Inadvertant cheating on ISSOM

[roadrunner]

I think a time penalty would be more appropriate penalty for a mistake than disqualification, but the rules do not currently permit this. So where the splits make it clear that people have taken an illegal short-cut, they should be disqualified by the organiser (or planner or controller).

I agree that a time penalty would be better, and we ought to consider changing the rules to allow that. Disqualification carries something of a stigma, in that people assume you deliberately cheated, whereas as has been said here, many cases of using forbidden routes are unintentional. Working out what time penalty would be appropriate is difficult, I suggest one second longer than the slowest split on that leg so that it's plain that no advantage can ever be gained.

[AndyO]

urban O has many detractors and it only strengthens their arguments when farcical situations such as this are allowed to persist.

I'm not a "detractor" of urban orienteering, but this kind of situation is one of the main reasons why I haven't tried it, and have no great wish to. Frankly my ability to take in map detail to that level has never been great, and won't get better now. I have looked at Routegadget routes for urban events and can see the point that Greywolf makes that it is a greater technical challenge than a lot of forests, but really, being caught by something like that would do my head in

[Jethro]

Eddie said-
I do not agree that "it is difficult to see the lines"

If you are red/green colour blind purple overprint is often very difficult to see!
This thread has just re-confirmed one of the main reasons why I avoid urban events.

In a previous life organising stage rallies the practise with results was that they were declared provisional by the organisers at a noted time and then competitors had a limited time to put in a protest (usually 30 mins)if they thought something was wrong. If none were received then results were declared final and that was the end of it. Perhaps it is time to adopt a similar system for street events and stop all this petty sniping.

[andy]

In a previous life organising stage rallies the practise with results was that they were declared provisional by the organisers at a noted time and then competitors had a limited time to put in a protest (usually 30 mins)if they thought something was wrong. If none were received then results were declared final and that was the end of it. Perhaps it is time to adopt a similar system for street events and stop all this petty sniping.

Results are still provisional for all races at the weekend as I have not been told otherwise, and am still receiving self dsqs. Anyone else?

[spur]

At the urban on Sunday there was a square of out of bounds surrounded on 3 sides by green, 150m north of control 207 (#4 on course 1). Is the south east corner of that square crossable? I could interpret either way, and erred on the side of caution.

Thought the courses were excellent. Seen some smoother routes I could have taken after studying for a while.

[andy]

At the urban on Sunday there was a square of out of bounds surrounded on 3 sides by green, 150m north of control 207 (#4 on course 1). Is the south east corner of that square crossable? I could interpret either way, and erred on the side of caution.

Looking at a zoomed in condes file, yes. but very ambiguous. don't think you could have been dsq'd for that

[andypat]

urban O has many detractors and it only strengthens their arguments when farcical situations such as this are allowed to persist.

I'm not a "detractor" of urban orienteering, but this kind of situation is one of the main reasons why I haven't tried it, and have no great wish to. Frankly my ability to take in map detail to that level has never been great, and won't get better now. I have looked at Routegadget routes for urban events and can see the point that Greywolf makes that it is a greater technical challenge than a lot of forests, but really, being caught by something like that would do my head in

I've never tried sex - I mean I've heard so many people compaining about it it must be rubbish...

[Another180]

Compulsory headcams for all participants at WOC 2015 sprint???

This is not an elite problem. It is a problem of old people not taking enough time to pick up sufficient detail to complete the course.

[graeme]

Indeed, you wouldn't catch a swathe of WOC competitors getting DQed for inadvertantly crossing OOB grass or walls

Oh, hang on...

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12461&p=133749&hilit=WOC+sprint+wall#p133749

[andy]

This is not an elite problem. It is a problem of old people not taking enough time to pick up sufficient detail to complete the course.

Uh oh. Dangerous thing to say, housewife??

[AAH]

This is not an elite problem. It is a problem of old people not taking enough time to pick up sufficient detail to complete the course.

