RESULTS

Final Results

ORGANISERS COMMENTS

After planning this event over three years it is quite a relief to see it run smoothly, a little was down to planning, most to the hard work of the club members and a little to luck, mainly that the weather held off for 24 hours. As a small club we were stretching our manpower resources, so many thanks to the EMIT UK team who run the results. I would like to thanks all the club helpers for their efforts on the day and a special mention for Charlotte (Publicity), Steve Robinson (Entries sec), Pat Barclay (Planner), Nigel Benham (course preparation) and lastly Arthur Vince our controller for his help and guidance.

It was a pleasure to host so many orienteers and to receive the emails of thanks which are most appreciated. I hope you enjoyed your runs and travelled home safely. We had an error with the allocation of classes to courses which led to some W75s running the wrong course and also some confusion at the start for the W70L, (full commentary below). The fault was entirely ours and we unreservedly apologise to those ladies especially those who lost the chance to gain ranking points and we would like to offer them a free entry to a future 2008 SARUM event.

I was asked about the entry fees and the breakdown below shows how we budgeted for the entry fee. The total of £10.50 per adult left a balance of £1.50 from which we subsidised the junior / family entry and a contingency for the unforeseen. Budgeting figures for the event Land charge

Includes attendance at ME courses Car Park fee to the estate

John Parfitt ORGANISER

PLANNER'S COMMENTS

I hope you all enjoyed Bigwood it really is a beautiful wood we had a great day the weather was kind, well until the hail arrived towards the end of the day!

When planning in Bigwood I had to take into account the numerous path network which covers this forest. With this in mind I tried to make the courses especially the M21, M35 etc …. courses more to the physical than the technical I hope this was achieved for you all, they may have been when looking at the winning times slightly on the long side this was all discussed with the controller during the planning.

The younger courses were at the top end of their range and with little or no climb I think this was the correct way to go - I hope they enjoyed themselves ah what to be young.

I know also of the problem with one of the courses and I apologise to those affected not many I know but to those few - sorry.

I have to comment on the range of courses and the slightly disappointing turnout we have in the junior courses I think this just show the demography of orienteering? I think orienteering needs to look seriously at the number of courses offered on events against the work involved in planning.

Finally I would like to thank the contoller(Arthur) and the organiser(John) for all their invaluable help during the planning and to Nigel for providing me with maps/corrections/final maps again and again. To you the competitor for entering and all the SARUM members who contributed to putting on a National Event.

Pat Barclay

CONTROLLER'S COMMENTS

It was brave of SARUM - a relatively small club - to bid for a National event; in my opinion they brought it off successfully. The greater part of 1000 competitors; no courses voided; a very good turnout on the usually sparsely populated junior classes, thanks to the FCC; an efficient timing and results system thanks to Emit UK; and no serious hitches that I was aware of except for the problems for the W75 class, which are covered in a separate statement.

Big Wood is not TD5 terrain. If National events in the South are to be restricted to areas which can provide truly TD5 courses, then you are going to find them rather rare. But Pat Barclay provided courses of the right standard for juniors (a necessary requirement) and, I reckon, challenging ones for their elders. A different sort of forest from typical National event terrain? Perhaps. Not to everybody's liking? Maybe. A wood which provided mostly pleasant running and in which those who used the right techniques were fastest? Certainly.

As you will have noticed, the courses were not on the short side. The Guideline requires their lengths to be a defined fraction of the length of M21L - with climb also taken into account - based on a hypothetical winning time for a elite runner of 75 minutes. M21L was won in 1.32.53 by Tuomas Tala of TVOC, an M35 ranked 18th in M21 at the time of writing. The estimate for the M21L course length was perhaps a bit long; however many of the senior long courses were won in pretty fast times.

Finally, my wife greatly enjoyed W50L, in spite of not being very quick on it. I suspect that is what it's all about for most competitors.

Arthur Vince, KERNO

COMMENTARY ON W75 CLASSES

W75 Results As a result of an unfortunate series of misunderstanding and errors of omission the W75's ran two different courses, 8 and 9.

The designated course for them was Course 9 as given in the final details. The entries website originally had W75L and W75S options. This was changed to W75 only when it was realised that the table of course/class combinations for National events (Rules, Event Guideline C) has only one W75 class; the intention is that all W75's compete on the shortest senior course. The Start list confusingly gave a list of times for W75L, and in error this class which should have been called W75 (not W75L) was allocated to Course 8; the maps required were printed on that basis. This resulted in a shortage of maps for Course 9, so that when some W75 ladies arrived at the start expecting to run Course 9 there was no map for them. To add to the confusion, the map and control descriptions for Course 8 had a "W75L" label, and for Course 9 a "W75S" label, a mistake which should have been corrected at a far earlier stage. A Course 9 map not being available, three W75's ended up running Course 8 successfully (4.8km rather than 4.1km); four ran Course 9.

Our decision on the use of the results for ranking point and badge time calculations is this:
1. The results for Course 9 are the correct ones for the W75 class.
2. Times for W75's on Course 8 will not count for W75 ranking point and badge time calculations, neither will they count for W70L calculations.

This considered decision supersedes the earlier one. We recognise that those W75 ladies who ran Course 8 have got the downside of this situation. We can only unreservedly apologise to them - and to those on Course 9 who did not get a run against their peers, and hope that in any case they enjoyed orienteering in Big Wood.

Arthur Vince, KERNO, event controller.
John Parfitt, SARUM, event organiser.

Next events

13 April 08 - Galoppen at Groveley Woods details www.sarumo.org.uk
Sept - Caddihoe Chase at Hamptworth

Comments on the results to the organiser - SARUMO@aol.com or 01985 216371