The influence of course characteristics on the variability of finishing times and running speed in forest individual races at the World Orienteering Championships from 2009 to 2019

Abstract

Problem Statement and Approach: A successful foot orienteering performance has been described as a combination of high endurance and cognitive capabilities, with elite orienteers demonstrating a high ability to run on physically demanding terrain. The uniqueness of length and type of terrain of each orienteering race led us to investigate the influence of course characteristics, such as length, distance climbed, number of control points, course technical difficulty, terrain morphology, runnability, and visibility, on finishing times and running speed in World Orienteering Championship (WOC) Forest competitions. Material and Methods: The official WOC results from 2009 to 2019 were collected and complemented with qualitative course characteristics. We used the Pearson product–moment correlation to analyze the relation between course characteristics, such as length, distance climbed, number of control points, course technical difficulty, terrain morphology, runnability, visibility, and performance indicators of finishing time and running speed. Results: Similarities between sex differences were found in long-distance races (22% ± 3%) and in middle-distance races (22% ± 4%), with female orienteers showing a higher interquartile range within the top 30 best-ranked athletes at the WOC races. When we applied a normalization to race length, this variable showed a very large positive correlation with middle-distance finishing times. Running speed showed a very large positive correlation with course length and a large to very large negative correlation course technical difficulty. For male long-distance races, higher differences between athletes were found on courses with a low number of CP, low visibility, and heavier terrain. Discussion: These greater sex differences found for the individual forest orienteering disciplines may be due to the terrain type encountered during competition and by the navigational tasks. The true nature of forest orienteering, where terrain type influences the physiological performance of athletes, explains the large to very large effect that course characteristics have on running speed for both disciplines and sexes. Conclusions: Our results suggest that orienteering course setters should pay careful attention to balancing length and technical difficulty of the orienteering courses with terrain type, as we observed a very large relation between course characteristics and running speed on WOC races. To increase the difficulty of the navigational tasks, they should seek competition terrains with low visibility terrain and reduced runnability and prepare courses with a low number of control points. Moreover, sex differences in orienteering performance are higher than in other endurance sports.