Missing Control

[roadrunner]

As Awk says, we hear about this sort of problem rather often at major UK events these days, and yet at overseas events I've attended (including two O-ringens, with 5 days of competition and many more courses), I don't recall anything similar. I can think of three possible explanations:
1. It really happens more here
2. It happens the same abroad but people don't protest as much
3. It happens the same abroad and people protest as much, but we in the UK don't get to hear about it
Would anyone with more experience of overseas competition care to comment?

[freaky_phil]

I received a free copy of the CompassSport yesterday (Oct 2006) and in it was a "Controller's Conundrum". Where Brian Parker recounted an exact same scenario where a 1st leg runner at a JK relay returned saying a control was missing. What Brian did in this case was to stop any second leg runners going out and making the decision to start all the 2nd leg runners at the same time (mass start), this happend on the mens open race so the race was decided over 3 legs instead of 4. As the controller/planner at the British knew the control was missing before the second leg runners started this could have been another course of action to take, reducing the relay to 2 legs instead of 3.

[Ravinous]

I wouldnt say that mistakes occur here any more or less that they do abroad. I have lived 6 years abroad in Sweden and Czech and O'ed extensively in both. The attitudes to protesting I would say is different however. In Czech I would say the general feeling is you don't (maybe overtones of the previous regime that you dont complain!?!). It was interesting to note the only time I put in a protest in Czech, it was met by a kind of 'How dare you put in a protest. We cannot have possibly done anything 'wrong'' type attitude. The notion of taking out a control (which we do a bit in the UK) is totally unheard of there. Needless to say, I didnt get anywhere with my protest, but they were going to change the rules. Maybe they did, maybe they didnt, but the same thing was occuring the following year. The Czechs dont follow a lot of IOF rules. Hence you get things like controls on identical crags 10m apart with control codes like 68 and 69. Planners can have the attitude that they want to catch people out.
I think roadrunners point 3 is more likely. Why should you hear about the problems of foreign races? The bulk of races are generally fine. The problem races will only affect certain courses and if they are speaking foreign, and you dont have anybody on that course, etc. etc.
In Sweden last year I think, their Sprint Champs had some major problems - cant remember what exactly... but if you are not at the race and you were not affected, you soon forget.

[EddieH]

I remember running in the Swiss 5 day many years ago M21E had a wrongly cited control on day 3. Oyvin Thon won by 10 minutes from his brother on that day with third place a loooong way behind. Thus all the other days effectively became irrelevant. No-one protested.

[Vidalos]

I started this discussion to try and understand the rules and how they are applied in this type of situation. And whilst many people have expressed views on what they'd like to happen the rules surely must be applied and applied in a consistant way. I think after reading them the logic seems to go something like this

1. Is the incident material to the course
2. Does it affect more than one competitor
3. Where a significant number of competitors disadvantaged

So can they be applied in a consistant way as they stand?

How can the officials and jury every know whether competitors have been significantly disadvantaged unless they talk to a significant number of people who were on that course.

And what is significantly disadvantaged over just being disadvantaged

[graeme]

How can the officials and jury every know whether competitors have been significantly disadvantaged unless they talk to a significant number of people who were on that course.

You can tell a huge amount from the splits on splitbrowsers/winsplits. After planning I always look through the splits (difference from "expected" time), and the telltale sign of a problem is many people losing time at a control. Having spotted the controls which have a significant effect on the result, I look to see whether the people who lost time there are correlated with the rest of the course. If the "leg" results are out of synch with the rest of the course, I worry about why (I also do this for courses I run). This picks up not only "wrong" controls, but other unfairnesses such as bingo controls, undergrowth which tracks up and using areas of bad mapping. I find it very useful for reviewing how my planning went, since competitors often dont notice and anyway are usually too nice to complain.

And what is significantly disadvantaged over just being disadvantaged

Significant is something close to the typical gaps between competitors, or the amount of time difference that luck can offer.

[awk]

Awk is this because the elite competitors are more likely to protest, because a) they are more certain that things are wrong b) they are more prepared to risk the void because more is at stake and probably fewr people are affected.

I don't think it's either - I think they have simply been more often affected by controlling/planning problems.

[Snail]

I have some sympathy with freaky_phil and SBOC here - at least on the evidence publicly available.

The SBOC runner went from 16 seconds ahead at control 3 to 28 second behinds at control 5, and was apparently confirmed as being ahead of the field on arrival at the non-existent 4 (and the first 5 controls were all common). That's a significant difference when the total time is around 16 minutes per runner, and when the eventually time behind the winning team was 15 seconds.

As phil said earlier

If you were running in the British Champs and someone came up to you and said "oh don't worry the controls not there, carry on" would you potentially abandon your run on the say so of some bloke ?.

Children in particular might at least be confused by this, so I don't think the SBOC runner can necessarily be blamed for spending more time looking for 4.

But I think that a child is much more likely to abandon 4 and continue to 5 if one of the two people saying to carry on (see Planner's comments) is from their own club and possibly recognised as the planner. (As was the case with the eventual winning team)

There could of course been other information available to the jury in reaching their decision.

However as someone else said the 'best' SBOC could hope for would be for the course to be voided - they wouldn't get two wins, but could avoid a 'loss'.