Ripon

[madmike]

I think you should disqualify him.

so do I

[RJ]

We must be careful not to create a lynch mob following each urban race, where we troll the results looking for offenders!! Yes, we need to get rid of the 'blatant' cheats and those who cheat knowing better, and won't own up and admit the mistake.

I'm not specifically using this event example..... But where some ambiguity arises between the mapped feature and the 'on the ground' feature we must be careful in how we treat the competitors. There is a learning process going on. Lets be careful how we enlighten people..... not by holding up an offender and 'stoning' them in public.

Urban racing needs more explanation. How to approach that? Should we have a handout for any new runners? If lines are bent on the map we should encourage competitors to take heed. Planners might indeed make better use of that technique. Perhaps NOT show the connecting line going through an OOB.

Education for all!!

[Homer]

Should we have a handout for any new runners?

I agree we need to tread carefully. However, in this case, we are not talking about a newcomer, but someone who has already done 5 Nopesport League races this year.

I think an approach from the organiser asking whether he would like to voluntarily declare himself non-comp is the way forward.

[Spookster]

We must be careful not to create a lynch mob following each urban race, where we troll the results looking for offenders!! Yes, we need to get rid of the 'blatant' cheats and those who cheat knowing better, and won't own up and admit the mistake.

I agree, but there has to be some balance. At the moment we seem to allow people to mostly get away with accidental (or perhaps intentional) serious rule infringements. We should do what we can to increase awareness of the ISSOM rules about crossability, but that must be backed up by more disqualifications where the case is clear.

[RJ]

I suppose it is very easy for rule infringement at a normal event to go unnoticed and for the culprit to gain an advantage. Urban racing seems to have some inherent 'catching' mechanisms. All for it. Perhaps it will lead to better behaviour at 'forest/fell' events where crossing walls has been declared a 'no-no'!

[IanD]

Steady on... I don't of think the people we axed as "cheats": in general they probably inadvertently gained an advantage. But I have no more hesitation in DQ'ing than, e.g., a long jumper who overstepped the mark.

I think this is the key point.

To leave a time recorded in the results for someone who is known to have used an illegal route is equivalent to counting a long jump where someone has taken off too late.

Such a disqualification does not of itself imply intentional cheating, any more than a disqualification for missing a control.

[skybluepete]

I competed at an Urban Event - earlier in the year , when I inadvertently crossed a similar 'uncrossable' wall (due to naivety and not knowing the Rules).Having drawn my course on Route Gadget and then submitting it with the 2 legs clearly showing that I had broken the Rules, the Controller contacted me. I subsequently disqualified myself. Other(s) similarly did so. However a number of other competitors had also jumped over this wall - the 3 to 4 inches of snow cleared from the top of the wall was a give away as were the amount of footprints. Not every competitor owned up and disqualified themselves.
I then examined split times etc. to identify other offenders, these were relatively inconclusive. I then examined other courses on Route Gadget and found that one competitor had drawn their route as if they had not crossed this wall and had taken a legitimate route - however for the legs in question their times per pixcel drawn were far quicker for these legs than for all the others (except the first - when they would have been fresher.
Therefore the Laws of Probability point to the fact that foul play was a distinct possibility ( these 2 fastest legs (out of 24) were 100 pixcels per minute faster than the others).
So there are two types of offender - the naive (who can be eliminated through education by way of more information etc.) and the not so naive (who can only be unfortunately be eliminated by way of the planning process).

[graeme]

About the worst thing we can do is to start using inconsistent, local rules and then blaming competitors for being confused. ISSOM has straight lines between controls. If the planner bends the line, that's just wrong. Maybe you think its clearer? What happens when at their next event competitors go straight "because the line wasn't bent"? BOF have already pushed the envelope in their Sprint guideline here saying the line must be broken or bent for "mandatory crossing points" (without defining what a "mandatory crossing point" is, or how to show one on a map). Remember that stile at the JK?

[IanD]

Back in the old days, before electronic punching, there was sometimes a problem with people deliberately cheating by taking controls out of order.

Sometimes to counter this, a 'manned control' was used. An official would sit at a control and physically check the control cards of people arriving there, to ensure that they had punched all the previous controls and none of the future ones.

