Discussion: Australian Easter stuff-up

From 3,000kms away it's difficult to comprehend what heppened on the middle distance day of Easter.

Apparently controls for the following day's long distance race were out in the forest, with identical numbers, and very close to some of the middle distance controls.

1) I can't believe they would have identical numbering - similar maybe.
2) Surely the SI units for the following day wouldn't have been put out by then?
3) Were the overall event Controller and the individual day Controllers asleep?
4) Why were only the elite courses affected - surely M21A, M35A would have had similar courses to W21E and M20E?
5) Has OANSW taken on too much with JWOC last year, Easter this year, and WMOC next year?

You actually had an event today? [cue Napoleon Dynamite voice:] Lucky!!!!! (Even if it was a stuff-up.)

The Australian/Easter 3-days is actually 4 days of orienteering - a relay and then a 3-day cumulative event, though for the elites I believe it's 4 days cumulative and part of the national orienteering league. It is the biggest event in Australia each year I guess.

Yeah, not too many details forthcoming simmo, seems hard to believe they could make such a rudimentary stuff up.

Does anyone else find this spooky? That is exactly what I dreamt about two months ago (see "Orienteering Dreams" thread). wooooo Or am I dreaming again?

(ps: I second disorienteer. They got to orienteer??? Lucky buggars).

But to answer some of simmo's questions, without it should be noted, knowing anything at all...
1. ?
2. putting out SI the day before is actually a very good way to avoid problems usually, since it reduces the amount of work done by organizers under the time limits & pressures of race-day. I can't see any problem in doing so if you have enough SI units, so long as all the controls for all the days follow the 'not too close to each other' rules and, of course, they all have unique codes. (note: for doing multi-day events in the same terrain I really love CONDES which allows you to place all the controls for all days on the same file / master map).
3. Hm, that might be a little harsh, eh? I think perhaps a more constructive question might be "how did the controlling process fail to pick up the problem?". At least we might then learn something ;-)
4. It is possible I would guess that the problem was isolated to only a few controls that affected only a few courses?

I do find it very useful to examine mistakes - both by competitors and by organizers - in order to improve process and reduce the chance of future mistakes. I hope that the organizers of the Easter event will be forthcoming with a description of what went wrong (for a listing of some of the errors I've made in my organizational history see Barebones Mistakes

Controls in question were in fact Day 3, not Day 2 (self preservation here, as I was planner for Day 2 and had no overlap with Day 1). Apart from that, I don't have a lot of extra information as I was busy putting out SI units for Day 2 and it was all over when I got back. I understand that the controls in question did not have flags or SI units and were on different features, well away from the actual courses but did have the same numbers.

To avoid a repeat, Day 2 Controller and I sure as hell made certain that any Day 3 controls remotely near ours (and there were a couple) were removed!

Whether courses should have been cancelled or not is not for me to say.

The controls at issue were 134 and 135. These were about 200 metres apart and (on our course at least) were successive controls (135 then 134).

Day 3's 134 was out in very close proximity to day 1's 135 (and therefore about 200 metres from day 1's 134), and day 3's 135 in very close proximity to day 1's 134. I didn't see either of the day 3 controls myself, but I understand that the controls in question were less than 20 metres apart (but on different features), and that the day 3 controls had a stand and manual punch, and a flag on the ground, but no SI unit.

I thought M21E might have been salvageable with the reinstatement of Lorenzo Calabro (who punched the day 3 134 instead of the real one) and possibly Rob Preston, as no-one else lost more than 2 minutes on it, but several competitors lost substantial amounts of time in W21E and M17-20E and I think a no-race was inevitable in those classes.

This was discussed at the technical committee meeting that afternoon, and Eric Andrews made a very wise series of points.
1. The planners and controllers for both days will be feeling terrible and don't need to be reminded of the mistake. They will be doing that for themselves regularly.
2. At another national event course cancellation event the person who viewed him/her self as responsible had to be talked out of a deep hole that might have had far more serious consequences than something as minor as an orienteering course cancellation.
3. We all need to learn from this without anyone being deterred from ever again taking the responsibility for course planning/controlling at major events.

