Time penalties for Ultrasprint races

[SJC]

Adding a time penalty such as 30s will mean that the fastest guys can probably afford to skip 1 or 2 controls and still comfortably qualify.
Do you not think it defeats the point of sporting competition if you are able to finish (potentially with a good result) without having met the requirements of completing the sporting task?

This approach seems to be perfectly acceptable in biathlon - miss the target and effectively incur a time penalty by having to ski the additional loop.

[andypat]

I think perhaps a good coverall new rule(s) in this respect might be to make the proximity limit proportional to scale. Haven't examined the implications in detail though.

I think it would be hard to fit such a rule to the "two controls on either side of a tree" approach that seemd to work really well at Regents Park last year.

Ultrasprint courses break all normal O conventions about closeness of controls etc,

yes, they do but they also break normal convensions for map scale, which combined with the fact you still have descriptions should mean there is no excuse for mispunching.

Not sure you always have descriptions - some use the red dot symbol.

Adding a time penalty such as 30s will mean that the fastest guys can probably afford to skip 1 or 2 controls and still comfortably qualify.

...but probably not win.

Do you not think it defeats the point of sporting competition if you are able to finish (potentially with a good result) without having met the requirements of completing the sporting task?

I think ultrasprint is gradually being redefined so the "sporting task" you refer to isnt necessarily the same as for normal linear forest O. My experience of this type of O is that a moderate time penalty seems to work well and am happy to have been given the opporutnity by the organisert to put this across.

[JK]

I am thinking along similar lines for the next Sprint Jamboree I plan.

Latest thoughts are "several" qualifying races and then a chasing start final (rather A final, B final etc).

These races are *not* the same as "normal" Foot-O (BTW I have recently been reminded that the first O was actually on skis - so I feel justified on using Foot-O to refer to what many of you call O or normal O) and some times it can be easy to make a mistake. One of the favourites at our event last year messed up in his first event and then had 3 more qualifiers to do knowing that he was already DQd.

For my event I was thinking of 1 min penalty for each control missed in the Qualifiers, but DQ if you miss one in the Final.

JK

[awk]

All this talk of different rules for finals, completion of the task etc etc: all theoretical.

In practice, at Regent's Park, the 30 sec rule worked really well, not only in ensuring that everybody tried to find all the correct controls, but also in controlling how races were won. The races were tight enough that carrying a 30 second penalty during the qualifiers made it tought to qualify. In the Vets final that I ran in, both Gavin and I mispunched, and we both suffered appropriately, with Simon beating Gavin on the penalty, and Ian beating me for 3rd on the penalty (although he didn't know it on the sprint for the line, even if I had worked it out by then!). Having a limit on how many mps you can have makes sense, and some care with planning obviously needed.

FWIW, I felt that the 30 second rule enhanced the event considerably compared to DQing, and helped make this event (and weekend) one of the best I've been to. Certainly memorable!