After having presented Mikhail
Vinogradov, the Portuguese Orienteering Blog shows you today the
remaining part of the Interview with the coach. On it, he addresses a
wide range of subjects about the present and the future of
Orienteering, showing a peculiar point of view in many aspects, based
on a solid and objective reasoning.
What skills are most valuable to an
elite athlete?
Mikhail Vinogradov (M. V.) - I
believe they are the tolerance to high training load and pain, the
patience during typical problems (e.g. injuries, slow progression in
performance), a professional approach in all
details and to be diligent and keep focused on self-improvement.
On the way to
excellence, what is innate and how much is acquired?
M. V.
- It is difficult to specify the exact proportion for Orienteering.
Actually, in any sport, the success depends on the following
conditions: Genetics, a good environment (including social and
economical support), a healthy status, the coach’s qualification
and the athlete’s character. Without one of these conditions, to
succeed in sports is almost impossible.
Do you prefer
to work with young people or the approach and the improvement of an
older athlete?
M. V.
- My focus is in elite sport. Youth sport requests another way
of thinking.
Looking at your blog, we realize
that the Relay is the distance in which your results as coach are
more valuable. Is it true that Relay deserves, actually, some special
attention from you?
M. V. -
The first reason why you see a high number of medals from
Relays is because at the official IOF competitions the struggle in
Relay events is not as big as in the individual distances. The second
reason is that I was a main coach in Halden Skiklubb and my job was
to win Relays. In fact, the Relay is a very special event in any
sport and there are a lot of particularities in Relays. I guess that
I got some important features of O-Relays and victories from my
runners in all types of international Relays that you can see like a
sign of it. Like a personal, National or club coach, I got victories
in the World Games, WOC, EOC, JWOC, Tiomila (women and men), Jukola,
Venla, 25Manna. “When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain he
wept for there were no more worlds to conquer” (laughs).
You've been a little bit bored with
the IOF's policy in the last years. But is it a “crime” to work
towards a greater awareness and recognition of the sport? There's
nothing worth in Brian Porteous' initiatives? Not even the Mixed
Sprint Relay?
M. V. -
I am not familiar with anyone on the IOF staff. I don’t know
who is Brian Porteous and what are his initiatives. I like the Mixed
Sprint Relay and I always was a supporter of new events in the WOC
program. But what’s the point in cancelling the Middle and Long
qualification? That action led to the introduction of quotas for
countries and it's the wrong way to get started with protocols based
on questionable IOF rankings. One of the reasons was to give the
option to the top runners to participate in a full WOC-program. I
think that there weren't any elite runners who participated in the
full WOC-2014 program. I am pretty sure that it was possible to
introduce WOC Mixed Relay without other unreasoned changes. And
what’s the point to send an IOF delegation to South Africa (WADA
conference)? I don’t think that doping is the number one problem in
Orienteering and I don’t think that a really expensive trip was
necessary (the WADA conference was broadcasted on-line).
What do you think about the
organizational level?
M. V. - The weak organizational level is one of the biggest problems in modern Orienteering, specially because we're talking about WOC/EOC organizations. I can refer to you the WOC in France
(2011) as the most terrible I have ever seen! We got the information
about the Sprint final that the Finish was going to be at the beam
line. All runners had been informed about this but, actually, the
timing was based on punching on the Finish station! I can also tell
you about the bad prediction of the winner's time. It is totally
different being prepared to run a Long Distance in 1:30 than in 2
hours. There were a lot of electric shocks during the forest events.
Galina Vinogradova was electrocuted during the Long Qualification and
she suffered for several days! Moreover there were no
English-speaking doctors at the Arena (!). There was a bad map
quality, extremely poor course setting in the qualification for
Middle Distance and so on. I counted 12 or 14 problems with the
organization that influenced the WOC results and the Fair Play.
