--On Thursday, August 22, 2002 8:27 PM -0400 Kurt Eikenberg
<dogpatch88@mac.com>
wrote:
> I have since learned that the people receiving the cone penalties called
> in from the course were located in a different location from the
> announcer and the announcer could only report penalties that he actually
> saw. If true, it would explain a lot. A bad situation.
Kurt,
Here's some more stuff that I haven't had a chance to tell you since then.
Let me start at the end -- I think the practices in place for most major events
are sufficient -- there is a process for getting all penalty information to the
announcer, and all penalties are posted on the yellow sheets (the second page
from the corner stations and master radio log) after each run, and the
computer results are also audited after each run.
But at this event, that's not how it happened. The cause was that while the
Chief of Scoring and the Event Chairs were all hard working, smart people,
they had never even run an event that used corner sheets and audits, never
mind working T&S at one or being Chiefs/Chairs of such an event.
I was, officially speaking, the Chief of Timing at that event. I was
asked to do this less than a week before the event, if that gives you any
sense of how well the Timing & Scoring process was prepared. I accepted,
on the condition that they understood that my family would be there and I
was not willing to spend the entire weekend holed up in T&S.
Then they posted the run order, with us running in first heat -- that's
something most events try carefully to avoid, because first heat is when
the Chief of Timing really needs to be in Timing. So a little lack of
communication there too.
(This was especially difficult for Bob and I, as not only was I Chief of
Timing, but he was the Chief Steward -- AND he had two kids running in
Formula Junior, which also ran in the first heat. I asked them to switch
us right after they posted the run order, and then we asked again on
Friday night, but they couldn't find a way to do it.)
Now, mind you, I was NOT the Chief of Scoring -- in a very unusual move,
they split Timing and Scoring into two separate positions. I was told all
of that was under control. I didn't learn that it wasn't until about the
middle of the day on Saturday.
Near the end of the day on Saturday, I went in to check on everything,
and learned that they had not been auditing penalties at all, just times
(which are much, much easier). So I (with a lot of help) spent two hours
after the event auditing the Saturday results, and found over 100 errors.
On Sunday, I did my best to put better practices into place with regard
to auditing, and it went a lot better -- I only had to spend 40 minutes
at the end of the event. But I never did manage to fix the rest of the
Scoring process, including how penalties got relayed from corner station
to the truck to the announcer. It was different every heat according to
who was in there, and I guess during our heat (when I obviously could not
be there) they still hadn't figured out the importance of this.
So it was a rookie mistake by some new folks who stepped up to the plate
to volunteer to run this event. I think it was an isolated incident, and
it certainly sucked in the way that it played out for you.
But we should all learn from this -- after each run, go check the master
time log for your time and the corner sheets for your penalties. Those are
the authoritative sources. You have the right, according to the rulebook,
to refuse to take your next run until those are posted. Don't trust the
computer results or the announcer; those are unofficial unless marked
otherwise.
Mark
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