British

[housewife]

My brother was one of the earliest starts on M21l as he was doing the commentary later. He spotted the control in the wrong place, and one bumping into the controller in a carpark, pointed it out as misplaced. The control was subsequently moved. Speaking to James just after the race, he was more concerned that the wrong placing could end up vioding some courses than the 11 minutes the misplacing cost his personal run. He probably lost the most time of anyone on that control, but would much rather not have the courses voided, as it would have spoiled the day for many.

[housewife]

By the way, thought my course, W21S was well planned, but could have done with 1:10 - PLEEEEAASSSEEE! I have perfect eyesight, but couldn't read the map properly. We did not even go over the road, so half of the 1:15 was useless.

[jab]

Well the British was a boys' weekend for our family and they really enjoyed the courses, the weather, their campsite and Raglan castle and they had a great weekend (including Monday's event). Thanks to all who worked so hard to make the weekend possible.

[King Penguin]

I know the rules call for a course to be voided if a control is in the wrong place or missing, but I remain convinced this is the worst possible outcome. Mistakes can and do occur, especially on such complex terrain. If we were all perfect then we'd all always run straight to every control. Yes, the Planner & Controller have each other as a sanity check, but they're also dealing with far more controls than any one of us on our run.
I believe the fairest outcome is to void the legs before and after the affected control. If this was generally known, then people who had been affected would find it easier to "put it behind them" on the run and get on with the rest of the course. At present they simply do not know what the outcome will be, and may well be scared to protest because they don't want the course to be voided. Surely we should not have rules which encourage people to suppress problems because they fear the solution more than the problem ?
I accept there is a risk that the position of two runners who go out late after the correction has been made may be swapped, but I still think this is the lesser of the evils in these circumstances. For a course to be fair all must be presented with equal challenges and opportunity.
Above all, I believe we must have consistencey in the outcome. On Saturday the decision was taken to remove two legs (In my view, the best decision in the circumstances. Do we really want there to be no British champion in one or more classes for a year ?). On Day 2 of the JK last year, as an early runner I was affected by a control which was completely missing. The decision then was not to remove the legs (my requested solution) "because none of the first few runners in the class (M45) were affected". Why should one outcome be right if the top runners are affected and a different outcome if they are not, and why should one outcome be right then and a different one now ? I accept the jury must be allowed to decide on specific matters affecting their event but PLEASE let's define clear rules / guidelines to be followed where we can. I believe there should be a change from the current "rule" of "void the course" to one of "remove the legs".

I was glad I was running on 1:10,000. Even then I had one control (small depression) where I really struggled to see the "cup" shape even when I knew it was at the centre of the circle, as it was touched on 3 sides by a contour line. Standing by the same feature on Sunday, with a diffenet control close by, I could not find it on the map ! At the Swiss at Zermatt last year they had dispensation to run the whole of one day on a 1:7,500 map because the ground was too complex to map even at 1:10,000. At Whitbarrow this year my course went into one complex area which to the best of my knowledge none of the 1:15,000 courses entered - I suspect because the Planner / Controller accepted it was illegible at that scale. Let's accept that some areas are more complex than others and be prepared to accept that it may be appropriate to use 1:10,000 for all courses in these circumstances. Orienteering is supposed to be a navigation and running sport, not an eyesight test.

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed all three days and appreciate all the effort that the organising team put into making the events a success. It's always far easier to raise negative comments than positive, so let's remember to give credit where it's due. After all, without such volunteers putting in the many hours which they do none of us would have any events to run in anywhere.

[bendover]

come on...

a course with a control in the wrong place is never going to lead to a 'fair race' regardless of whether or not you take two legs out of the splits.

there's all manner of reasons why. i can't be bothered to go into them.

i'd rather see no british champion than a 'champion' from a race that wasn't kosher.

[seabird]

I came away from the British thoroughly happy and having enjoyed myself. Thank you to everyone involved in staging the event.

However there is no point if we just have a love-fest here. No-one wants to leave volunteers (or even professionals) who put in a lot of effort feeling dispirited, and I hope all the messages of thanks dispel that possibility. There is a very delicate line to be trod. But we all learn from critically reviewing what has occurred. I think posters here have correctly identified problems that occurred on these two days and that should be of benefit to all of us who may be involved in the future in staging major (or even lesser) events.

The biggest lesson for me personally is that although I am a great fan of the convenience of laser printing, on this detailed an area at 1:10000 it is just not clear enough, contours blurring imto each other etc. Does anyone else feel that waterproof paper also reduces the visual clarity, or is it purely the limitations of laser printing? I have not personally been able to do a direct comparison yet.

[redkite]

Had a great weekend and enjoyed the area, the organisation and the weather. Just about every orienteer in Wales put in a lot of hours helping on Saturday.

On the more general issue of map scales, if a person with average eyesight cannot read the detail required to navigate successfully to the controls then either an inappropriate map scale has been used, or the map detail is wrong. The 1:15,000 map last wekend probably failed on both counts.

