Technical limit
fig.1. Florian Schneider on the technical limit (Kids O Week/SOW 2019).
Definition: The technical limit is the speed you can run without making mistakes and executing flawless. This limit is individual and depends on the type of terrain. It only comes to count if you would be able to run faster than navigate. Factors are talent and specific training. (fig.1.)
Novaggio 2018
fig.2. Example of a technical limit. Blue is the performance index of Matthias Kyburz at the Test race for EOC 2018 in Novaggio TI. Red is the re-run the same day. What you can see here is, that Kyburz constantly runs 10% below his impressive running capacity, thereby performing technically close to perfect.Or.. uhm he might actually be running below his technical limit.
fig.3. Same day. Same plot for Fabian Hertner. His competition speed is closer to this running capacity with only a 5% gap, but his performance is less stable. So he definitively scratches on his limit.
fig.4. And here comes Joey Hadorn. He ran parts of the competition full speed, but performed less stable for the rest him too.
fig.5. And here comes Christoph Meier. Competition speed is 2.7% down from running capacity. Almost no mistakes.
fig.6. Thus here you see the running capacities of these four runners. In the final result. Kyburz gets 2., Meier 4th, Hadorn 11th, Hertner 12th. Meier made the best out of his "limited" running capacity. Starting with a re-run disadvantage of +2.20 min. to Kyburz he get it down to +0.19 min. in the competition. He also passed Hadorn and Hertner turning re-run deficits of 45 and 27 seconds into a 20 seconds advantage in competition.
Now the Novaggio village was a pretty technical terrain with advanced demands on route choice, map-reading timing and proper execution. Let's switch to ...
WC 2019 in Switzerland, Laufen
fig.7. World Cup Switzerland 2019. Sprint Laufen, Performance index.
The WC in Laufen can be described as less technical in regard of route choice, map-reading timing and proper execution. Thus many runners managed to perform according to their shear running capacity. Technically stable runners with lower running capacity could not get an advantage here. Hadorns offensive strategy did not pay out this time neither loosing 24 seconds on the second long leg. In the end Yannick Michiels won due to a bad route choice of the even faster Kris Jones, but in general we can conclude, that the limit in WC Sprint Laufen was of physical nature.
Songtang, World Cup Final 2019 in China.
fig.8. World Cup China 2019. Sprint Songtan, Performance Index.
The contrary here. The terrain was definitively limiting running speed of most of the runners. For example Yannick Michiels speed dropped by 2.4km/h between Switzerland and China. He still managed to win, thus almost everybody must have "dropped" similarly. Not everybody though to the same amount. Kyburz, peaking 7.5% ahead of Hallan Steiwer in Switzerland got back to even with him. Hadorns peak passed Michiels, Rauturier advanced relatively. The biggest relative step forward, although it technically was "
the smallest step backwards" regarding speed took Li ZhuoYe. Not competitive regarding speed in Laufen, the technical terrain on his homeground made him even competitve-wise. Note that even his running speed dropped but rather insignificantly. He (as some other Chinese runners) relatively over-performed in the most technical parts and under-performed in the more physical parts towards the end of the course.
His limit was thus mostly of physical nature, while all other struggled with a technical limit. Many competitors clashed with the fact, that they could run faster than they should, resulting in time losses due to wrong route choices, but also many problems with proper execution.
As a result the overall performance of the usual suspects resulted in unusual big lag from the winner to the superman-time but also to the estimated winning time of 13-14 minutes (Michiels 15.18 and +1.16 on superman).
Resume
- Technical limits lead to a collective under-perfomance from the usual suspects.
- Li ZhuoYe got his chance of a lifetime an made it. He is not to expect to succeed in faster and less technical Sprint neither in terrain he is not as technically adapted to. (But return to Guangdong and he might out-run you again).
- All these athletes publicly claiming foul-play by ZhuoYe (and Hao), but also the IOF not supporting the Chinese Radio Sport and Orienteering association against these untenable claims, owe them a huge reparation for the damage made. Those high-handed claiming to stand for fairplay, should bear their responsibility and revoke their false claims as loud at they made them.
- The sprint courses should be held open for re-runs after the competitions.
Epilog
- Why couldn't I just shup up?
- No anonymous comments.
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