Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Monday, September 04, 2006 Comparing different erasThe comments to my post about experience were all over the place. Without getting into the specifics of what I wrote or what the comments were, they spurred me to spend a few minutes thinking. Among other things, I spent a few minutes looking back at Eric Weyman's O' career.Comparing different O' eras might even be related to how different orienteers view experience. For some background, Eric ran on US Teams beginning with the 1979 World Champs in Finland and ending with the 1989 World Champs in Sweden. As I thought about it, I realized that the World Champs has changed tremendously since then. Consider this: Eric's US WOC team career spanned 11 years and he had a total of 11 WOC starts (with just 5 of them individual starts). By comparison, Samantha Saeger's US WOC team career has spanned just 2 years and she has already had 6 WOC starts (with 5 of them individual starts). At this rate, Samantha would have 66 WOC starts if her US WOC team career lasts as long as Eric's did. The number of potential WOC starts is much larger now than it was. It also could relate to how the sport has changed with regards to experience. Basically, Eric couldn't consider experience to be very important. There just weren't enough chances to gain experience. If Eric stood at the start and believed that WOC experience mattered, he'd lose confidence. On the other hand, Samantha could stand at the start line and legitimately tell herself either, "I've got a lot of WOC experience" (after just two years) or "I'm taking this race as a way to get experience for the future" (and the future would be just a year, or even just a day or 2, away). Eric had a good WOC in 1983 in Hungary.* He could enjoy it for a year, then spend another year getting ready for the next WOC in 1985. If Eric were running now and had a good race, he couldn't really afford to relax because he's got just a year to get ready for the next WOC. It probably would work the other way, too. Imagine that Eric had a disaster in 1983. Then he'd have two long years before he'd have another WOC start where he'd have a chance to put his bad race behind him. These days, he might (depending on when he had a bad day) be able to put it behind him at the same WOC. I think these changes in the WOC make a difference that I probably don't appreciate as much as I would if I were competitive know (For the record, I ran 4 WOCs, beginning in 1987 and ending in 2001). What was the best ever U.S. WOC result? I'm not sure, but Eric's 1983 qualifying race must be up there. Here are some of the results from that race: 1 Jaroslav Kacmarcik CZE 60.10 2 Jorgen Martensson SWE 60.30 3 Sigurd Daehli NOR 62.54 4 Lars Konradsen DEN 63.21 5 Kent Olsson SWE 63.45 ... 18 Tore Sagvolden NOR 69.20 19 Eric Weyman USA 69.40 20 Georgi Stonov BUL 69.48 21 Kari Sallinen FIN 70.24 22 John Sondergaard DEN 71.15 23 Ted de St.Croix CAN 71.31 In 1983 to top 25 qualified for the individual final. To try to put Eric's result in some context, I looked at how he'd have done in the long qualifying race in 2006, if he ran the same percent behind the winner. He'd have qualified in the A and B heats, but finished 16th in the C heat, missing a qualifying spot by about 25 seconds. Eric's final results were not nearly as good (he had a big boom at the 2nd control). He had a nice run in the relay on the team that managed what I think is still the best US men's relay result ever. I want to thank people for the comments a couple of days ago. Looking at comments from people I know and have a lot of respect for, but which seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum, got me thinking. And thinking got me to looking at results. And looking at results let me learn something. * Though just months later he was beaten by some old guy in the US Champs. posted by Michael | 12:11 PM 
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