Day 2 Report
Edinchip is a brand new area to orienteering and credit goes to Allan Downie (Tayside Orienteers) and Terry O’Brien (Event Coordinator) for their exploratory efforts finding new terrain that was under everyone’s noses all the time. Edinchip was technically less demanding than Auchingarrich, but instead offered a variety of different terrain types from sheep grazed moorland, birch forest, marsh, ancient oak woodland and more marsh!
There was fantastic support from the Edinchip Estate and others in the community including the organiser of the Balquidder, Lochearnhead and Strathtyre Highland Games – the parking fields and race arena had been the scene of caber tossing, highland dancing, weight throwing, pipe bands and other Scottish pastimes. Orienteering is new to Rob Roy Country but hopefully will become more of a regular feature.
I thoroughly enjoyed my course and the weather stayed dry till we were packing up in the race arena after course closing time. Further details are in the daily online news-sheet but there was an issue with a small number of competitors who either deliberately or mistakenly crossed the “uncrossable” purple line bounding the river that ran through the area. In the interest of fair competition, we would ask anyone who crossed the river to give their name to Information on Tuesday and disqualify themselves. The purple line rule also applies to uncrossable/not to be crossed fences on some other days. Four days count towards the overall result so plenty of opportunities to come good on other days.
Thanks go to the team of helpers including Day Organiser Carol Burnapp who had the misfortune to put her knee out of place yesterday while setting up and spent much of the day organising proceedings from the Director’s Chair. I am expressly forbidden from publishing a photo of her enjoying a cup of coffee and a bacon roll as it gives the wrong impression of all the hard work involved. The detachment from the Military Police were also a great asset – a deterrent to anyone who might have been tempted to exceed the 30 mph limit through the village. We are looking forward to another of Allan and Terry’s new areas tomorrow.
Day2 – Jury Decision
The Day 2 Organiser has received 4 protests about the decision to void the legs across the river. The Day Organiser and Controller decided that they did not agree with the protests and convened the jury who have now reached the following decision:
We know, both by direct observation and by some very short leg times, that a significant number of competitors crossed the river at points that had been marked as “not to be crossed”. While some people have self- disqualified the leg times shows that a number of people who crossed the river have not done so.
While the ideal solution is for all transgressors to be disqualified, there is no means of doing this on the basis of the knowledge that we have. While it would be possible to disqualify those with very short leg times, it is not practical by this means to recognise all those who crossed the river.
In view of the above, we believe that the leg is unfair. We support the organiser’s decision to remove the time for that leg. While there are some changes to positions as a result of this, the vast majority of runners benefit from the removal of advantage from those who crossed the river but did not disqualify themselves. We recognise that no solution is ideal, but we believe that voiding the leg produces the least unfair outcome.
Day 2 Jury
Neville Baker, Hedley Calderbank, Simon Errington
