canoe.

Hmmm,...
so this rule may be applied also at WOC Sprint Final next year in Venice on course sections crossing busy pedestrian zones. This dead sections can be great for spectators, something similar to Biathlon when they approach the shooting ramp. I would rather see that this time limit is added to the final time. Easier for explanation than vice versa.

They removed a leg up to 1 minute in the sprint qual at WMOC this year, in order to cross a busy road. I planned to take my time, study the next leg before punching, but apparently too excited. My split was 20 seconds.

Some interesting possibilities are suggested here. An area that's too steep. Put the biggest climb into a non-timed leg. An area with a boring bit (perhaps two nice areas a little way apart). Put in a non-timed transport leg. A "braided river" system of downhill MTB tracks, where you can't use all the route-choice options in a single run. Provide an untimed shuttle back to the top and a new map. Ditto for ski-O, enables it to be run on downhill areas, continuous shuttling is usually available. Stage rogaine - series of nearby rogaines over say a weekend adding up to 24 hours.

I want my water stop drinking time subtracted while we're at it

I think it detracts from the race especially at international level, when competitors are given 1 - 2 minute to look at the remainder of their courses

I organised a MTBO event were we had a road crossing, we also used it as the map change, so you couldn't plan ahead. We also had a time limit that you could do the leg in

@Nikolay: You could have a map exchange. But I'm still not sure this is a good idea, though..

It's Ok for WMOC and WRE'S maybe, but not so sure for WOC WC JWOC.

If you have a speaker or TV coverage, etc you will need to use online controls at the crossing point so the runner's time can be adjusted in 'real time', otherwise the speaker wont know the correct times or placings as runners finish.

I feel the same way about artificial fences. WOC should be inspirational, the essence of orienteering. It should be held on great terrain. [That for me is also the best argument in favour of split WOC.]

To be clear, I wasn't thinking about WOC. I was thinking about having fun in the real world, with less than ideal terrain.