Mike's E-news

[Mrs H]

I can think of two separate occasions when I have gone to the horses mouth to question BOF requirements only to find that the stipulations were a lot less onerous than BOF were suggesting.

The first was when BOF said that I could not identify by name the juniors in photos in the club magazine I was editing when the Protection of Children in sport body said I could, and the second was over the blanket ban on under 16s crossing roads in urban races when the insurers themselves said this was permissible under certain circumstances.

If I was feeling generous I would say this makes me think BOF are inclined to over simplify things. You can imagine what I might think if I wasn't feeling generous.

[roadrunner]

UKA's insurance (which also covers Fell Running Association and Trail Running Association events), LDWA's insurance and ARC's insurance all cover organisers and members but not non-members - just like BOF's. None of those seem (from their web sites) to consider that there's a problem with this.

[DJM]

blanket ban on under 16s crossing roads in urban races

It's not as prescriptive as this. For example, the JK Sprint Competition Rule says:

M/W16 and below will not be able to cross roads with significant traffic. Roads with traffic management that induce low speeds are acceptable but busy public roads are not

[Mrs H]

Did you mean proscriptive not prescriptive.

Yes but i wanted to get the under 16s across a normal road (no traffic management) with a marshalled and timed out crossing arguing that I was effectively installing my own traffic management scheme. The insurance man said "risk assess and act accordingly" so I did. Now it might be that was what BOF had in mind with their wording but somehow I doubt it - and if they did why didn't they just say so?

[graeme]

What MrsH proposes sounds sane and sensible, just like the BOF rule is...

Courses for those aged under 16 on the day of the event must not have any
routes that require the competitors to cross roads with significant traffic unless
appropriate traffic management arrangements have been put in place.
Such arrangements may include: mandatory safe routes, crossings controlled by lights/marshals, the use of underpasses/bridges, timed out legs etc.

Did someone tell you otherwise? Unfortunately this canard about a "ban on under 16s crossing roads in urban races" gets tossed around so much some people even believe it.

[Mrs H]

No what I got was what DJM put up. Perhaps they brought your version in after my enquiry - I did copy MH in on the exchange . I certainly could not find anything so accommodating when I was looking and I did ask BOF at the time for clarification but got no reply

Hello BOF
Please could I have some clarification on the Urban Race Guidelines pertaining to Under 16s. Is it permissible for them to cross roads with standard amounts of traffic if the road crossing is marshalled and timed out?
Looking forward to your earliest possible reply
Many thanks
Lynden Hartmann

My extremely experienced and clued up controller said he was happy with the arrangement as it was done in ordinary cross country O events.

[King Penguin]

And an excellent event it was too.
Plenty of others since had adopted the same approach to road crossings.

[roadrunner]

It looks as if the BOF Rules have been updated to reflect "common sense" (as Mrs. H suggests) but the JK Sprint rules have not: BOF Rule 14.21 reads essentially the same as what graeme quotes as rule 2.10.4, whereas JK Sprint rule 3.1.2(c) only allows under-16s crossing "roads with traffic management that induce low speeds" - which certainly doesn't cover a timed-out crossing. Of course, this could be deliberate - a timed-out crossing does change the nature of the event in that it allows the competitor to plan ahead without it impacting their race time - but if that had been the intention then I'd have expected the rules to say so explicitly.

Surely there should not be duplication like this between the overall rules and those for a specific event, since it inevitably gives a risk of confusion. Wouldn't it be better if event-specific rules only covered those things that are additional, or different, from the overall rules (which is actually what the JK rules say right at the beginning) - so, for example, the statement about parents signing disclaimers should not be in the JK rules because it is already in the overall rules. Incidentally, the rules for the British Sprint Championships do seem to follow this policy.

[mykind]

This all seems a bit odd to me. The FRA manages to insure all races run under its rules without any huge difficulty. it also seems strange to me that an insurer (rather that a national governing body) would happily insure a complete novice rather than someone with three events experience - who is more likely to have an accident? maybe what we are seeing is the outcome BO specifying that only three "free" runs are allowed when they negotiated for insurance rather than the insurers specifying this number which, oddly, corresponds exactly with the number which has traditionally been "allowed" for beginners. Can anyone out there enlighten me.

[RJ]

All the NON members contribute the £1 levy from their entry fee which is collected by BOF. The levy return form states how many NON members there were. Why can't this £1 levy fee go direct to the insurers to cover their liability? Or even change the levy amount to £3 for NON members and then the club adds £2 to the entry fee. There is surely a way round it.

I really do feel we should treat this 'in house' and not have to explain to NON members who are our likely NEW members. And we should all have membership cards! We can present these as a matter of course at all events regardless of level. We should not be telling these potential NEW members that they are really creating a problem for us!

If new participants enjoy the sport and they get to six or so events then they will want to join. Personally I would have no problem selling membership to someone who had done that many events. Juniors are a little more difficult but even so it should be possible to sell the idea of membership to them as well.

[lindseyk]

Mike’s latest e-news spells out the insurance situation and I don’t have a problem in telling non-members that they’re not covered by BOF’s Public Liability insurance after 3 events except most, like me, probably don’t fully understand what that means. For example, if they damage a wall while competing is that covered or do we tell the landowner to pursue the non-member for money. The club is covered but clubs don’t damage things, people do. Anyone with an insurance background able to give us some ideas on how to respond to questions from non-members / sell them the idea of joining ?

[andypat]

Lindsey - I'm obviously reading the situation differently to you in MIke's somewhat ambiguous e-news letter.

I dont see any scope in there for the uninsured non-member to continue competing. There does seem to be at least one potential solution, but I'm a bit disappointed it hasn't been spelled out a bit more clearly. For example

Of course if the club or association fee is £0
then they automatically become members of the club and association at the same time.

is clearly wrong, the club and association fee would both have to be zero. I'm fairly sure at present its not possible for someone to be a member of BOF and solely a Scottish club without being also a member of the SOA costing £7. I do think clubs need much clearer guidance from the top on this one!

[Gross]

Throw this in with WOC & the 6 Days coming up.....

What about all the non GBR runners who cover more than 3 events... are they covered by insurance?

Are they treated as BOF members if they are members of another IOF Federation??

[Scott]

The FRA manages to insure all races run under its rules without any huge difficulty.

The FRA doesn't insure anything. (Edit: I guess they may insure themselves as an organisation, and perhaps their committee members against negligence, but they don't provide liability insurance for races, clubs, members, competitors etc.) Fell races are insured by UK Athletics, and I'm pretty sure UK Athletics insurance only covers third-party liability for competitors if the competitors are members of an affiliated athletics club.

If you run at a fell race and you aren't a member of a UK Athletics-affiliated club (or a club affiliated to one of the home nation athletics governing bodies), I don't believe you are covered by third-party liability insurance, unless you have arranged your own cover elsewhere. I am, however, happy to be corrected on this if anybody knows differently.

[lindseyk]

Lindsey - I'm obviously reading the situation differently to you in MIke's somewhat ambiguous e-news letter.

I dont see any scope in there for the uninsured non-member to continue competing.

My reading of it, and taking into consideration the wording about disclaimer on the entry form and making non-members aware that they may not be insured, suggests that we CAN take entries from non-members. So two of us have read the email and come to two different conclusions !