On a relevant tangent, when the planner, the controller and organiser of this years JK sprint had the first site visit to look at the 1:4,000 map, we all looked at ourselves and thought, ' we cannot see the detail'. The result was a 1:3,000 map on all but the elite course that I think everyone could read.

[housewife]

It is so British to declare the courses void. In order to declare the courses void, someone has to make a protest. If someone is aggrevied enough to make a protest, then voiding becomes much more likely.

Reminds me of the european champs last year. The Estonians had put a butterly in the middle of the classic final , and half of the women at the start were given control descriptions that correlated with their course, and the other half were given despriptions that bore absolutely no resemblance to the controls on the ground, not just jumbled up numbers, but complete gobbledygook. It was a complete muck up. After everyone had finished, the results were announced as final, and teams had 10 mins to raise any protest before the results were confirmed, as usual.

We watched and waited to see team management flock to protest, which would surely have voided the courses, but not a single team did so. Can't remember the exact postiton, but the overall thinking was that noone was hacked off enough to spoil a good race for others. Courses should not automatically be voided, if no one protests.

[Vidalos]

Even where there are appeals and juries, the decision is often then left with the person making the appeal such as

"even though we agree with you, you do realise that if you keep your appeal we will have to void the course, do you want to do that?"

thus placing the onus on the person making the appeal and the jury abdicating their responsibility

From experience this weekend

[Becks]

I'm afraid for this once I'm not at all sufficiently happy to be fit enough to run round a course with my friends and see my family. To get to the British took half a day off work, £40 on the train, £80 in B&B accommodation (very grateful to mum and dad for supplying this), entry fees, and 16 hours of travelling. To be met with a glorified fell race with a wandering control, when I was expecting an elite Championship course, made me incredibly angry. Is it any real surprise the field for the elite races was so small if this is what happens when people make a huge effort to attend an event? Incredibly disappointing.

Misplaced controls happen, bad course planning happens, but we should have every possible control in possible at our premier events to stop it happening there. Pre running courses (something Graeme regularly asks for when planning in Scotland), notice taken of constructive criticism from pre runners, double checking of controls by new bodies on the morning of the event (why not combine this with waking up of the boxes?) should eliminate the problems encountered on Saturday. Yes, I know this takes more precious volunteer time, I know it's increasing the work load, but this is our premier event of the year, the British Championships. If we can't get it right here, why should we even bother?

I would just like to say however that none of this ranting takes away the fact that Jenny's victory in W21E on Saturday was fantastic and thoroughly deserved. A fantastic class performance from a top athlete.

[david_rosen]

I completely agree with Laura and Becky. This was the British Championships and it should be a top class competition. If there are aspects which were sub standard, then we should not just brush them under the carpet. We need to analyse what went wrong, learn from the experience and try to prevent similar mistakes in future.

[graeme]

Jenny's victory in W21E on Saturday was fantastic and thoroughly deserved.

Indeed.

Bendover and the rules committee who advise it should be otherwise are well out of line. The organisers who found the best way from an unfortunate error to the fairest result are spot-on.

[SeanC]

So does the sport have an effective and organised way of feeding back after major events? If competitors dont feel comfortable making an official protest what other way is there?

Although I'm a fan of nopesport, for this particular purpose I dont think it quite works. Its a bit like the media, you only get half the story, in this case the story from the viewpoint of (some of) the competitors. I'm concerned that readers will get an unbalanced image of the event organisation, and this may discourage future volunteers. My club are helping with the JK relays next year and I'm not looking forward to nopegrief should something go wrong.

[redpossum]

Thoroughly enjoyed the British - thanks to WOA.

Interesting to read the comments about the map but a lot of people have the wrong idea about 1:15000 and 1:10000 maps. All maps should be made with the amount of detail for 1:15000 scale. 1:10000 maps are merely enlarged for people of older age groups who generally have poor eyesight. The Pwll Du map suffered in two ways: a lot of the detail was too small to be noticed whilst running and a lot of the small contour wiggles from the PG plot had not been smoothed out as well as there being an excess of form lines.

I suspect that not enough time was allowed for the survey to keep the cost down and appreciate the amount of time that would be needed to cover the area whilst mapping. However, this is the third edition of the map and a lot of the problems should have been ironed out.

[roadrunner]

I was interested to read the many comments about the variable runnability of the rough open (which I found as well). When you think about it, isn't it a bit strange that we have four levels of runnability for forest, but only two for open (one of which tends to be reserved for grazed grassland and the like)? Is this because orienteering was traditionally mainly in forests (and so the open areas formed only a minor part of the course), or because in other countries there's less variation in runnability of open areas? Maybe we need some way of showing more and less runnable open, especially in completely open areas like this, since I agree with the other comments that using the "undergrowth" screen would just obscure things too much.