Federation Table

WorldCup Jonny Rankings IOF Cecilie

WelomcetoColdAsh2023photo:Jane Courtier, from the British Champs website

While we're waiting, let's mention the IOF World Federation League Table and pose a few questions (for your personal amusement, no prizes.) This decides how many runners a country can enter in an individual World Cup Race. There are separate tables for men and women, combining forest and sprint.

If you've kept interest this far you can probably say what are the top four countries in the tables. But how about a guess for their order (it has changed in the last year)? And how about who's fifth, and where GB stands in each table?

What are we waiting for?

The British Championships are on Saturday 25th March at Cold Ash in Berkshire.

Startlists - British Orienteering Champs.

Routegadget for the last big race at Cold Ash.

ColdAsh_mapclipCold Ash was used for the JK Long Race in 2019 - our report


Our JK2019 Report - all four races.

World Cup Entry Quotas

There are different, perhaps better known, rules deciding entries for a World Champs.

In a World Cup, like with the World Champs, there are some "personal places" for e.g. last year's World Cup winners. (The rules on personal places are different to those for the World Champs.)

These are additional to the main determinant, the World Federation League Table at the start of the calendar year. The result is "national quotas" and it applies to the seven World Cup individual races in 2023.

Britain has six places for both women and men.

  • The top 6 Federations get 8 places.

  • Federations ranked 7 to 14 get 6 places.

  • The host Federation gets 8 places, irrespective of its standing in the IOF Federation League Table.

  • All other (non-suspended) IOF member Federations get 4 places.

The table is based on the World Ranking Lists. The sum of the points for the country's top 10 sprint athletes give the "Sprint points". The sum of the points for the country's top 10 forest athletes give the "Middle/long points".

The Federation League points are calculated by adding Sprint points to two times Middle/long Points.

It's a big calculation!

The World Ranking Lists count an athlete's best five results. So the Federation League is a sum using 100 numbers (10 sprint and 10 forest, each with five scores), selected from the large number of individual athlete results in World Ranking Events. Some of the 100 can be zero, where a country does not have 10 athletes in that discipline with a full set of counting scores. In fact you do not have to go very far down the 56 country list for this to start happening - the sixth country in the both tables doesn't have a full 50 scores for sprints.

The ranking lists are still using results from the previous 39 months, a change because of the COVID interruptions. It reverts back to 24 months in the middle of this year. This means for example results from the 2021 European Champs, which most GB athletes were unable to attend because of UK Government restrictions, will drop from the system.

For a bonus game see how many of the 56 federations you can name? (There are currently 78 Member Federations, although 7 are currently suspended, 5 for not paying.)

The answers

  • The Big Four, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and Finland occupy the first four spaces. Sweden took the top spot from Switzerland in both tables last year.

  • France is fifth in the men's table, Denmark in the women's.

  • GB is seventh in the women's table and ninth in the men's.

GB position?

Although the GB women are placed 7th, and the men 9th, the points gap to 6th is smaller for the men. But in any case, would GB really want or use more than 6 places in a World Cup race?

Czechia, who are the sixth nation in both tables, could always increase their score by having ten men and ten women with five sprint WRE scores.

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