Montag, 25. November 2019

Swiss National Team 1999-2020

Here comes my annual update of the Swiss Team 2020.

Swiss National Team 1999-2020


  • At the womens side stability on the top but drop outs from B- and C-level. (Lisa Holer, Anina Brunner, Sandrine Müller, Marcia Mürner, Saskia Bruchmüller and Lisa Schubnell). Sina Tommer from B to C and new Elena Pezzati into B-Team.
  • At the mens side. With the retirement of Andreas Kyburz after 11 senior seasons, the two Hubmann brothers Martin and Daniel are now the most experienced/oldest in the men team. Hadorn up into the A team, Curriger and Dubach from B to C. Werren, Andrin Gründler, Bieri and Ullman drop out of C. 
  • Chamuel Zbinden, Tino Polsini, Reto Egger advancing to the B team.
  • New juniors Lilly Graber, Sanna Hotz, Corina Hüni and Vera Moser. Florian Freuler, Simon Hamel, Janis Hutzli and Dominic Schacher.
  • Trivia: First time we can spot a second generation athlete with Sanna Hotz, daugther of Daniel Hotz, member of the Swiss Team in 2003. With Sanna Hotz we have the second double generation appearance in this list (Sara Gemperle -> Eline Gemperle, Daniel Hotz -> Sanna Hotz).  Athletes with parents being former members of the Swiss Team are not uncommon. Athletes with both parents being former members of the Swiss Team too.
  • Daniel Hubmann enters his 16th season as a member of the A-team. fig.1 you can see who the team looked like back in 2005. Beside Daniel Hubmann, two more guys still would be on the team photo today.
     
fig.1.The team in 2005.  Some are missing though, at least Vroni.

Mittwoch, 13. November 2019

Chinese sequel VI - ZhuoYe Li in the B-Final World Cup Switzerland

I asked Devon Yao if he could ask ZhuoYe Li to provide me with his route choices from the B-final World Cup Switzerland. This to get a indication of ZhuoYe's running capacity.  Blue is the first loop, red the second.

I measured the route length (2Dreun/courseplanning tool) -> 4.217m
ZhuoYes running time -> 15.50
ZhuoYes average speed ->3.45 min./km
Top speed -> 3.27 min./km on long leg 15th control (Yannick 3.04min/km)
Looses time (about 6 seconds each)  at 7th control (wrong route) and 13th (tweaking)


Here you can see the Performance index curves from ZhuoYe Li, Gaute Hallan Steiwer and Yannick Michiels on this course. Yannick constantly performs at 103%, Gaute at 95% and ZhuoYe at 87%.

The outcome here is consistent with the assumption made earlier that ZhuoYes competition speed (physical capacity) is averaging at about 3.45 min./km

Freitag, 8. November 2019

The Chinese sequel V: The chinese rockets

I wonder: How did the Chinese men and women as a team?

The men

The Chinese men started fast. Top 4 at the 3rd control after about 2 min., 469m and 4 corners, 4.15min/km. Top 2 still after 3.25 at 6th control 829m an 18 corners 4.07min/km.

Li ZhuoYe keeps the lead until the second last control.

Note: Also slow starts and non-collective error pattern of the Chinese men Team.

ZhuoYes speed on the non technical legs: 7: 3.52min/km, 14: 3.53min/km 17: 3.50min/km; 22: 3.49min/km; Run-In: 2.33min./km

ZhuoYes speed on the technical legs: 4th: 4:56min/km;  8th: 4.14min/km, 19th: 4.20min/km; 20th: 5.28 min/km; 21th: 5.06 min/km



The women

Also the women started fast. Top 2 at the second control after 1.02, 251m,  4.07 min./km.

Still 1, 4&5 at the 7th control after 3.40 min. and 850m. Shuangyan starting pace: 4.18 min/km. Jiayis and YongYus starting pace 4.42 min./km

Note: also bad starts and individual error pattern from the Chinese women team.

Haos top speed: 7th 4.19min./km; 9th 4.10min./km; 14th 3.58 min./km; 20th 3.48 min./km.

Conclusion
  • The general team perfomance pattern do not indicate collective cheating.
  • The team performance in the first section does not indicate collective cheating.
  • The fast start of some team members (chinese rockets) can be explained with over-motivation, familiarity with the kind of terrain and good preparation (map was available, start-setup was predictable). The starting speeds of the chinese runners where not incredibly high.
  • The starting speeds of the later winner Hao as the mens 3rd Li are consistent with their perfomance throughout the courses. So acutally, if claims are true, only Hao and Li would have had gotten the entire courses leaked... Wow!
  • Contraindication: Hao runs neither 7th nor 9th at full speed, why should  she slow down here, if she knew the good routes already.
  •  Simona vs. Shuangyan. Shuangyans performance was not extraterrestric. She just was ready from the start. A cautious start and a mistake by Simona made her succeed. (btw. Impressive how fast Simona adapted (first time in China, first Sprint in this type terrain after maybe ?two? traings to adapt, she gets into the rythm just after the first section of the course)

Donnerstag, 7. November 2019

The China sequel IV: On the technical limit

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.


Mittwoch, 6. November 2019

Songtang Slow down effect

I wonder.
How much did the Songtang terrain slow down Yannick? How much ZhuoYe?

I measure length of the chosen routes (2DRerun course-setting tool) and divide by time. For Yannick both Laufen and Songtang.  For ZhuoYe only Songtang (no GPS available) and official length in Laufen.

The result:
Yannick drops by 2.4 km/h. ZhuoYe drops by 0.2 km/h

Montag, 4. November 2019

WC Final China without chinese Athletes

OK. Follow up.
I remove the Chinese Athletes from Winsplits, such that the do not bias on the SuperWOman and compare the TOP 20 pattern of (WCF China minus Chinese) with (WC Switzerland) for Switzerland I add Zernis and Lösch to get the same x-axis for both competitions. First two figures are men, second two figures women.








The KanPas Focus 200

So here is the KanPas Focus 200. Actually the compass making orienteering easy. Maybe even too easy? - Sorry for that. fig.1. What a beauty ...