WOC Classic Q

[krocks]

For me there's an obvious catch 22 situation here - the rule states there has to be certainty that the unidentifiable punch missing is not the competitor’s fault.
Well, it appears the only way to be certain about this is to check the control unit! Or can you be certain, even from that?

And what powers (if any) are there for the IOF jury to interpret unprecendented or unanticipated problems? Common sense of course says check the SI unit, but maybe its not in their power to adjudicate what the rules say.

[johnloguk]

I think what Oli needed was a witness (other competitor, official, etc?) who could say that they were at the offending control and heard it bleep when Oli punched. This is highly unlikely so yes it is a bit of a Catch 22. I also think with the new generation of SI card the rules should be looked at again. No one wants to interogate boxes hundreds of times at a big multi-day festival, but at a WOC surely it isn't too much trouble?

I was DQed once when I was certain I had heard the bleep, I still got DQed and all I do now is take more time and get at least 2 bleeps before moving on, but then I'm never going to win anything dawdling along like that. It isn't so bad at C4 (although I accept it should never happen), but poor old Oli after all that work and effort must be more than p****d off!

[graeme]

Its a lovely catch 22. Unless you are certain of the outcome, you can't check the box (but if you are certain, you dont need to).

If you check the box, you're breaking the rules, but having done so you would be certain and become obliged to check it.

The fault is with the rules, not SI. It is fatuous to assume a system will be perfect, but with sane officialdom this can be resolved (e.g. Bruce's complaint - the system failed, and he ultimately got reinstated).

Graeme

PS These faults always seem to be associated with heavy battery use. Electronics behaves strangely at low voltage.

PPS "time but no code" is a possible signature of punching too fast. I'd guess if they interrogated the unit, Oli would have to be DQed. Not interrogating the unit simply leads to bad feeling all round - another signature of a bad rule.

[Roger]

Does anyone know whether IAAF / IOC rules contain a 'common sense' clause that explicitly allows e.g. a hurdler who's taken down in a semi-final by a falling rival to start as a ninth runner in a final?

If not -- i.e. if allowing such natural justice in the face of the rules has been done solely on the gumption of a jury -- then the normally stuffy and rule-bound petit bourgeois world of athletics is ahead of sensible pragmatic orienteering. Woe is us.

And if there is such a sensible provision, then athletics is again ahead of orienteering. Woe is us -- still.

There's clear evidence here that something may (may) be wrong with the equipment. It would be perverse to fail to investigate, and this probably involves interrogating the box and testing Oli's card. (Did he try re-downloading BTW?) If this can't be concluded before Tuesday evening, Oli should be allowed to start 'under protest' in the final.

[SYO Member]

Scanners are not infallible. I work for an company in which literally millions of scans occur each week using proprietary software and while 99.9999% may be OK, there are occasional hiccups whereby scans are not correctly recorded and it is never possible to deliberately re-create the error.

In a similar vein, we've all been at supermarket checkouts where the operator is doing the same repetitive motion on similar items, having done it thousands of times before, and one of the items won't scan first time.

In Oli's case, look at the evidence objectively, some of which may not have been known at the time the IOF jury met.

* He did hear the beep at the control after punching (otherwise he would have manually punched) and had a time recorded on his card but with no associated control code.

* Confirmation of this could be made (even now?) by checking the unit but this was not done.

* The current IOF rules regarding possible mis-punching are ambiguous.

* There are other known examples of errors similar to Oli's (e.g. German forum, 'granny M' in this thread).

* There are precedents in International o-events for re-instatements to occur, e.g 'housewife' at the PWT race.

* We're told that all other teams/competitors would almost certainly support Oli's re-instatement.

* This could be done in addition to the 15 others in his heat still qualifying.

If there's any IOF council member reading this, or has it pointed out to them, could I ask that you cut through the red-tape and re-consider Oli's case this evening or first thing Tuesday morning. Due to the nature of orienteering, there will probably always be issues which need a top level decision to be made from time to time, and what a magnanimous gesture a re-instatement would be which would show fairness and common sense in our drug-free sport (which is becoming a rarity after the events of the last few days).