To specific questions:
1) I can't believe they would have identical numbering - similar maybe.
From my own experience of setting a large event on the same map and the day after a WMOC final, I can only add that avoiding this problem can be a lot of work. There are often not enough stand numbers to avoid duplicate controls on the map. Course setting software does not allow this to be checked automatically. The work arounds are tedious. I can foresee an email to Finn.

4) Why were only the elite courses affected - surely M21A, M35A would have had similar courses to W21E and M20E?
They were the only courses that went there.

5) Has OANSW taken on too much with JWOC last year, Easter this year, and WMOC next year?
I think OANSW has already answered this question by asking for assistance with the 2011 National Carnival. Victoria went through a similar (but perhaps less arduous) run with Easter, WMOC, Oceania/Nationals+Oz MTBO, World MTBO, Easter in pretty close to consecutive years. I can't remember them all. We are still emerging from that hole in my opinion.

I understand everything said about not criticising volunteers etc etc but it was a very stupid mistake to make by some very experienced orienteers/controllers.

I had a good run that day and didnt see the offending controls but i definitely understand the ruling....

Considering it was a JWOC/WOC trial and a WRE, which OA has to pay for, and all the runners had forked out $35 for a decent race it was very disappointing/frustrating.

I think the courses were well set though, the sprint maybe could have had a bit more (then again i lost nearly a minute!) and i came away happy after not being too enthused about heading into the crappier parts of the area prior to the weekend.

Not that big a deal if you ask me. I think the people who protested should be taking a lot of the responsibility for the mistakes they made, as apposed to blaming the organisers? Sure it was an oversight of the organisers, but who doesn?t make mistakes, I feel very sorry for the organisers.

Lazydave, you only had to pay $35 for the race because the sport is run by volunteers. If you paid for professional event organisers, maybe then they could be held accountable, but how much do you think the entry fee would be then?

BTW does anyone know where I can find a copy of the splits? They would be interesting to see.

Grant I dont think the majority thought it was a big deal, but the positioning of controls with those numbers did make it an unfair race. If someone managed to not come across the offending control(s) (which was 50/50 depending on which way you approached the real control) then they would not baulk and lose time wondering what the hell is going on. I lost a little bit of time in this way but didnt care too much. Anyone who did feel wronged had a legitimate case I reckon. How can the competitors take responsibility for a 'mistake' like that?
Also I hope most people feel sorry for the organisers in this case, but that doesnt make the situation in the forest correct. I do agree that the organisers should not be subject to abuse over this.
Solution: someone on the weekend told me that Vic dont have two controls the same number. Surely we wouldnt use all the numbers 101-999? And allocate sections of numbers to different clubs.

Its not that simple in Victoria. We have changed our numbering system to take account of the new SI capabilities. All boxes are permanently numbered in a sequence. Yes, no duplicates. But this means all clubs basically have the same stand numbers as each other. When a big carnival comes up, we need to borrow SI boxes like everyone else. And we then have to program them to match our stands. This means there will be duplicates at a big event.
If you allocate entirely different numbers to each club, you will be reprogramming your SI boxes at each event.

Sorry, I stand corrected.

I agree my original comment about the Controllers was a little harsh - thanks Adrian!

I guess a positive is that there's now one more detail that IOF Advisers and Controllers will know to check on.

Having said that, maybe we need to look at what has become an Easter trend - holding at least 2 of the 3 days on the same map. I know there are considerable manpower savings when you don't have to move all the infrastructure, but we seem to manage it ok at other events (eg Oceania, Aust. Champs carnivals). And it's no saving if key people don't have the support to avoid mistakes in the more important aspect of the actual courses.

I think in future if multi-day events are being held on the same map, then there needs to be a physical boundary (a road, fence or major creek) between the areas being used for different days. Alternatively, the map needs to be big enough to ensure that there are several hundred metres between the various days.

If neither of the above is an option, wait until the afternoon before putting the next day's controls out - it may take more people, but would be worth it.

There's one other trend I want to comment on - the increasing number of controls used at events (not that I know how many were used at Dubbo - it's just a trend I've noticed, mainly though observing the increasing size of elite control description sheets!). Maybe if we didn't use so many, we wouldn't need duplicate numbers? OAWA has 2 sets numbered 101-270. In my view 170 controls is more than enough for two days of a national event with the recommended 15 courses for Easter and the Australian Champs.

