"Is Facebook killing Blogger?": Mikhail Vinogradov's opinion

“Is Facebook killing Blogger?” During the last years, I've been worried about this subject and decided now to explore it with your help. Let my give you an example, a kind of starting point: We have in Portugal a webpage lodged in the Portuguese Orienteering Federation's site, which is called OriOasis. It's kind of a “mini-World of O” site, where 23 Portuguese Blogs and Sites are represented. More than a half of them are completely dead and only six blogs have articles published in 2015. Five of them have 25 articles overall published along this year. The other one, Orientovar –www.orientovar.blogspot.com –, has 390 articles published so far. Orientovar is my personal blog and I know what I'm talking about; but I also have to say that I have now around 80 visitors each day, while that number, three years ago, was higher than 400 visitors each day. At the same time, I can see that the “dead blogs” administrators, are still quite active on Facebook, which mean, probably, they moved their attentions from Blogger to Facebook in an almost definitive way. So, I tried to listen some top bloggers about this subject, having their feedback about five questions (the same for everyone). Emily Benham, Catherine Taylor, Mikhail Vinogradov, Lizzie Ingham, Hans Jörgen Kvale or Jan Kocbach are some of the bloggers that, during the next days, will leave here their opinions. Of course, you're also free to participate, leaving your contribution on the Portuguese Orienteering Blog's commentary corner. We'll certainly appreciate that!

Looking for the Portuguese example above, do you feel the same with your blog and blogs around you? Is this a problem for you?

Mikhail Vinogradov (M. V.) - I don't feel some pressure from Facebook to our blog (or other blogs). Some athletes have created Facebook pages, but in my opinion are different things; unlike Blog, the Facebook frame is really a short message mainly with picture.

Do you have an Orienteering Facebook page? Could you tell us about your experience in having both a Facebook page and Blog?

M. V. - Galina and I have Facebook accounts (not Athlete profiles!), We used it to contact people and also put announces about articles in our blog.

Is it clear that Facebook is a quick way to talk about Orienteering, but is it also the best way to promote our sport? Is the Blogger condemned to be extinguished?

M. V. - In my opinion, Blogs are better to communicate in Orienteering. You can put a lot of pictures, maps, analysis, surveys, etc.

Have you ever felt like stopping writing? Are you loosing the interest in writing and reading – and sharing! - about Orienteering?

M. V. - No.

Have you any general ideas about Communication in our sport that you would like to share?

M. V. - World of O is the best option for the moment.

Joaquim Margarido

Mikhail Vinogradov, Part II: "The weak organizational level is one of the biggest problems in modern Orienteering"

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

Mikhail Vinogradov, Part I: "Love is the best inspiration!"

“In 2004 I fell in love with the one who became my wife – Galina Galkina (Vinogradova, since 2005). That was the turning point in my life, sport and career.” This is the beginning of a nice talk to Mikhail Vinogradov, along which we'll get to know better the man and the coach.

In 2004, Mikhail Vinogradov worked as a lecturer of Economics at the University. Between his hobbies, he could count distance running and chess. Like many Russians, Mikhail knew about orienteering but he had never practiced it before. Step by step, he came to Galina’s sport life: like a sparring-partner, specialist in recovery, mental coach, and then like a personal coach.

One year later, Mikhail started his first O-sessions. He was reading books – “there is a lot of O-literature in Russia”, he adds -, talking to runners and thinking a lot about the Orienteering entity. “In my opinion, the key element for the success in Orienteering, as in chess, is the effectiveness of an algorithm of choosing and the implementation. But I was really surprised that Russian O-runners did not think about it. Moreover almost no one was able to explain what they were doing in the forest during the races!”, he says. To him, another “shocking thing” was that “many Russian coaches believe in distance running training plans in Orienteering. In my opinion this is a dead end! Orienteering is a different sport and you can’t just transfer plans and methods from distance running”, Mikhail concludes.

A new approach

“I realized that I had to develop my own way in Orienteering”, says Mikhail, about the first approaches to our sport. He started to read every scientific paper about sport physiology, biomechanics, psychology, geomorphology, molecular biology and, every time he had a doubt, he questioned the authors, some of them were the best sport scientists in the World. John Hawley from Australia and Michael Joyner from the USA deserve a special word about their support. Also Vyacheslav Kostylev, Tatiana Ryabkina's personal coach, played an important role in Mikhail Vinogradov's coaching philosophy. Mikhail remembers: “We spent hundreds of hours mailing and meeting each other.”

Based on what he had learned, Mikhail Vinogrodavod developed a lot of new tools and exercises. “I was one of the first coaches who started to make special preparation to Sprint”, he assumes. When Mikhail met Galina, her usual results in the Russian Championships were around the top 20-30 and some times the top-10. Mikhail's first coaching success was a strong debut of Galina Vinogradova at WOC in 2008, in the Czech Republic. She got the 4th place at Sprint and the Silver medal at WOC-Relay, with the best first leg time.

A hard task

In 2009, Mikhail Vinogradov had an offer to join the Russian National O-team as a volunteer and in 2011 he started at Halden Skiklubb as main coach. “Halden Skiklubb was like a rocket launching for my coaching level», he remembers. He became a 100% professional coach, spending every free time to improve his skills. It would be easy, in that time, to find Mikhail Vinnogradov running in the forest and searching good legs for Halden SK trainings/competitions. He had a lot of meetings with runners, made common analysis, learned the best runners’way of thinking, studied Norwegian language and read a lot of scientific papers and O-analysis. Also here, a word of acknowledgement to Lacho Iliev, Bjørn Axel Gran, Marius Bjugan and Emil Wingstedt. “They helped me a lot with my adaptation to a new country and to a new profession.”

Mikhail Vinogradov spent days and nights thinking how to beat Kalevan Rasti and Tampereen Pyrinto. “during the main preparation time, Winter and Spring, I slept only few hours per night”, says Mikhail. But such a hard job was repaid! Before Mikhail's period as Team coach, Halden SK had won the Jukola in 2010, but in 2011 the team lost three key runners from this “gold relay team”. Even though, they managed to reach the 2nd place in Tiomila and an amazing victory in Jukola with a new line-up. Moreover, in 2012 the Halden SK achieved the best results ever in the Scandinavian Orienteering history – victory in the four biggest club relays (Tiomila, both men and women, Venla, and 25Manna).

Return to Russia

In 2012 the new administration of the club decided to try something new and Mikhail Vinogradov was dismissed. At the moment, he's searching for a reason: “In fact, as I know, all the Halden SK coaches before me and after me had the job for three years and more and I don’t have an explanation for this decision. I have no idea what was the true reason to stop my successful work”, he says. Knowing that the market for O-coaches is really narrow, Mikhail Vinogradov left Norway and came back to Russia.

Last year, finally, he found a job related to top-sport. He is an expert in the Russian Olympic Committee and a lead expert in Sports Center of Innovative Technologies and Teams Exercise Training. His direct connection to orienteering remains in the role of personal coach of Galina Vinogradova, Valentin Novikov and advisor in the physical and mental training of Olga Vinogradova. “I got my current position because of my love for Galina. I left my old profession, moved to another country, spent 10 years of my life helping Galina to get better and better. Love is the best inspiration!”, he concludes.

Don't lose the second part of the article, tomorrow. There, you'll see Mikhail Vinogradov talking about the present moment of Orienteering.

[Photo courtesy of Natalia Vinogradova]

Joaquim Margarido