IMPORTANT VENICE 2012

[Gross]

Lots of orienteers to be seen on the BBC World Coverage of wet Venice.....

[madmike]

(I believe the 4 favourites for the mens elite never started)

Carri and Potrin started (Carri only did 1 direct to 14 (no 2-13) and then all controls to finish as he is coming back from an overtraining injury). Osterbo, Hubmann, Simkovitz and Tennani all missed the cutoff.

Similar in Ladies where only Sarka ran of the favourites, the rest of the elite were looking for best conditions i.e low tide

(note favourites in this context is those who were identified by Goggi and I over a beer).

To add to the story - when the message came back that the police and a council official had closed the start, and then 60 mins went by, I went to talk to the "management" so that we could communicate a message to the people as to what was happening.

The planner did not want to enter any kind of discussion on the topic. I, therefore, went to the Competition Director (Italian) and asked him to take a decision, he stated that 75% of people had started and therefore prizes would be awarded - his call. This was not a unanimous decision amongst the management, which led to a distateful scene at the end of the prize giving - I think it safe to say the technical team leader who puts a lot of work in to make the event happen from an orienteering perspective was in total disagreement with the decision.

The winning Czech Team declined to accept the team trophy as they believed the competition was fundamentally unjust. I understand that view.

Personally, if I had been controller or direttore di gara, I would have cancelled the event on grounds of fairness and safety - I was, as I was wading towards the event centre, amazed to see people heading to the start (i.e. this is not a view I came to with 20/20 hind sight).

2 last points:

1. Well done those of you who ran and smiled - the spirit amongst the competitors was tremendous.
2. Can someone please ping me Tim Tett's email address or nope pseudonym so I can arrange to get his prize to him. Edit: No longer needed - thanks Spookster

[Big Jon]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/11/venice-floods-high-water-italy

'Secchi complained that a running event around the city had not been cancelled on Sunday. "As Venetians were trying to fix their homes and shops, people were running down the flooded streets splashing everyone with water," he said.'

Got there before me!

[awk]

Whatever the rights and wrongs of cancelling the event or otherwise, I am extremely grateful to all those involved in the Venice organising team, who went to such huge efforts to put the event on: watching some of the team working on the finish, last controls etc, they were working in horrible conditions.

I was one of those who was fortunate enough to get a run, and it was obvious fairly early on that conditions were such that a 'fair' competition wasn't going to be viable, whilst my course still just about 'went'. I suspect that the decision should have been for the competition to be cancelled, but to perhaps allow people to take a map for an untimed run round - or even timing available but no results. However, it's easy in hindsight, and certainly, whilst the conditions were grim down near the finish/sports centre, where we were staying, we were out of the worst and unaware quite how exceptional things were elsewhere in the city. I can appreciate why, with so many visitors, the organisers felt that they really wanted the event to happen. I just hope that in the desire to keep things rolling and their entrants happy, the longer term future of the race hasn't been jeopardised.

[madmike]

..... I suspect that the decision should have been for the competition to be cancelled, but to perhaps allow people to take a map for an untimed run round - or even timing available but no results. ....... I can appreciate why, with so many visitors, the organisers felt that they really wanted the event to happen. I just hope that in the desire to keep things rolling and their entrants happy, the longer term future of the race hasn't been jeopardised.

Awk - spot on imho

[Scott]

Imperterriti invece molti partecipanti a un gara podistica di orientamento che non si sono fatti scoraggiare dall'acqua e hanno proseguito la loro corsa in maglietta, calzoncini corti e scarpette, incuranti delle onde sollevate tra gli improperi di chi cercava di non bagnarsi.

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[Arnold]

With hindsight I also agree with awk's suggestion that handing out maps but not publishing official results (or maybe publish but only in alphabetical order) would have been best.

I don't think there was any safety risk - yes you could easily slip but it was a predictable risk. So to quote graeme, people always need to use common sense and take as much risk as they are comfortable with. But it just wasn't right to have a race when everyone's shovelling water out of their shop/home - it happens quite frequently and no-one was injured, so it's not quite the New York situation, but still it's just not nice. Plus it wasn't going to be a fair competition so why take the risk to jeopardise it long term.

To Mrs H's point of picking the best date, I don't think you can predict WHAT tide you will get any further than a few days out (like a weather forecast) but I had been wondering whether you could predict WHEN the tide will be in, a year in advance. The time of high tide seems to shift by about 35-40 minutes every day so can you try and pick a date when it peaks at 3am rather than 9am? That could be possible.

[Mrs H]

Well that's why I asked because in Britain you can buy your tide tables for various places for the year ahead in a little book so the information must be available for at least 18 months or more in advance and this has been the case since I was a child 50 years ago - it gives you a very accurate time and a fairly accurate height for low and high tide. Obviously you can't predict storm surges and stuff but you can predict the autumn and winter tides which will be the most extreme. I just felt in this day and age things are so much more sophisticated.

Obviously I appreciate the Med is different but I thought it might be possible to pick times when the Aqua Alta is less likely to be a problem. To pick the day of the sixth worse on record seems incredibly bad luck

[madmike]

from FISO Website (translation by madmike):

The race today was suspended for reasons of "public order", a term usually not well suited to the sport of orienteering. This was because of some complaints from inhabitants of Venice following the splashing caused by competitors.

"We apologize for the inconvenience caused to the city - said the organizer Giampiero Mazzeni - and to prevent any unfortunate incidents we preferred to stop the event.

[Mrs H]

This is what I'm trying to describe, particularly note the graph to the right which describes which days the highest tides are expected. They can do this years in advance.

[madmike]

Imperterriti invece molti partecipanti a un gara podistica di orientamento che non si sono fatti scoraggiare dall'acqua e hanno proseguito la loro corsa in maglietta, calzoncini corti e scarpette, incuranti delle onde sollevate tra gli improperi di chi cercava di non bagnarsi.

Google Translate

madmike Translate:

Undaunted, however, were many competitors in a foot orienteering race who were not discouraged by the water and continued their courses in t-shirts, shorts and running shoes, regardless of the complaints and insults of those who tried not to get wet.

[Arnold]

Bizarrely the first item you see on the Italian O-website is "Venice Meeting a great media success", with lots of TV coverage apparently and even the story about the race itself is entitled "Svobodna and Portin win in Venice" with the fact it was cancelled only mentioned halfway through.

So perhaps I'm wrong to worry about future editions. They seem too focused on WOC 2014 and the media interest to worry about that.

[madmike]

Bizarrely the first item you see on the Italian O-website is "Venice Meeting a great media success", with lots of TV coverage apparently and even the story about the race itself is entitled "Svobodna and Portin win in Venice" with the fact it was cancelled only mentioned halfway through.

True but there is, of course, no such thing as bad publicity.......

[madmike]

So perhaps I'm wrong to worry about future editions. They seem too focused on WOC 2014 and the media interest to worry about that.

No you are right to worry about future editions but let's keep our fingers crossed.

[Mrs H]

Admiralty Easytide says it can predict tides in Venice up to 50 years into the future (for a fee)
I looked at the free sample 7 day graph here
Looks like next Sunday would have been a much safer bet