One for the SEA to sort - since it was his control?
PS I can understand their TM being in quarantine on the day, but there have been 9 days since.... seems a bit long to wait to protest.
Also they knew before the race even started that their TM (along with many other TMs and coaches) would be in quarantine until after the women's race had ended - and so if it did happen that a protest was needed, someone other than the TM would have to deal with it. Their choice to put the TM out of action until after the protest window closed and the results were official - not exactly strong grounds for an appeal!
The protest is about the unfairness of other teams being escorted to the control by teammates, or directed to it by commentary.
I expect the IOF will use the TM's procedural error to reject the protest and refuse to consider the actual substance of it, or the implications for organiser's best practice. So it will happen again.
The subtext to this is a furious argument in the planning team about this control. This was NOT about TV: everyone wanted the run in to come around the statue, to get the TV view of the athletes with the castle behind. The issue was simply whether to tape part of the route or use a control. This exact problem was foreseen by the team and rejected as a possible issue by the SEA.
It's satisfying to be proven correct, but I'd rather we'd done the right thing by the athletes in the first place.
About the week's delay - some Russians read attackpoint ;)
Ok, but wasn't the control in exactly the same place as it had been the day before, and wasn't the athlete in question one who had in fact punched that same control in that same place on the middle distance race? So it's not as though the presence of a control in the centre of the finish chute (even if physically placed *slightly* further downhill than it was drawn on the map) should have been entirely unexpected to them.
And I guess the protest is really about the loss of points which makes Russia more vulnerable to relegation next year, rather than them being particularly bothered about 5th place...
@jennycas Quite right, they aren't going to get anywhere claiming the control was *slightly* in the wrong place.
It's about fairness. Either its a proper control, which all the athletes have to find and punch on their own, according to the normal rules of orienteering, or it isn't. What you can't have is the Dane escorted to the control by her teammates, the commentator reminding some teams to go back and punch (see e.g. Czech men), and then deny the Russians the same options.
A smart protest would ask for EITHER those teams who received assistance against the rules to be DQed, or ALL violations of the rules at the last control to be annulled.
@jayh why do you think I was straight in there with reasons to reject the protest?!
@graeme agreed that there are procedural things to improve for future, although the Danish women did at least wait the correct side of the final control - Kyburz on men's final leg was headed to the wrong gate on the way to the final control until his teammates in full view standing some way before the control prevented him making the mistake a number of other teams did make (eg Yannick near the front on first leg). Probably fair to say though that athletes are used to taped routes (arena run-throughs) with controls on the marked route, and also that all last leg runners were taken to the waiting pen straight past the final control, no excuse for not checking the layout then. And the fact there is a final control is on the map and descriptions ffs!!!
Any reasonable person would say that what happened to the Russian team was blatantly unfair (even if they really ought to have known better).
A cynic would add that complaining (late)* to IOF about IOF imposed decisions will have exactly the outcome that Graeme predicts.
*The cynic would add that the fact that the protest is late will, as Graeme points out, be used as the excuse to dismiss the protest. Had the protest been on time a different reason to dismiss it would have been found. However as the detailed reasons for the decisions reached in protests are, as far as I can tell, never published we will probably never know anyway. This also pretty much guarantees that no lessons will be learned.
Graeme, you should put in a protest
On the sprint and middle days I witnessed more than one athlete *nearly* run past the spectator control, and some of them were reminded of its existence by the murmur of the crowd. What I'm curious about is whether the relay teams who escorted their final runners into the finish sought/received permission to go back into the competition area!
That's an interesting one. It's a long-established tradition but is in technical breach of the rules, which means that if an organiser decided they would disqualify someone for that the team probably wouldn't have any recourse. (I suspect said organiser would be on the end of lots of well-deserved derision, though). However, the rules only say that a competitor who breaks a rule "may" be disqualified, so if someone protested against, say, Denmark, the jury wouldn't be under any obligation to disqualify them even if they found that the rules had been breached.
(About 10 years ago, a winning relay team at the world swimming championships were disqualified because the earlier swimmers jumped back into the pool to join their last-leg swimmer before the last team had finished).
@kitch. Yes, I should have, and I now know that the organiser would have upheld it. Of course, that may have triggered a counter protest.
Unfortunately we didn't find out what happened until the protest window closed.
Bottom line is that it was a bloody stupid idea to have the control there at all.
based on your commentsI was thinking a protest along the lines of "SEA are a liability and they should be got rid of"
I even pointed out that the Swiss men were waiting before the final control to the SEA and got a shrug in response.
Once a jury is discharged, a federation can still make an appeal to the IOF Council (Rule 30).
This discussion thread is closed.