Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Tuesday, August 05, 2003 A rough comparison of WOCs in 2001 and 2003I spent some time at lunch today looking at results from the long distance qualifying races in 2001 and 2003. In 2001 the WOC was in extreme Nordic terrain in Finland. This year the long distance terrain is classic continental terrain. I wondered if the different terrain types would make for different results. Would different countries do better in Switzerland than Finland?I decided to rank each nation based on the results from the long distance qualifying races.* The formats between 2001 and 2003 varied a bit, so making direct comparisons of results is a bit awkward. For example, in 2001 each nation got four runners in the qualifying race while in 2002 each nation got three runners. For each nation I calculated the average place of its runners. For example, in 2003 the U.S. had runners who finished 19th, 27th and 25th. The average was 23.67 (exactly the same as Japan). I then ranked each nation based on the average. The top team was Norway with an average qualifying place of 3.33. The U.S. tied with Japan for 27th. Which nations did much better in 2003 than in 2001? Only two countries did a lot better in 2003 than in 2001 -- Ukraine and Austria. Ukraine was the 4th ranked in 2003 but was the 24th ranked in 2001. Austria was the 8th ranked in 2003 but was the 19th ranked in 2001. The Austrian team must be happy to have done much better. I bet they feel comfortable in the Swiss terrain since it is so close to home. Which nations did much worse in 2003 than in 2001? Six nations did much worse in 2003 than they did in 2001 -- Denmark, Russia, Australia, Latvia, Poland and Ireland. Denmark and Russia were hurt by disqualifications. Russia was really hurt by Novikov's disqualification. The other two Russian men, Mamleev and Efimov, had decent qualifying races in Switzerland. Actually, Mamleev was more than decent; he won his heat. It might have been better to exclude Poland because only one runner ran the long distance qualifier in Switzerland. Which nations did well in both 2003 and 2001? Five nations ranked in the top ten in both WOCs -- Sweden, Finland, Norway, Czech Republic and Great Britain. I thought it was interesting that the Swiss men did very well in Finland in 2001, but not nearly so well at home in 2003. The worse rank in 2003 is largely because one of the Swiss, Felix Bentz, was disqualified. The other Swiss men did quite well. I suspect the team is satisfied overall, but won't be satisfied without good results in the finals. Looking forward to the finals I won't make any predictions, but I am looking forward to seeing how tomorrow's long distance finals turn out. The conventional wisdom is that the non-Scandinavian nations will have a good chance to take some medals. * I only looked at results from the men. I would have included the women, but my lunch hour wasn't enough time to include the women's results as well. posted by Michael | 8:50 PM 
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