After few years, in
2014, we faced again a poor level of organization
at EOC in Portugal! (By the way, before EOC I was pretty sure about
competition's high-quality). Fools never learn? Looks like the IOF
does not count its own failures. We often face problems with bad map
quality (last cases were the Middle WOC-2013, the Middle and the
Sprint WOC-2014). For me, it is obvious that after the competitions,
special people must analyse (and ask the
top runners) about the organization, the maps, etc. and take
conclusions for the future! And the next WOC-organizers must count on
previous bad experiences. I could spend weeks telling you about
problems in the IOF's work, but the general conclusion, in my
opinion, is that the IOF is such a conservative organization that it
is impossible for them to adopt something new. Just take a look at
the discussion about the scale for the Long Distance at WOC-2011 and
you’ll see what I mean.
If you had the power to do so, what
steps would you take in order to make orienteering a more
participative and sustainable sport?
M.
V. -
First of all, I'd stop wrong spread-out-around-the-World actions
(such as the World Cup overseas events or the intention to invite
small exotic countries to the IOF). Instead
of inviting Nepal to the IOF, it is necessary to keep focus on the
development of orienteering in such big countries as Germany, Spain,
Poland... Some points you can find here:
http://vinogradovcoach.blogspot.ru/2013/11/i-agree-with-dadek-novotny-critics-of.html
and
here:http://vinogradovcoach.blogspot.ru/2014/07/i-totally-support-niggli-concept-of-new.html.
And I will write about it in the future (when I formulate some ideas
in a clear way), like my posts about Sports Statistics/Performance
Analysis in Orienteering.
It´s interesting
to hear you talking about the Sports Statistics, because it was
something that I would like to know your opinion about.
M. V.
- I think that the development of sports statistics/performance
analysis is an important step to lift up orienteering to the next
level. That’s important not only for coaches and runners but also
for media and fans. I'll give you an example: during
the World Games
2013 the speaker
said «What a big surprise that Nadya
Volynksa won the medal!» But for me that was obvious that the
Ukrainian runner was one of the favorites. I based my forecasting on
the careful analysis of international races in 2013. With good
statistics arrangement it is easy to get access to results’ dynamic
of a particular runner, his/her chances on the particular
terrain/event types, statistics of success/victories against other
runners in the heat, etc.
Take a look at the differences between
tennis and Orienteering. Tournaments and single matches in tennis are
quite long. Why do the spectators go on looking on the players for
2-4 hours? Something happens in a tennis match every minute! And
there is a lack of ‘something’ in orienteering broadcasting (it
is impossible to cover all the forest with TV-cameras). That means
that in Orienteering we have to fill empty time (the lack of athletes
near the cameras) with professional speaking (based on sports
statistics and expert opinions) and nice graphical information of
performance analysis.
Orienteering in the Olympics. Would
you like to comment?
M. V.
- I am against Orienteering in the Olympics. It is a false goal. For
the moment, I believe that Orienteering is a clean sport (post
‘Doping in Orienteering’ in our blog
http://vinogradovcoach.blogspot.ru/
is coming next month with analysis of
several positive cases and estimations of effectiveness of the
current IOF anti-doping policy). Moreover, most of the people believe
in ‘Fair Play’ in Orienteering (not 100%, but close). But
everything would be gone in the Olympics. We would see the current
generation (who respects the Fair Play) gradually losing their
positions. With doping would happen unfair access to forbidden areas,
bribes for knowledge of event courses, and we would be at same dirty
level as cycling, track & field athletics or weight lifting. The
current Olympic movement is far away from the ideals of Pierre de
Coubertin and we can see multiple huge scandals of doping in Kenya,
USA, Russia, and the corruption in some international federations
just confirms it. I believe in Fair Play and my athletes share my
life values. But new runners without moral restrictions will come. Do
we really need that?
What are your projects and goals in
the short term, as a coach?
M. V. - As I said before, right
now I’m working with Galina Vinogradova, Valentin Novikov and Olga
Vinogradova. And all my projects and goals are related with the
trainings and performances of these three athletes.
Thinking about the future, would you
mind sharing with us your greatest wish?
M. V. - I wish that every runner
in Orienteering will be healthy, injury free and enjoy our sport!
[Photo courtesy of Mikhail Vinogradov]
Joaquim Margarido
No comments:
Post a Comment