Competitors would normally have been told that there was a manned control, but would not necessarily have been told which one it was, thus forcing them to take the controls in the right sequence or risk being disqualified.

Something similar could be done to deter deliberate crossing of not-to-be-crossed features. Simply announce that one such feature on the course will be watched by a marshal with a camera or some other means of identifying people. (It would help if wearing numbered bibs were compulsory but this would not be essential, most people will be recognised fairly quickly if photos are posted with the provisional results.)

[madmike]

IanD,
absolutely right - completely agree (Edit: with your previous post not the one above here, which was posted whilst i was typing)..

I have only once seen something that I would characterise as a deliberate, unmitigated attempt to cheat and that was the ESOC runner at Edinburgh this year who tried 2 locked doors to cut through a building rather than run up to the top of the alleyway and back down the next one. Unfortunately he was far too fast and, therefore, not near the finish when I got there else I would have reported him.

We all mess up and I have been out of bounds, accidently, myself this year.

If somone has done 5 NULs this year he will be near the top of the standings and his points should be removed, regardless of whether he gained an advantage intentionally (cheating) or not. It's like double hitting your golf ball during a bunker shot - you don't do it deliberately but you take the penalty and often you are the only one who knows you have hit it twice.

I seem to recall someone jumping down a very high wall at the Bishops Palace in Lincoln a few years ago and therefore setting a leg time 2 mins quicker than anyone else - he was either dq or dq'd himself, admitting adrenalin got the better of him - Strider may recall the details? But as I remember, he was sanguine about it as most of us would be if we mucked up and gained an unfair advantage.

[Scott]

ISSOM has straight lines between controls. If the planner bends the line, that's just wrong.

On that basis, isn't it also wrong to bend the lines between controls on ISOM maps?

[RS]

This seems to be turning into a witch hunt against 1 man. Looking at the splits, there seems to be more than 1 man and definitely some women on B course who have unusually fast splits compared to others. Give him a chance- he may not read Nopesport and someone may rib him about it at York.
Do agree that crossing the wall is cheating though and I would be inclined to put a control at the gate as I gather from the posts it was straight on to a busy road after the gate.

[greywolf]

graeme wrote:ISSOM has straight lines between controls. If the planner bends the line, that's just wrong.
On that basis, isn't it also wrong to bend the lines between controls on ISOM maps?

ISOM & ISSOM say exactly the same: "Where controls are to be visited in order, the start, control points and finish are joined together by straight lines."
Whether or not that means that the course marking must go direct in a single straight line from 1 control to the next, or may use a number of straight lines to e.g. link with manadatory crossing points or avoid OOB I shall leave to the semanticians...

ISSOM also says...
"The course planner should not encourage unfair actions from the competitors, such as crossing barriers or areas with forbidden access. If it is unavoidable to set legs that cross or skirt areas with forbidden access or impassable walls and fences, then they have to be marked in the terrain, and observers should be present at the critical points."
and also
"features that are represented on the map as impassable, independently of their effective passability, shall not be crossed..... competitors who do not obey this rule, which is part of the IOF competition rules, must be disqualified."

[graeme]

On that basis, isn't it also wrong to bend the lines between controls on ISOM maps?

For an elite IOF race I'd say that yes, technically, it is. What it really means is you should either have a control at the point which has to be visited (see e.g. WRE at Dalrulzion) or a means of DQ'ing anyone who doesn't go there (e.g. spectators/officials at the gate into the finish field).

For lower key events (e.g. those under BOF rules) bending the line is a reasonable compromise to emphasize that there is a point which has to be visited, but it was too much hassle to put extra controls out. I think this local rule works OK in ISOM-areas, where there are very few "forbidden-to-cross" features but wouldn't be helpful in typical ISSOM where most straight routes cross a forbidden feature.

semanticians..

Here, you can rely on BOF and their shall-I should-I?
If the controls are to be visited in a prescribed order they shall be joined by straight
lines. These lines should be broken to avoid obscuring important detail, diverted to
meet up with compulsory routes, broken or diverted to indicate compulsory crossing
points, and broken or diverted to avoid lakes, ‘out of bounds’, or other areas that
cannot be crossed by competitors.

[Scott]

straight lines ... semanticians...

I believe Euclid defined a straight line as a breadthless length which lies evenly with the points on itself, if that helps.