I always assumed that the last leg of a relay should be forked (for maximum challenge & excitement) but lately I've seen a few major European relays that don't use forking for the final runner - sometimes leading to a bunch of following followed by an exciting sprint down the finish chute. But surely it would be better to fork the last leg? Any insight would be appreciated into when to fork and when not to
AZ, Barebones 2008 Relay course planner
I like to see forking/gaffling in the last leg, but you need to be careful that in the process, you dont make one course harder/longer than the others, leading to a disavantage to the team on that split.
As a mass start event you cannot disallow following - the setters only recourse is forking/gaffling; and that should apply to all relay legs.
BUT all of the legs each team is running at the same time need to be very close in terms of difficulty, control positioning, length, and climb. Otherwise the experience for the runners involved and the spectators watching is meaningless, confusing and ultimately disappointing as you are not running head to head.
I've still not come to terms with the Irish Championship Relay in 86 or 87 when I had been battling for the lead with Aonghus O'Cleirigh on leg 3. I crested a ridge to the 2nd last control and punched; the finish was visible on the next ridge a few 100m away with spectators cheering and next thing Aonghus appears on my shoulder. I handed the punch to him and smiled, confident in my sprinting ability. I set off for the last which was down off the ridge and a bit to the left - out of the corner of my eye I could see Aonghus heading for the finish: Whaaaa??? My 2nd last WAS HIS LAST!! I sprinted hard and closed the gap but lost by 7 seconds. I never want that to happen to anyone else: it was a crushing disappointment.
I remember that the last leg of Jukola a few years ago was forked (maybe it always has been, I'm not sure), except for the last couple of kilometers to avoid the problem Eoin and Uncle Jim pointed out.
In Jukola I think that all legs are always forked. That's the way it should be I think. It's much more fun to run then.
The last leg should definitely be forked EXCEPT for the last 5-10 minutes of the race, their should definitely be a final loop or section which should be common.
You appear to be referring to the Tiomila, which is an all-night relay with many legs. Maybe they didn't anticipate that several teams would be so close after several hours of racing.
In a 3 or 4 leg relay, all the legs should be forked. However, I'd suggest the last control should always be common.
One option is to do what they did at WOC in Australia in 1985. It was a 4-leg relay. the first leg had a common last control, which the runners waiting to be tagged couldn't see, but the 3rd and 4th runners waiting in the spectator area could. The 2nd runners had the same last control, but then they switched to a different last control for the 3rd and 4th legs. Many 3rd and 4th leg runners went straight to the control they'd seen, and were shocked to find the code didn't match. Annichen Kringstad and a Norwegian girl were leading the women's race, but the Norwegian had obviously been following Annichen, because she was very slow to realise what was happening. This allowed Annichen to get a decisive break, and Sweden won.
How do I know this? I was the marshall stationed at the last control for legs 1 & 2. Unfortunately, as far as I know only one girl mispunched, but she was the Australian (no names, no pack drill), and I was groaning inwardly, but couldn't say anything to her!
I like to see forking/gaffling in the last leg
What is gaffing?
The Swedish word for "fork" is "gaffel".
So gaffling (with an L) is the same as forking.
(I asked the same question, several years ago.)
What is gaffing?
It's what we brits/aussies/kiwis (anyone else?) seem to call what North Americans seem to call forking. A few common controls in a relay with different forks/gaffles inbetween.
I am just amazed that in big competitions the courses can be forked and still be considered fair. I would think that any kind of fork would open up an endless and subjective discussion about which prong of the fork was faster.
As an aspirant course setter, I have worked hard to carve high quality legs on our local club maps. I shudder at the difficulty of designing two legs of equal difficulty to make a fair fork. That would be very difficult on our maps. May be it would be easier on World Class terrain?
toddp: You have three options on a gaffle: A, B or C. For one team the first leg runner gets option A, the second option B and the third option C, another team will have the first runner on option B, the second runner on option C and the third runner on option A. As you can see the teams ran the options in a different order but in the end both team have completed exactly the same course so it is perfectly fair.
If you have more than three teams competing in the relay then you can have two sets of forking giving 9 options, three sets to give 27 etc etc. So it is easy in a relay to make sure that teams can't just follow each other but in the end still do the same course.
I think maybe it is TIoMila that I am thinking about. In this year's event the two long legs (4th leg & 10th (final) leg) weren't forked. In 2007 the 9th leg was not forked, but the 10th was. Does anyone know the reasoning behind not forking at TioMila?
forking is used in relays, if you have a 3 person Relay, you can have up to 2-3 different forks/gaffles.
So common control, then 3 different controls, back to another control that is common = a 3 way fork. Team of 3 runners take a different fork each and at the end of the day, every team has done ever fork
i cant believe no one has said "who gives a fork" yet.
so making 3 different courses and having different combinations of the 3 for every team is called something else? i suppose relay setting is all up to the setter. forking or setting 3 different courses dont really matter as long as the corses are challenging i suppose. Good luck AZ.
Relay planning with forked legs is not a big effort to achieve. I have planned the SN O Cross and had all 100+ runners running different courses with every control split. Only thing to watch is that no one control of a "group" is not significantly shorter.
The race is completely different, and less fun (?), if everyone knows, or even guesses!, that there is no forking.
Once in a while we put a fork in our Adventure Runs giving racers the option of easy and long or short and difficult. When combined with lots of climbing we call it "The Fork 'n Hills"
IOF rulebook, appendix 6, Competition Formats : "For fairness reasons the very last part of the last leg shall be the same for all runners"
Eoin, you should have protested.
At WOC93, we did what simmo describes, where legs 1 and 2 went to one penultimate control, while 3 and 4 went to a different one, and all of the maps (4 legs for each of 32 men's teams, ditto for the women except that there were fewer teams) were different. And the courses were offset printed. One restriction placed on the setter was that all forks had to have the same number of controls, so that when you got to a common control, it would have the same control number for all competitors (this was the only way we could get the offset printing to work). There was still a wild variety of forking used, though.
Organisers please feel free to write in if I'm wrong; but I can only recall (however I don't have a great memory) ever formally protesting once since I started in 1969 - a last-control half-metre termite mound among 0.4m termite mounds in thickly wooded flat terrain that I attacked twice from the finish chute on accurate compass bearings. Certainly I have been often been critical about events, sometimes abrasive but usually in print much later on (not about the IOC relay though). I've certainly advocated boycotts of more events that I've protested on.
In this case I don't think a protest would have succeeded. Each team overall ran the same course. It wasn't run under the IOF rule mentioned above. The controls were in the right place. I don't think the setters would have predicted the circumstance that arose and I don't think a jury would have found in my favour. Even if they did, there was no recourse other than voiding the event - an event that everybody who was there will remember for a long time. I got to be a participant in one of the most thrilling finishes ever to an IOC Relay.
PS the termite mound protest was dismissed. I thought it was clearly in the wrong placeon the wrong mound; but my compass work wasn't good enough (well, actually I think you'd have needed a theodolite) and it was probably close to being correct.
This discussion thread is closed.