Ray Waight

[Gross]

Ray's request is a load of bolloks.... the rules are the rules & they have been since introduced in 2004. If they needed to be changed then that's down to our GBR officials & BOF representatives... if as Hev said she was screwed by the same thing in 2005 then why not the outcry then?? And why not numerous request for the rules to be changed???

Sorry but I figure Oli was stuffed by the establishment who can't see further than the end of thier noses.... particulary because the majority of them don't even orienteer....... I mean here in GB we have a CEO who wouldn't know a fast or a slow punch if it hit him in the face (no disrespect to his abilities but he doesn't know orienteering).

[bendover]

gross, sorry to be a pedant but you left the 'c' out of 'bollocks', hence leaving your previous post redundant in it's vital 'rude, yet serious, that's me, gross' element.

[Jon X]

Gutted for Oli, he was looking in great shape for a top result and deserves better from the software and perhaps also from the jury. I say 'perhaps' because it is the jury's job to implement the rules rather than to decide they are wrong - a recipe for chaos and inconsistency otherwise.

However in this case I am not at all convinced that the rules actually say the box cannot be read in this circumstance. (Based on this thread I am assuming that this was definitely not the case.....)

20.7 A competitor with a control punch missing or unidentifiable shall not be placed unless it can be established with certainty that the punch missing or unidentifiable is not the competitor’s fault. In this exceptional circumstance, other evidence may be used to prove that the competitor visited the control, such as evidence from control officials or cameras or read-out from the control unit. In all other circumstances, such evidence is not acceptable and the competitor must be disqualified. In the case of
SportIdent, this rule means that:
• If one unit is not working, a competitor must use the backup provided and will be disqualified if no punch is recorded
• If a competitor punches too fast and fails to receive the feedback signals, the card will not contain the punch and the competitor must be disqualified (even though the control unit may have recorded the competitor’s card number)

My reading of this is:
The first thing to do is establish with certainty whether or not it is the competitor's fault. I can't see anything in 20.7 to say it is outside the rules to read the box for that reason - the certainty thing is about whether or not they can be placed, not whether or not the box can be read.
If that certainty has been established, the next step is to look for evidence that the competitor has visited the control - i.e the box can then be used to show that the competitor punched correctly.
But the additional wording about Sportident at the end is confusing - what happened to Oli could be interpreted as meaning that the card does not contain the punch (last bullet). (i.e. it could be argued that it only contains part of it).
However even in this circumstance I think it rests on whether the competitor 'received the feedback signals' - and this takes us back to the certainty point - for which the box could be used.

Obviously all this would be no good to Oli anyway if reading the box produced evidence to show he punched too quickly before the unit had finished writing to his card (i.e. that it was his fault after all).

However, it seems to me that the jury decision can only be based on how they believe the SI software to work - and that although interrogating the box would have allowed them to make the correct decision with certainty, and is allowed within the rules, they have instead chosen to base their decision on what they believe to be the most probable circumstances.

But it is also true that the IOF rules state that the decision of the jury is final - this is after all the outcome of an appeal against an organiser's decision. Although I may not agree with the decision I do agree that competitors and teams need to abide by the rules of the competition (imagine the chaos if jury decisions could all be appealed).

I would of course be delighted if the jury and/or IOF adviser read this post (or any other in this thread) and decided they needed to reconvene and reconsider!

[SYO Member]

Gordon's entitled to his own opinion, but there has been an incident in a sport with a higher profile than orienteering where a decision was made 'in the spirit of the game'.

1999 FA Cup 5th Round, Arsenal v Sheffield United, 1-1 with 15 minutes to go. An Arsenal player was injured and a Sheffield United player deliberately kicked the ball out play. When play resumed, an Arsenal throw-in sent the ball back to United's half for one of their players to pick up. However Arsenal new boy Kanu, who didn't know this unwritten rule, intervened, and Arsenal went on to score, and it remained 2-1 to Arsenal at the end.

With the agreement of both sides and against the existing rules, FIFA made the unprecedented decision to allow the game to be replayed (Arsenal won 2-1 again) and this was fully endorsed by FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

Substituting Arsenal with the other o-teams/competitors, the referee with the o-jury and FIFA with the IOF, and bearing in mind the phrase 'in the spirit of the game', I would still ask that Oli's re-instatement is considered on Tuesday morning by the powers that be.