Surely we wouldnt use all the numbers 101-999?

This brings up something that has bugged me for a while: SI box numbers. Why were there any duplicate control codes at the event at all? Seems to me that there's no reason why the SI box number has to be used as the control code, and in fact there are some good reasons not to. In the days of pin-punching, there was never a problem with controls being duplicates because they had the same punch pattern. (In fact, there's a hypothetical reason to not use the box numbers as codes, that being that someone could in theory build a gizmo that could be programmed with the control codes and transfer those codes to an SI-dibber with whatever splits are desired for cheating purposes -- the current system is like distributing the punch patterns to all competitors.) It may be that the software being used doesn't allow for the control codes beig different than the boxes, but if so, this is something that needs to be fixed.

I hope that the main outcome from this is that we actually klearn from our mistakes this time. A very similar thing happened last year at easter with controls from day 2 out overlapping day 1 courses. This affected atleast one runner, although mercifully no courses were cancelled. I remember having discussions with a NSW orienteering official about it at the time.
Where the courses overlap there is always room for stuffups. There are numerous preventative measures, don't put out the day 2 controls in that area until after the day one event, being the most basic.

simmo i'd never endorse any sort of limit on the number of controls... some areas you need a lot, some courses you need a lot, and of course some require less controls to make a good race.

the crazy thing with this stuff up at easter was the fact they were using controls with the same codes that were only a hundred (or so!) metres apart and they carted all those stands up from sydney and out into the forest - when they could have gone and moved the relevant stands (only a handful of metres!) after the race on day 1. so i'd argue that not only did the organisers of day 3 ruin the race, but they also made work for themselves.

one thing i've been thinking about is that when something doesnt seem right you have to work out whether you or the organiser is at fault. sometimes organisers do make mistakes, and when you're racing you have to deal with them. i never saw these other controls in the race but i reckon it would have been quite confusing as i have never had to work out whats going on when i see a control with the code on top that is the UNIQUE code of a control i am going to... i think you'd need to be fairly confident to quickly understand the organisers are the ones at fault in that case.

* Wrong number - day 3's 134 was closest to day 1's 135
* Flag on ground
* No sport ident unit
* Wrong feature (gully, not rock face)
* Offending control was 300m from day 1's 134

5 reasons that the runner could use to realise the control wasn't theirs.

Yes, the number probably shouldn't have been on the control, but think about how many hours the organisers/controllers have put into the carnival. Sometimes things get overlooked. A lot of elites haven't been on the organising/controlling side of national carnivals/NOLs/WREs. It's a HUUUGE task. There are so so many things to think about. This was an oversight and I'm sure they feel bad enough already.

Surely the runners have to have a look at why they made such mistakes too.

for sure miss jones! note that the top end of the results weren't affected...

That sort of follows by definition, since if you were seriously affected you weren't in the top end of the results...

As far as I could tell from the splits there were 4 W21s, 4 M20s and 1 M21 who either lost more than 2 minutes on the control or were disqualified for punching the 'phantom' 134 rather than the real one, including the eventual W21E winner and three JWOC team members.

I never saw the offending controls, but if I had it would have seemed disconcerting at least, and I'm not sure that in the heat of competition I would have been able to identify it as an 'organiser puts out day 3 controls too early' error rather than a 'organiser forgets to put out SI unit' error.

Hmm, so 9 people lost more than 2 mins, yet nearly double that number of people were part of the protest?

Miss Jones, they are also 5 reasons why people would have lost time wondering what the frikkin' heck was going on. My first thought was 'misplaced control', then 'vandalised control'.
Again, how can a runner analyse why they made a so-called 'mistake'? They didnt make a mistake, they got confused as to why their next control was at that location!

Also, you can lose less than 2mins and still protest.

Glenn, they made a mistake by looking at a control that wasn?t theirs??..

Sure it could be confusing. I do understand why some people complained or protested, when you put so much into making a team and then you feel that your place in that team is being jeopardised because of an organiser?s fault it is a survival instinct to protest.

Unfortunately we have developed a culture in Australian Orienteering that if you feel hardy done buy you protest, without consideration for anyone else.

