British Orienteering Ranking List

Details of the Ranking System

This page gives a brief summary of development of British Orienteering's ranking system. The system was set up in 2000 comprising automated results submission and ranking points calculation. Small adjustments to the calculation have been made over the years but for the most part it has remain as originally specified. The submission system has also remained basically the same but over the years has become more informative. Perhaps the biggest changes have been in the range of applicability which seems to be changing regularly.
  1. The original specification (updated in October 2003 to include item 4 below) used in 2000 included a 5% extra weight for C1/2 events. The ranking list covered all adult classes from age 18 upwards.
  2. In 2001 the 5% weighting for C1/2 events was dropped.
  3. The first two years of the ranking list suffered from a small steady downwards drift in the scores. In 2002 a method of normalising the scores was devised to keep the class average score around 1000 points per event and has been used since then.
  4. October 2003: the small class standard deviation factor which was originally set to 0.16 was increased to 0.2.
  5. February 2004: the 18A and 18S age class were replaced by 18L and 18S respectively.
  6. April 2004: the 18L and 18S junior age classes were removed from the ranking list.
  7. January 2007: the new BO local membership grade was excluded from the ranking list so as to provide an incentive for national membership.

The Person Responsible for This Page

Mike Cumpstey

Last Updated January 2007