Ray Waight

[EriOL]

In which case what are the codes ErrA..ErrD being referred to

Good question - the documentation does mention the error code being passed (instead of the time), but no mention of what the error codes are (typical of the documentation actually). My assumption was (which may be incorrect) is that the byte where the high time value OR error code is written is primed to a value before the write (ErrD seems to be the one to me), but once the time is written over this there is no error. Of course the error code isn't passed as a nice friendly ErrD but actually 0xFD - which you can only tell is an error because it would result in a time > 12 hrs. No mention of how to tell this in the docs either.

I remember my testing as being able to write the station correctly but the card knowing nothing, but then again that wasn't what I was actually testing for so I may have misremembered. I've just tried doing some more testing but it's difficult with the kit I've got here at the moment. I couldn't get it to register a time on the station but not on the card, and I got at least one ErrC (all others were ErrD though as I remember). I'm prepared to be corrected on the station knowing if it thought the transaction was successful - this could be the key to this case although we're still a jury with no power. However I stand by saying I've never seen a half written card, nor do I think it should be possible, so this alone should be enough to use the backup data?

I've been in contact with the SI people at WOC. What they have to say is this:

1. The control Oli mispunched at was not a radiocontrol.
2. FF was written to Oli's SI-card, meaning that space for the punch was reserved on the card but no actual time and controlcode was written. This is perfectly normal if you punch too fast on a control and don't wait for the signal.
3. The punching unit was interogated and contained Oli's SI-number with the errorcode ErrC. This is also perfectly normal if you punch too fast.

Case closed?

[Ed]

I've been in contact with the SI people at WOC. What they have to say is this:

1. The control Oli mispunched at was not a radiocontrol.
2. FF was written to Oli's SI-card, meaning that space for the punch was reserved on the card but no actual time and controlcode was written. This is perfectly normal if you punch too fast on a control and don't wait for the signal.
3. The punching unit was interogated and contained Oli's SI-number with the errorcode ErrC. This is also perfectly normal if you punch too fast.

Case closed?

sounds pretty damning. Oli's punching technique must be *that quick* - he obviously needs to slow down!

[FatBoy]

Sounds like the card is written in 2 stages after all. Although FF is control code 255 which is a valid code so I'm slightly confused. I was wondering last night (in the pub...) how a "blank" control code would be stored when the only values allowed are 0-255 - I assumed it would be zero.

For my own knowledge I'm going to get on the case with SI about the error codes and when they are and aren't written - should be in the documentation after all. It would be useful for all of us who are involved in download for an event of any importance to know this stuff!

It does seem pretty clear cut for Oli though - sounds like he did imagine a beep. Hard luck though.

[Neil M35]

Perhaps not surprisingly, proving that Oli heard a beep turns out to be not very straightforward. We were working on the assumption that the SI-card processing had broken down but the control unit had finished it's processing and beeped anyway. Now it turns out the control unit had not finished processing, but Oli still heard a beep, so either Oli is mistaken or there is a problem with the processing in the control unit. This seems less likely then the previous scenario but is still not impossible. I've worked in IT for 16 years and I know that just because you can't identify or reproduce the problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Telling the users they are imagining it doesn't go down well.

Sorry EriOL but I don't think anything is proved either way - and your "Case Closed" post struck me as being a little bit smug. Everyone accepts that Oli went to the right control and stuck his SI card in the hole. If you do that with Emit you know you have registered a punch one way or another, with SI you don't. He doesn't deserve to be disqualified.

[Gross]

jobbie... I've just seen the sprint race results while sitting at Palanga Airport & now am very pissed off with mis punching

[Toni]

Case closed? (with a ? Neil rather than smugness perhaps??)

Maybe for Oli but hopefully not in the broader sense - still an issue that needs to be resolved if so many athletes are unhappy with SI being used at WOC. If athletes lack confidence in the system then something should be done by IOF to resolve this.

I also find the discussions about other nations supporting reinstatement interesting - I've sat in quite a few team meetings and think that team managers are there to do the best by their athletes and will usually not support the addition of others for whatever reason - and I guess that is what their job is? Probably not surprising that for example the swedes might not support it after a complaint by another TM last year that the entire swedish team should be dsq'ed at WC GBR becuase the TM walked through the competition area at the sprint.