Occassional thoughts about orienteering
|
|
| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
|
|
Wednesday, March 07, 2007 Home court advantage in orienteeringSome discussion over at Attackpoint touches on the idea of a "home court advantage" in orienteering.Neil wrote: Choosing a good line and similarly learning to run efficiently in a particular terrain type are technical (mental) skills which need to get wired... I think this might be a reason home advantage is so great. And Boris wrote: Yeah, I keep noticing this in Sweden. Very often, I will lose time to home-grown Swedes who 'magically' (that is, as far as I can tell, there is no scientific way to do this) always pick really good lines through terrain, even when the visibility is really low. It's like the forest just parts, ala Moses and the Red Sea, for the Swedish orienteer. I guess I've noticed the same thing. If you train in a specific type of forest, you get better and better at moving through it efficiently. Nothing surprising, but still worth remembering. Reading about these comments reminded me of an article that I've skimmer on home court advantage in, of all things, speed skating. You wouldn't really think there would be much of a home court advantage in speed skating. And you'd be write. But there does seem to be some home court advantage. The author concludes: Even though the home advantage effect exists, it is very small when compared to variation in skating times due to differences of rinks and individual abilities. In the intro to the paper, the author notes that home court advantage is usually attributed to four factors: crowd support, familiarity with local conditions, reduced travel time for home athletes, and the rule factor. How would you expect these factors to affect orienteering? Crowd support should make little to no difference. There just aren't enough opportunities for crowds to support orienteers. Familiarity with local conditions should make a difference. That's what Neil and Boris are talking about. Reduced travel time should make a difference. On the home court, you don't have to deal with the stress of travel or the differences in living conditions. You can sleep in your own bed. That level of comfort and lack of stress is bound to help you perform. The rule factor shouldn't make a difference because orienteering doesn't involve rule judgements or local rules. While there may be differences in course setting or mapping styles, those aren't really rules, those are local conditions. Another related issue is how performance varies with the importance of the event. The paper finds that speedskaters tend to do better at major events like Olympics and World Champs: We also see that both men and women skate significantly faster at the major tournaments: the Olympic Games and the World Distances Championship. The effect is of the order of 1%, both for men and for women for both types of events. The existence of this effect could be caused by national selection of skaters participating in these tournaments: only the very best of the best qualify for such events. Also, these tournaments attract a lot of media coverage, which makes it important for skaters to perform as good as they can. Miserable performance during these two tournaments can have dire consequences for future sponsor deals and access to training facilities and new materials... I still haven't read the whole paper, but I think I probably will. You can find a PDF of Home Advantage In Speedskating: Evidence from Individual Data by Ruud Koning. Back to okansas.blogspot.com. posted by Michael | 6:21 PM 
Comments:
orienteering doesn't involve rule judgements or local rules
Post a Comment
Are you serious? Sometimes it allowed to run over fields, sometimes not. Where exatly is the edge of a forbidden area, how close to that you are allowed to run. Epunch issues, special rules for different epunch systems. Are you allowed to look at the map before start or not and are yo used to do take advantage of it. Following issues, how much you are allowed to follow or co-operate with other runners. There is a long list of these if you just think about it for a moment. -Jagge- # posted by
 : 9:24 AM |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||||
|
|||||
