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Occassional thoughts about orienteering


Monday, March 29, 2004

Finally...the peer nation lists

 

Here are my groups of peer nations.

Top Elite (1): Denmark, Switzerland, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Norway, Russia, Finland and Sweden.

1 Step Behind (2): Estonia, Latvia, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Australia and Ukraine.

USA Peers (3): Portugal, Slovakia, New Zealand, France, Bulgaria, Belgium, Canada, Japan, Poland, Ireland and USA.

Euro 2nd Level (4): Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Slovenia, Croatia, Belarus and Serbia/Montenegro.

Newcomers (5): Brazil, China, Korea, Hong Kong, Israel, Kazakstan and South Africa.

The main factors I used to group nations are the number of runners (men and women) ranked in the top 1000 in the IOF world rankings and the number of times the nation had a men's or women's relay team at the world champs in 1966, 1976, 1987, 1997 and 2003. I also used some other measures and made some subjective decisions.

Group 1 averages 154 top runners and 4.1 WOC appearances.
Group 2 averages 55 top runners and 2.5 WOC appearances.
Group 3 averages 17 top runners and 3.3 WOC appearances.
Group 4 averages 8 top runners and 0.8 WOC appearances.
Group 5 averages 2 top runners and 0.6 WOC appearances.

Keep in mind that these groups aren't necessarily based on WOC performance. They should give a sense of potential performance, actual performance may be quite different. For example, to me it looks like France over-performed at the 2003 WOC in Switzerland (taking a couple of medals).

Any comments?

Comments are welcome. Anyone think the groups are wrong? Let me know. People all over the world read this page. A lot of people know a lot more than I do about orienteering in different nations. Maybe I've dropped the ball in a few cases (or more!). If you think I've got a nation in the wrong group, let me know.

posted by Michael | 8:13 PM

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