disaster for small federations
Some thoughts about the new rules which haven't been changed after the general IOF assembly this saturday.
- Which runner has the highest level? Pierre Kaltenbacher (8th of Austria) or Pavlo Ushkvarok (2nd of Ukraine)?
- Belgium can send only 1 athlete to next world cup season unless we send some runners to WRE-events.
- How shall we select this one runner??
- How shall we send the athlete to the competition, with or without a coach?
- Is Belgium still interested in World Cup or is it to expensive to send only one runner?
Focussing on WOC and WRE-events seems the only solution to keep the bunch of young talented athletes motivated. WRE-events in similar terrain as WOC 2007 or 2008 are good opportunities.
The best athletes of Belgium are planning to focus only on WOC for next season. Probably some countries will not send any runners. Can we still call it a WORLD cup?
- Will we ever see news items like these at WOC in Danmark: "26 nations represented in long distance final Posted by Clive Allen on July 30, 2006 at 21:01"? Not for a World Cup in my opinion.
posted by dries @ 14:15
4 Comments:
At 10/10/06 11:42,
Anoniem said…
Yep Pieter was the best in Belgium this year... But I and some others (like Nicolas, Tom, Wim, ...) couldn't defend all our chances by a long period of injuries and our shape is still really bad right now.
Just for example analyse the evolution my scoring place in BRE :
Link
I'm waiting for 2007... without injuries !!! And the selection will be held in 2007 not now... everybody has a chance but the one who will be selected has to be good in scandinavian terrain not especially in Belgium... That's it !!!
I'm waiting for selections in foreign countries (not in easy Belgium) and in very challenging (both physically and technically)terrain. Winning in Belgium doesn't mean "getting to the team" !
At 11/10/06 10:36,
Anoniem said…
It will be stupid to organise an expensive selection just to select one runner! and who (especially of the flemmish athletes who have to pay it all themselves) is willing to pay a lot for a selection weekend when the chance to be selected is so little?
This system definitely is not fair!
At 13/10/06 11:39,
Anoniem said…
vers van de pers:
The IOF Foot-O Commission had a meeting on Thursday 5th and
Friday 6th of
October 2006 in Murol, France. One of our main discussion
subjects were
the World Cup 2007 Special Rules.
The main item of discussion was the minimum number of places for
runners
each federation can enter in a World Cup race in 2007.
The World Cup 2007 Special Rules that were sent by the IOF
secretariat to
all Federations on August 8th, 2006 and published on the IOF
website
(though without news flash), provide a minimum of 1+1 runner
(women +
men) for each Federation.
IOF Council has received, and forwarded to the Foot-O
Commission, the
letters of the Federations from CAN, USA and NZL, all three
claiming a
minimum of 3+3 runners for each Federation.
At the World Cup 2006 Final in Murol/France, the Foot-O
Commission
received a petition, initiated by a runner from Ukraine, which
was signed
by a big majority of runners participating in the World Cup
Final. To the
petition, the letter from the Canadian Federation to Council was
attached. The petition pointed out the effect of the published
World Cup
2007 Special Rules towards small Federations, e.g. Ukraine, who
has many
male runners among the top 150 in the World Ranking List (WRL),
but per
1st of October, only 1+1 places for the 2007 World Cup, due to a
bad
Federations Ranking.
The IOF Foot-O Commission made the following decisions:
1. There will be an addition to the published World Cup 2007
Special
Rules.
The addition will come at the bottom of the paragraph "National
runners
quota", and it will be (wording not 100% fixed yet):
---
In addition, Federations who qualify for two or one places (i.e.
in
positions 19 and below in the Federation League) and who have
one or more
runners among the 150 best-ranked runners in the individual
World Ranking
List (as published on 1st January 2007 in the World Rankings
section of
the IOF website), will qualify for extra places as follows.
· Each runner in the top 150 of the World Rankings list (as
above)
will give their Federation one extra place in the National
runners quota
· There is a maximum of three runners allocated to each
Federation
· Men's and women's quotas shall be treated separately
Thus a Federation which already has two places can obtain one
extra place
by having one or more runner(s) ranked among the 150 best on the
individual World Rankings and a Federation with one place can
obtain up
to two extra places by having two or more runners ranked among
the 150
best in the Rankings.
A Federation may enter any runner irrespective of their position
within
the IOF World Rankings list.
---
2. In addition to the national quota of 3 WREs for each
Federation, each
IOF region is allocated 3 WREs to be distributed between the
member
Federations in a manner to be decided by the region.
Hopefully, this will give more runners in North America and
Oceania (and
Africa and South America) the chance to score points at 4 WRE
events.
3. The Foot-O Commission doses not want to rise the general
minimum of
runners for each Federation for the World Cup 2007.
4. The World Cup Special rules shall be reviewed in 12 months
time,
before the 2008 season.
We, the Foot-O Commission, have the following background and
reasons for
our decisions:
I. Our task is to create an high media and elite profil for
World Cup.
See
http://www.orienteering.org/footo/Elite%20Events%20Programme%202007-
_29Nov05.pdf, especially "Aims" and "Objectives".
II. We have understood that we, with the published version of
the WCup
special rules
(http://www.orienteering.org/rules/World%20Cup%202007%
20Special%20Rules.pdf), create a problem for some very good
runners (e.g.
men from UKR) and have therefore made an addition, such that
federations
with runners among the 150 best in the WRL get up to 3 places.
Also
Federations as CAN, USA and NZL will profitate from this change.
III. We recognise that non-European Federations have a
disadvantage with
respect to number of WREs staged in their regions, compared to
Europe. We
try to improve the situation by allocating extra WRE's, and we
will
review the World Cup rules for next year. (We don't claim it's
perfect.)
IV. We disagree with CAN/USA/NZL that the World Cup is the arena
where
they must develop their elite runners.
As always in the IOF system, it is the IOF Council who finally
approves
all rules. We have given our updates for the World Cup 2007
Special Rules
and, of course, also the petition/runners signatures to Council,
who will
make the final approval of the World Cup Special Rules at their
meeting
in November.
For the IOF Foot-O Commission,
Frauke Schmitt Gran
At 13/10/06 16:40,
Anoniem said…
Leuk dat er toch nog een rechtvaardige aanpassing is gedaan. Voorlopig zou de Belgische ploeg dan volgend jaar twee mannen en één vrouw naar de world cups mogen zenden aangezien Fabien op plaats 145 staat. Hopelijk valt hij niet uit die top 150 maar het seizoen is natuurlijk nog niet afgelopen met toch nog ongeveer tien WRE voor 1 januari 2007. Pieter staat op plaats 162, dus mocht hij zin hebben om nog een WRE te lopen, kunnen we zelfs misschien met 3 mannen deelnemen aan de world cup volgend jaar. Maar laten we allereerst hopen dat Fabien in de top 150 blijft!!!
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