If orienteer?s placed a little more accountability for their own actions, rather than always looking for someone else to blame then we would have a lot more good orienteers.

I don't see why anyone is dissing people who protested. Nobody likes to protest and cause a race to be cancelled. The implication in these criticisms is that these people just fucked up and then protested out of sour grapes. A quite insulting charge.

Of course we should be very careful about criticising organisers that make a mistake. By the same token we should be careful about criticising runners who quite rightly protest. They also probably feel bad enough already.

What does 2 minutes have to do with anything? Last I noticed most events are timed to the nearest second.

It may not have anything to do with this particular case, but I did notice that the same person was listed as technical director and overall controller for the Easter carnival. Whatever happened to the concept of an independent controller? It doesn't matter how experienced or competent the organisers are, they need a controller who is genuinely independent of the organisation.

I think this personel overlap may reflect the problem of a shortage of suitably qualified volunteers. If it didn't in the case of NSW, it certainly will in future carnivals. Also discussed at the OA technical committee meeting that day was:
1. You need 6 or 7 level 3 controllers to run a national carnival now according to the latest rule changes.
2. Few states have this many level 3 controllers.
3. There is a reluctance on the part of some people to take on this level of qualification for fear of never being able to escape the call to duty.
We are very good in this sport at making rules, but not very good at cutting the cloth to fit the available workforce. IMHO all rule proposals should be require assessment for volunteer burden. But that would be just another rule.

I didn't mean to criticise the protesters. I guess i had assumed people would protest if they were significantly affected and felt incredibly strongly about being affected themselves and perhaps not to protest for a cause. If runners shouldn't be criticised though, then we need to think about organisers being criticised publicly. If you think the people protesting feel bad, I would imagine the organisers would feel a hundred times worse... that their race they had been preparing over a year for, had to be cancelled. If the Oceania Sprint Champs that I organised last year had been cancelled due to a protest, I would feel ABSOLUTELY terrible and probably too scared to organise another major event.

I know I felt pretty awful at WMOC when a relatively trivial protest got up (some people being reinstated after mispunching controls which were too close together) - having your course cancelled would be considerably worse.

Just out of curiosity, which rule was used as the basis of the protest? My understanding of the situation is that (is this right?):
Day 1 control 134 was in the right spot
Day 3 control 134 was 300m away (with no SI)
Day 3 control 135 was 20m away (on different feature, with no SI).

For above - It was Day 1 control 135 was 20 metres away (not day 3)

To rephrase Adrian's question, is this the situation?
On Day 1:
Day 1 control 134 was in the right spot
Day 1 control 135 was in the right spot
Day 3 control 134 (with no SI) was 20m from Day 1 control 135,
and 300m from Day 1 control 134

Yes?

Yes

grant, i wouldnt say we have a culture of protesting when you feel hard done by... if the organiser makes a mistake and you lose time from it, i think its fair enough to protest. (and it does happen overseas!) i dont think anyone doubts whether the organisers fucked up this one, but i guess its up to the jury to decide how "significant" the fuck up was. i think the issue in this case is the jurys decision. we shouldnt be (and i dont think anyone is) having a go at the people that protested, rather the decision to cancel the course.

the overall winner of W21E was 5mins down on the day in question, was that all on the dodgy controls? i get the feeling that the cancellation introduced some unfairness itself, quite a few others lost significant time on that course and then had the slate wiped clean...

I think the added problem was the sequence of control numbers. If it had just bee another control 20m away, that would have in itself been grounds for protest in itself, but would not have caused as much confusion. I understand it the day 1 sequence was 135, 134; so to suddenly find 134 before 135 has the potential to cause some confusion, particularly in the heat of competition with stressed competitors.
Yes the runners had enough cues to know that it was the wrong control, but that is not how we react under stress.

Orientshow event at Maldon later this year. No control numbers on clue sheets. So no confusion...

Are our rules mired in the constraints of pre-SI days. The problem controls were right near the end of the course. If the object of the rules is to maximise fairness, which is the fairest option:
1. Let the result stand. Those confused by the errant day three controls are disadvantaged.
2. Cancel the course. Those who had a good result are disadvantaged.
3. Use SI splits to shorten the course to the last control before the problem zone. Seems the obvious option to me, but I have been told many times this is unfair. Still not sure why it might be less fair than the previous two options. I note that this was the option used by the JWOC selectors.

