okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

How many runners to send to the WOC

At a team meeting in Wyoming last week, Mikell Platt suggested that the U.S. might want to send more than 4 men and 4 women to WOCs. The idea came up a few years ago and the "executive steering committee" clearly didn't want to send any more than 4 men and 4 women.

I think sending more than 4 and 4 would probably be a good idea.

In thinking about how many people to send, it is worth answering a couple of questions: What is the minimum and maximum number of races a nation could get during a WOC? How many runners do other nations send?

Minimum and maximum races

Each country gets up to three runners in each qualifying race and relay teams have three runners. A nation that didn't qualify any runners for finals would get 3 sprint qualification runs, 3 middle qualification runs, 3 long qualification runs and 3 relay runs. That's 12 races (and, of course, the men get 12 and the women get 12 so the total is 24).

The maximum number of runners would be 3 sprint qualification runs, 3 sprint finals runs, 3 middle qualification runs, 3 middle qualification finals, 3 long qualification runs, 3 long final runs and 3 relay runs. That's 21 races (42 for men and women together).

How many runners do other nations send?

The WOC home page has a list of entries. 37 nations are listed.

The most athletes a nation can send is 14 (7 men and 7 women). 6 nations plan to send the maximum. 7 nations plan to send 10-13 runners. 5 nations plan to send 9 runners. 5 nations -- including the U.S. -- plan to send 8 runners. 11 nations plan to send 3-7 runners. 3 nations will send just one runner each.

The median and average number of runners a nation sends are 8.

I took a look at the number of runners the U.S. peer nations plan to send. My peer nations for the U.S. are: Portugal, Slovakia, New Zealand, France, Bulgaria, Belgium, Canada, Japan, Poland and Ireland.

In terms of how many runners a nation sends, the U.S. sits right in the middle of the peer nations. Four nations plan to send more (Japan, Belgium, France and Ireland), four nations plan to send fewer (Poland, Bulgaria, New Zealand and Slovakia). Canada, Portugal and the U.S. all plan to send 8 runners each.

posted by Michael | 8:02 PM

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