buzz wrote:At the finish I asked if I could speak to the planner but was pointed in the direction of the organiser who told me to fill in a complaints form....
I don't know when you complained, but to be fair to Kristian the organiser he was in a difficult position.
Several years ago, the responsibility for technical complaints moved from controller to the organiser. At an event like the JK, there's no way the organiser can go off into the woods to check things. There was an early complaint about 87, the organiser sent the planner/controller out to take a look, they came back and said it was in the right place. So the organiser rejected the complaint based on the information he had - what else could he do? Then there was a protest, but by the time we reported back that the control was wrong (and others that were complained about were not), everyone had finished.
NeilC wrote:I don't believe that it "clearly" indicated the best middle distance orienteer. A look at the 2023 JK results...
2023 is irrelevant: your son was definitely the best M21E in 2024, under any analysis. A putative 2023 jury would likely have reached a different solution. Voiding W21E was not primarily about controls in the wrong place - it was about being unable to determine who was best out of Fiona and Megan given the information available. Not voiding other courses which had #87 was because we did think the final results gave a clear indication of who was best. Our course was very close to being voided, given Fiona's dad's time loss.
The key point is that a jury of Grade 1 controllers in possession of the full facts should be able to make a better decision than a committee of Grade 1 controllers discussing hypotheticals.
The USA has a rather splendid rule called "sporting withdrawal", where if a small number of competitors are seriously affected by a problem, they can opt to be removed from the result and this is properly acknowledged. This can cover anything from temporarily missing controls to stopping to help injured runners.
I believe Sweden has a rule that the course should be truncated if the problem occurs more than 75% into the race.
The IoF has moved away from complaints and protests to a "referee" system, where one person deals with problems and decides unilaterally what to do.