From: Simon@sdea.demon.co.uk (Simon Errington) Date: Sat, 26 Apr 97 17:37:51 GMT Subject: Re: IOF President's articles in the recent O-Worlds Message-Id: <862076271snz@sdea.demon.co.uk>
The more I read about orienteering in the Olympics the less keen I get to see it there. Continued talk of bribery and corruption, along with the demands of TV, lead me to conclude that any Olympic orienteering event would have very little to do with sport and everything to do with commercialism. But if we must proceed along this route then we need to find a type of orienteering where bribery can play little if any part. Presumably the main advantage of seeing the course before the event is in being able to select the optimum route between each control. What we need is an event where route choice plays little if any part, but map reading is still important. It would also be useful if prior knowledge of the terrain was of little importance. I would suggest that the closest we come to this at present is in Sprint-O races, held on what would normally be considered technically easy terrain (much of South East England!). This tends to put the emphasis on hard straight running, ensuring that you are going in the right direction. We might need to restrict the maximum leg length, since this would limit route choice. An ideal map would probably have lots of paths and vegetation features. Small contour features would be a bonus, but large hills are out since they shift the emphasis from the map to running ability. Apparently the race needs to be short to fit the attention span of the average American TV viewer. A winning time of 15 minutes is probably enough. I seem to have ended up with something close to the current World Park-O competition. Now we can start adding the frills: a) Do not put control codes on the controls. Elite orienteers should know when they are at the right feature. (Wrong, ALL orienteers should know when they are at the right feature.) b) As in a), but with extra control flags scattered randomly through the terrain. A rule such as "at least three control flags within the circle" would seem possible. Given a reasonably open area with good visibility this should lead to some interesting problems to be solved as you navigate in oxygen debt towards a sea of control flags. Quite by accident I seem to have invented a cross between sprint-O and precision-O. It's got map reading, it's got running, it can be staged in the nearest public park, it could be quite exciting and it should be possible to develop the TV side as well. Given the statement in the first paragraph, I formally register a world-wide claim to royalties from the use of this concept, or any derivation of it, at any orienteering event held after 26 April 1997 :) -- Simon Errington (Simon@sdea.demon.co.uk) London Orienteering Klubb (LOK)
From: Arline and Sidney Sachs <sachs@axsamer.org> Date: Sat, 26 Apr 1997 14:57:22 -0400 Subject: Re:Numbers at events Message-Id: <199704261857.OAA02483@axsamer.org>
I way I see it from oversea, the major problem in the UK is not between having badge events or colour events but the total numbers at the all events. It went down from 122,000 to 101,000 in 2 years. This should be the major concern of everyone. One of the reason that most will overlook is there are TOO MANY EVENTS. I was president of our local club which cover an area that a regional organization elsewhere in the world will. It has maps that are over 200 miles apart. We decided once to increase the number of events from 2 per months to 3. Althrough some persons attended all the events, the total number for the year reminded the same. That means others was not coming as often. What I believed happens was since more events available, some people in their planning weekend activities, does not reserved any days for orienteering and end up doing something else. However, it there was only limited opportunities close enough to drive to for an afternoon, they will reserved those days for orienteering. By reducing the number of events, we increase attendance (both per event and total) and reduced the amount of work involved. Sidney Sachs Quantico (Washington DC area) Orienteering Club
From: "Mark Roberts" <nmr@iprolink.co.nz> Date: Sat, 26 Apr 1997 16:55:02 +0000 Subject: Re: How do you turn start triangle in OCAD 5? Message-Id: <199704260446.QAA570850@iprolink.co.nz>
Evan, (You're gonna kick yourself about this...) All point features,including User-Defined, can be "rotated" by clicking and dragging as you draw the feature, instead of just clicking. Mark Mark Roberts Box 99612 Newmarket Auckland New Zealand nmr@iprolink.co.nz mark@kiwiplan.co.nz Home+fax ++9 520 5993 Work ++9 263 4793 Fax ++9 263 4794