I disagree with shep here (for a change).

Elites in Australia honestly seem to believe that if the organiser makes any slight mistake, then the whole day should be voided. Unfortunately, our juries reinforce this impression by voiding courses like this one. I'm not trying to diss the people who protested -- they have a right to do so -- but the jury should be held accountable to the rules. Those rules say that a 'significant number of people must be significantly affected' to cancel a course. As Blair mentioned, only 2 people DNFed on our course, and noone lost more than a couple of minutes. That was unfair on those people, but not suficiently unfair to ruin everyone's day.

For comparison, let's look at cricket. During a rain-affected one-day match, the players (through no fault of their own) can be significantly disadvantaged by the Duckworth-Lewis system. It is unfair, and, while it often ends up with the correct result, sometime ends up in a patently unfair situation for one team. What do cricket do? Do they cancel the whole competition? They only cancel it when it really becomes untenable (25 overs per team I think). The reason they do this is that they can't afford to have matches cancelled so easily.

Likewise, I would argue that Australian Orienteering cannot afford to cancel races unless the results are so skewed that they bear no resemblance to the competition.

hoggster, sorry to disappoint you but i agree with you...

but i dont think we (aussie elites) are more prone to protests (with the intention of voiding the course) than elsewhere in the world.

the big difference with eg cricket is that all the players know whats going on, they're all informed and they know what they have to do to win. they're not all standing in the dark trying to second guess the game organisers. big difference...

that is disappointing. i might consider changing my mind ....

Okay, you've successfully eliminated the Americans from the discussion by bringing in cricket analogies. We'll be quiet now. (Duckworth-Lewis? I don't even want to know. And don't bother to supply an explanation or a link. Now, if you want to discuss the infield fly rule...)

__________ i think the main problem with stopping the course at a certain place is that it hasnt been done before and isnt in the rules anywhere - as far as i know, maybe the technical director can tell us.

The unfairness is probably that some orienteers would start their course easier and build up speed/confidence so that the second half of the course is where they make up time and get a good result.

Maybe if the we introduced a rule where the cutting of the course could be applied after a certain distance say 2/3 and a result could stand? It would have been perfect for the Easter situation.

The big thing being talked about is unfairness, maybe we just shouldnt bother? Life is unfair! It will be impossible to make every happy.

I say orienteers who are on attackpoint are much smarter then those who arent. We should be the jury and put it to a vote, whatever we say goes. I vote re-instatement of the course, purely for personal gain :)

J-J, sorry, you can't make a comment like that and not get some kind of an explanation...

No real baseball analogy is possible for Duckworth-Lewis. If one team batted all its nine innings first, then the other team did the same, then D-L would tell you what to do in case of a rain delay (by adjusting the score according to how seriously D-L's statistical model indicates that they are affected). (Though now I think about it, I'm not sure what happens in baseball when a game is rained out with an inning after the fifth in progress, particularly if the lead has changed during the course of the inning in progress. Someone will no doubt tell me.)

lazydave, that unfairness is exactly the same as in D-L (Gilchrist may score 100 in the first ten overs but Australia can still be all out for 225, while India can score slower to start with but still win, and D-L might flip that). shep's objection still stands, though, so the only possible fair fix would indeed be to take the last non-affected control as the finish since nothing is yet screwed up at that point. Everything after that point definitely has to be thrown out (certainly it's just not cricket just to drop the splits to and from the problem controls).

I think Grant was mentioning on the weekend that Sweden have just introduced such a rule? For JWOC selection purposes we used the results up to control 9 (the last one before the problem control), although we may not have done had it been at, say, 40% rather than 80% distance.

There were a few people whose misfortunes on other controls were wiped from the books by the cancellation, but Kathryn wasn't one of them - she lost 5.03 to the fastest (Vanessa) on that leg.

(and, whatever else can be said about Duckworth-Lewis, it's a lot fairer than what preceded it - hands up anyone who remembers the England-South Africa World Cup semi in 1992?)

Hand up - was that not D-L system Blair?

