okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Monday, June 21, 2010
Home field...and the prescient Aspleaf
The Nordic Tour continues tomorrow with races in Stockholm, including the qualification races on my old home field. I lived near the university in Stockholm and spent many hours running in the forest that will host the race. I'm looking forward to seeing the courses. Here's today's model event.
The qualification race in the morning for all runners will be a normal sprint (12-15 minute winning time) with a 1 minute start interval. The top 30 athletes qualify for quarter finals, of these 12 qualify for semi finals and 6 runners will run the finals. The quarter/semi/finals are mass-start events with 6-8 minute winning time. Note: There is no gaffling in the semi-final and final heats! The 6 runners in the final will get bonus seconds 120-90-70-60-55-50. All other runners in the semi/quarter finals also get bonus seconds, counting down to 1 second for the slowest time in the quarter finals.
It sounds interesting and I'm glad to see experiments with different formats. That said, I can't help but think about Aspleaf's prediction about orienteering in 2025 and his vision of Olympic orienteering:
And on o-zeugs olympic map, I'd keep right along the out-of-bounds and pace count, although I must say that I like the looks of that open area to the left.