No slur of the elite was intended! I had written a long waffly post and decided that sentence was the only bit that might be interesting. The logic was:

Having seen a couple of Andy's recent headcam experiments (see St Andrews nopesport thread for his latest), it looks like headcams are the future.

If someone wears a headcam, you can tell where they have been very accurately.

So the only practical way anyone is going to find to police sprint any time soon is going to be either to get the runners to wear headcams or to video the proceedings.

But even though the price will come down, this won't be practical terribly soon.

But it would probably be cost effective by WOC 2015 and athletes have to carry GPS trackers at some big races these days so no big deal.

So it might be something interesting to do at WOC 2015. The footage is reviewed after the event partly to check noone has crossed an uncrossable boundary and partially to put together some cool after-the-event video footage.

Or not.

But no slur of the elite intended. The only out of bounds crossing I've seen that looked deliberate has been upcoming but not top runners...

[andy]

Having seen a couple of Andy's recent headcam experiments (see St Andrews nopesport thread for his latest), it looks like headcams are the future.

If someone wears a headcam, you can tell where they have been very accurately.

So the only practical way anyone is going to find to police sprint any time soon is going to be either to get the runners to wear headcams or to video the proceedings.

But it would probably be cost effective by WOC 2015 and athletes have to carry GPS trackers at some big races these days so no big deal.

So it might be something interesting to do at WOC 2015. The footage is reviewed after the event partly to check noone has crossed an uncrossable boundary and partially to put together some cool after-the-event video footage.

Or not.

It's not, they aren't.

You can get cameras that would have enough detail to provide the relevant information (£30? or so)

but..

You bash your camera off a tree/building and it stops working, then there's that evidence gone and it's unfair for everyone. Not going to happen. You can't place the responsibility of camera's safety in the competitor's hands. I don't know about GPS but I don't see anyone being dsq'd based on a GPS track, it's too imprecise and only used for media purposes. (although knowing my luck it's happened before, I do remember mamleev getting done for following a few years ago, did they use gps for that?)
Also, after a 15min race with 30 people in it, that's 7 and a half hours of footage to watch. Again, not going to happen.

But no slur of the elite intended. The only out of bounds crossing I've seen that looked deliberate has been upcoming but not top runners...

I don't think (m)any orienteers would cross an oob deliberately, far less just the elites. Some people just don't know or don't think.

big races need this kind of thing mapped/executed sensibly and marshaled where relevant.

[andypat]

And of course race numbers so they can be ID'd.

[EddieH]

As I see it the Elite are no real problem here as they do disqualify themselves when tey realise after an event that they made an error and hadn't looked carefully enough.

Sadly the culture amongst many others seems to be "oh well what the heck?" just as people used to take controls out of order and be happy to take a resut when they had not completed the course (e-punching killed that one but it was rife).

The attitude is often "I don't care I want a result regardless." The failure to disqualify 100% definite culprits here simply compounds that attitude thus building a dishonest culture.

For whatever reason the elite do not subscribe to that culture regarding uncrossable boundaries, yet they'll happily discuss what they are doing out on a course when that is also against the rules - so the culture doesn't work there.

Maybe golf is the only game/sport where honesty seems to be the absolute culture amongst the top guys

[70plus]

I am not an urban orienteer, but this topic seems to occur pretty often in that discipline (if that is the right word). After almost 40 years of planning and controlling 'classic' O courses, one of my priorities has always been trying to eliminate opportunities for short-cutting - intentional or not - at the planning stage. Where competitors feel there is enough at stake, there may always be a temptation to cheat. In most sports that can be curbed by an alert referee - not much chance of that in O, where people are out there unsupervised.

The problem is clearly much worse in urban O than in trad cross-country, but planners and controllers should try to anticipate all possible short-cuts. In the (distant) past we have had manned controls to prevent cheating; electronic punching has removed that need. But crossing out-of-bounds may still be a good short-cut which planners should forestall.

Maybe we are all such nice chaps and chapesses that none of us likes to make nasty accusations. But we wouldn't need to if the planner has done the job thoroughly.