No - that was the previous system where if the innings was reduced to N overs the target was the opposition's N highest-scoring overs. This meant that if a few overs were lost the target hardly changed because the overs that 'fell off' were the ones where 0 runs were scored (these still used to happen in 50-over matches back in 1992). Net result was, when it rained for 10 minutes in the 48th over, South Africa's target was amended from 22 off 13 balls to 22 off 1 ball (whereupon the crowd chanted, en masse, references to bovine excrement). Even more bizarrely, in an earlier England-Pakistan game, Pakistan were all out for 74 and England found themselves chasing 64 off 16 overs (before it rained again - without the point from that washout Pakistan, the eventual winners, wouldn't have made the semis).

To get back to an orienteering connection, that was one of my more epic orienteering travel days - I ran an event at Wyangala Dam which was a de facto National League (the National League didn't exist yet but pretty well everyone who mattered was there), drove to Sydney, got to the SCG a few overs after the start, left after the end of the game and drove back to Canberra, getting home at 2 a.m. or thereabouts.

perhaps everyone should go do some technical training instead of crapping on about this.

Good point Ben! Or in my case, I should get back to work.
I wasn't going to get dragged into the politics, but...
* I certainly think the course should have been cancelled. Easy to see that people could get completely thrown. I signed protest letter not because I had grounds to but because I thought others clearly did. Personally it contributed to a bigger mistake than would have been for me. I hadn't clicked that it was our next control code, but still had suspicions of sabbotage going on when I was making my mistake - was where I thought our control would be (was only 50m away), had similar code, control flag on the ground...

*I disagree about our tendency to protest in Aust. There may be some individuals who protest a lot, but most of us don't like dudding our friends out or upsetting organisers so don't protest even when a race is unfair and should be cancelled. This happens all the time in our Sydney MetroLeague finals, with misplaced controls and even in NOLs. Eg a Middle distance race in WA in 2005 when the control triangle was placed 100m too far forward and the first control was only 100m away, so Shep, me, Hoggster (?), etc lost minutes from overshooting. We didn't protest.

What can one say, it's a lose-lose situation regardless of what action is taken. The contestants lose and the organising officials all lose!

The competitors lose an important race, especially those vying for a team position or WR points. No doubt all the officials involved would be devastated and (unfairly) may lose the respect of the orienteering community. To suggest that this mistake was caused by laziness or ineptitude on behalf of the organisers would be folly. These guys are all very experienced and know what they are doing. Why then did it happen?

Everybody knows what a wonderfully engaging sport ours is, but it has one major drawback and that is the workload involved in running events, especially major ones. Perhaps this error happened because there was too much to do and too little time and assistance to do it. I know for a fact that the overall controller was out until 10:00pm on one particular evening placing water barrels at drink controls. I also know he ran around "starting up" SI units each morning so that competitors wouldn't lose that 0.5 of a second or whatever it takes for them to wake from hibernation. Why do we have somebody with a role as important as overall controller carrying out these basic tasks? Almost certainly because nobody else was "available".

I know elite competitor put in months of training and hard work for this event and can justifiably feel miffed, but at least your work can be utilised in upcoming events. Consider the Day1 officials. They have nothing to show for many months of work and it can never be utilized again. How upsetting must that be?

At the chasing starts on Day3 I heard elite competitors joking about the day1 situation, all within earshot of one of the officials involved. I hope it was ignorance of the fact that he was there as it would be rather nasty to do so otherwise. Every mention of it must have been a barb in his heart.

Rather than worry about which rule should have been applied we should be looking at ways to simplify events. My role in this carnival was a limited one but I still was on site from 7:00 am through to 4:00 pm on most of the days. I'm sure this affected my orienteering as I had two of the worst days orienteering I've had in a long time (and it wasn't all to do with the technical difficulty). All in all not much of an Easter for me and as I said I had very much less to do than some of the key people. Wouldn't it be great if we could lessen this workload to some degree and perhaps consequently also lessen the chance off stuff-ups?

Where would I start? - Water on courses.
I'm not going to win any friends amongst you guys by saying this, but it's a big commitment to supply water for so many competitors. I reckon this should be a competitor's own responsibility! Why not a new rule stating everyone has to wear a camelback, they're cheap enough nowadays. Have you ever put water barrels out, been out to collect them afterwards and had to pick up all the discarded cups (often carried many metres away by competitors) and all the sticky gel sachets discarded by (mostly) elites? Not great fun I can assure you. There's a few hours saved straight away!

