okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
National O' philosophies
Do different nations' national teams have different philosophies?
I was listening to an interview with someone in management of the KC Royals baseball team and he was talking about the development of some of their young players. He said that the first thing they did with young players - pitchers specifically - was to help them learn and understand the team's philosophy of pitching.
When I heard that, I wondered about orienteering team philosophies. I think different teams probably have different philosophies, but I've got no idea what those might be. Is there a Norwegian team philosophy? Is it different from the French team philosophy?
There certainly seem to be some broad general approaches to training and those general approaches seem to differ in different nations. I think I've written about a "typical Norwegian training model" for example.
Is the North American philosophy we'll hold a team trial and hope enough people show up to send a full team? Do we have enough elite athletes to send runners based on say continental versus scandinavian terrain? Or with limited numbers, just send who wins the team trials?