What else?..ummm?

leepback: i think it would be folly to suggest elites don't do the types of things you suggested

FatRat - I never said they didn't.

if we all just focussed on DEVELOPMENT and PROMOTION we would be inundated with so many competitors we could pay all our staff to run events.

but no, orienteers tend to be rule geeks.

I think for a WRE we should actually be focussed on the technical side of things FatRat. The rule geeks should rule this one. I think a reason why (almost) nobody protests during MetroLeagues (as Tracblue said) - people are far more relaxed about the results. These sort of events are more conducive to grassroots Development and Promotion too.

i just dont see the point of this thread. it was a mistake, everyone can see it. jury has made a decision, its OVER. adding/changing rules offers NO assurance it wont happen again, but changes in the obvious over-workload may.

this is not about rules, the rules exist, they were judged to be breached and appropriate action was taken. in that respect, i don't see what there is to discuss from a technical point of view. only real technical argument i see is that if the technical competence of orienteers was sufficient, they wouldnt have even looked at the number of the control that wasn't theirs, but i admit that is a somewhat weak technical argument because we are all prone to error.

i think saying this event is not about development and promotion is COMPLETELY WRONG. if we want to remain a marginal geeky pathetically understood and funded sport, then MetroLeague is a good place for development and promotion. I wonder if thats the type of strategy the NRL (or any other well recognised sport) will go with in the future!?!?!

You are right FatRat, the threads over. I'm off to watch the football now...

a significant number of people must be significantly affected to cancel a course

is that an OA rule Andy? Makes it almost impossible to cancel a course. The very nature of these things is that usually only a minority are affected - that still doesn't make it fair. By that criteria if only one person was affected by a organisers' mistake, but that person would otherwise have won, you just tell them bad luck the results stand.

Although a good lawyer might argue that in cases like this everyone was affected because they all ended up with higher placings than they should have.

Anyway in this case that rule doesn't apply - it was a WRE so IOF rules apply not OA. As Glenn points out the expectations differ depending on the level of an event. But for a WRE the standard should be high.

Sure, let's aim for high standards. The debate is over what to do if those standards aren't reached. I am arguing that if we cancel the entire day every time those standards aren't reached, then we are all losing out. If only one person is affected, why should that destroy everyone's day? Should we have cancelled day 3 just because Shep got injured when he might have won? If not, I can't see the difference between that case and a potential winner being the unfortunate and only victim of an organiser's mistake.

To put the other view, Jasmine Neve came 2nd on day 2, and would have done regardless of the organiser's mistake. She has lost that opportunity and there is no recourse for her to appeal. How is it fair that she had that taken from her?

To answer your other question, it is an OA guideline. IOF provides no such guideline so there's not much to follow there.

Should we have cancelled day 3 just because Shep got injured when he might have won?
Not unless he tripped over a control stand that was left in the terrain from day 1 - and then the protest would only be upheld if the number on the stand was same as one of the controls on his course.

I have a suggestion that would prevent this kind of problem, not that I think it is common, but also help athletes in the races.
Have the control number system make sense!!
I propose that we give each course a number 1-8 or whatever it must be, eg if there is 2 blue courses then add a number, and use a format like:
(Day)(Course)(Control(2 digits))
so you get a 4 digit number. In the particular case, assuming they were blue controls and 8 courses were set the numbers would have been:
1834, 1835, 3834 and 3835. not only will this prevent these mistakes, but as a competitor, if I come I would rather not have to remember the arbitrary control number. And if this was widely adopted it would become unnecessary to print the codes out even.
I understand this would take some modifications to equipment, namely adding a clear waterproof container which can be used to hold a card to be printed.

Lost somewhere in the middle of this is any mention of how rare course cancellations really are. In 1500+ events I've only ever had my course cancelled three times (and one of those was because there was an access mix-up and people with guns were suggesting in no uncertain terms that venturing onto the far end of the course had the potential to seriously endanger your health), and there have only ever been two classes cancelled (both in 1987) in 37 years of Australian Championships.

"one of those was because there was an access mix-up and people with guns were suggesting in no uncertain terms that venturing onto the far end of the course had the potential to seriously endanger your health"

tell me that story blair... it sounds like a corker

Those are impressive numbers Blair. With the exception of the AROC races (kudos to Grant), if adventure races were cancelled due to misplaced controls there would have been roughly three completed events in Australia since 2001 (and yes that is a source of eternal frustration).

Don?t know how many races I have run, but Day 1 Easter is the only reasonably major race that has been cancelled that I can remember. I have however run plenty of races that were much less fair than day one of Easter.

My favourite personal hard luck story was when I lost approximately 10 sec in a PWT race because a gate was locked that was marked open. Apparently there was a guard guarding the gate, but decided to lock the gate and go home because the race was nearly over and no one had taken the route choice through that gate (I was the only one who took it). As it turned out if I ran one or two seconds faster in that race I would have won the overall PWT that year and be about 60 000 SEK richer.

I?m sure I have had a lot more lucky outcomes in orienteering than unlucky ones though. There must be hundreds of controls that I have spiked when I didn?t really know where I was. Its just that they aren?t as memorable.

i am laughing at these people telling us to go do something better and this argument is over and then adding their own comments...

i'm with you lazydave, lets reinstate the race! we both have logins for the OA website, do you want to do it or me?

forget about getting day 1 reinstated Shep - put in a protest to get day 3 cancelled because of your injury - Hoggster will support you.

its been cancelled. simon's winners cheque is going to bounce and the organisers have refunded my entry fee.

Day 3 should be cancelled because some competitors had prior exposure to the control locations, thereby giving them an unfair advantage.

Day 3 had other problems, I had a control description that said mound, and there was one very close the centre of the circle. The control was actually on a boulder at the centre of the circle. So what should I have believed, the control description or the circle? When I quizzed the controller he said it was a bit hard to decide what exactly the rock feature was?????.

"one of those was because there was an access mix-up and people with guns were suggesting in no uncertain terms that venturing onto the far end of the course had the potential to seriously endanger your health"

It was at Turallo Creek in 1987. This is a long, narrow area outside of Bungendore - fast gully-spur terrain (I had a memorable race with Jock there in a mass-start event in 1991). Six landowners. The organisers had forgotten to make contact with the northernmost of the six, which only the longest course went into. (Being ambitious I was already running course 1, or whatever it was called then, in local events). Unfortunately, said northernmost landowner decided to organise a kangaroo shoot on the day. The first I found out about this was when I reached the fence and was confronted by two people who pointed their guns and suggested in no uncertain terms that I go elsewhere forthwith. I did.

Robin, I had a look at Deb's map and the circle is, as you say, on the boulder, with highpoint as the description.....must ask Deb if she noticed, because she Never reads her descriptions!

Boulders are rocks sitting on the ground, high points are sometimes used to describe rocky high points or knolls which are in fact protrisions of the underlying bedrock. Maybe your description was knoll...rocky

The simple answer to this situation is to get rid of control plates altogether. This is what we have done in Tasmania, where all of the SI units now have unique numbers on them. No confusion, multi-day events can have their own sets of control numbers allocated.

Re: Fairness : Life is not fair so why should orientering be?

"There is no justice..there is just us" - Hobart CBD Grafitti - mid 1990's

Question, why do we have numbers on the stands adn on the SI boxes. Surely just numbers on the SI boxes would be enough. For organisers that would make lfe a bit less complicated. Don't have to put a particular stand in a particular place, just a stand. The number on the box then defines the control number.

what a complicated sport :)

we should try it with bikes.

or skis

Question, why do we have numbers on the stands adn on the SI boxes.

The really big advantage to having it on both the stand and the SI box is that it adds a lot of double-checking to the process. We typically put off-trail stands in the woods one or even 2 weeks early. In the days immediately before the event we put out the remaining stands, hang all the flags, and put an SI box on each stand, ideally with the same number as the stand.

I've actually done events with stands labeled one way and boxes labeled another, and it is a sure way to screw something up. It's possible, but it's very prone to error. In one case I remember, I had stands labeled with letters (like EB, DF), and I was using OE2003 software which requires control *numbers* from 31 up.

My short answer to your question would be, "Because it's a part of a robust process that helps reduce mistakes."