Results for British Relays, Greno Wood, 18/05/2003

Co-ordinator

Organiser

The key to a successful Relay is creating a buzz amongst competitors and spectators - mainly the same people in different roles. To achieve that buzz you need a fairly fast runnable forest technical enough for us lesser mortals to make mistakes when racing (and even the elite). For the JK and British Relays, it shouldn't be too technical - relays which drag on are a pain, not just for the poor sods lost in the forest - everyone wants to get off reasonably early. But of equal importance is the assembly area/arena.

EPOC has done both a British and JK relay before and we've thought a lot about how to get an atmosphere. I think the essentials are:

1. a big re-entrant. Flat assembly fields, even tilting flat fields, just can't work as well. The spectators and waiting competitors have to be able to see the in-coming runners. A re-entrant is the only way of ensuring good visibility for everyone (until we can afford stands).

2. a good commentary to keep everyone informed and entertained.

I can't stand number calling when I'm in a waiting pen - I can't cope with the noise of it as well as a commentary - in the end, I usually feel rather detached from the event whilst waiting. By getting the sight lines right, we avoided the necessity of calling the numbers and the people in the waiting pen were able to hear the commentary clearly. In designing the changeover pen we were helped by Roger Baker's comments about angles of taping, run-ins and run-outs and the results was that it all needed very little supervision so the CLARO team had very little to do. Only a couple of people missed their connection.

Andy Monro and Chris Poole leading the commentary had a terrific team supporting them and got almost every class announced correctly - by far the best performance at any JK or British so far. But they were very dependant on Michael Napier's system picking up competitors dibbing at both the final control and the control prior to the spectator control so they could get the info to you spectators as competitors were running by and not after they had passed. His system was the key factor in enabling the prize giving to start almost on time and be finished so early, achieving a near full turnout of teams on the flattened podium. Any organiser contemplating doing a relay like this and not using his service needs their mental health checking.

When you had all disappeared I checked the field for litter. I found two tiny bits of paper the size of thumb nail so a terrific thank you for that. Mind you, Wilf's were a bit disconcerted that many people stuck their plastic water bottles in their plastic bags - that wasn't intended by us - apologies to Wilf!

So the team of helpers who worked like Trojans went away very very tired but very cheerful indeed because it was apparent that everyone, well almost everyone, had enjoyed the day. My grateful thanks to EBOR, finish, downloading and results, CLARO, changeover, EPOC helpers for most of the rest, MDOC's Ian Watson the Elder, for perfect (ie calm, good-humoured, practical) controlling, and meticulous planner Richard Payne (he was the chap in tears at the Prize-giving because I forgot to thank him - we're going to rectify that by letting him plan our next informal), and lastly, but not least, Brian Shaw and Phil Haywood with their SYO team who gave us invaluable support - as a thank-you to them we're putting on a podium building course.

Ian McMillan (EPOC)

Protest

A protest was submitted at the re-instatement of SYO in the Men's Premier Class. Their last runner's punch did not register. He was initially disqualified but reinstated by the controller who had been standing at the control.

The protest was considered by the jury who decided:
"The competitor must be disqualified because it is the competitor's responsibility to put the punch in the e-card."

As there will be quite a bit of discussion amongst orienteers about this I quote the relevant BOF Rule:

"6.5.2 The control card, electronic or otherwise, must clearly show that all controls have been visited. A competitor with a control punch missing or unidentifiable shall be disqualified unless it can be established with certainty that the punch missing or unidentifiable is not the competitor's fault and that the competitor visited the control. In this exceptional circumstance, other evidence may be used to prove that the competitor visited the control, such as evidence from control officials or cameras or read-out from the control unit. In all other circumstances, such evidence is not acceptable."

You can check the BOF rules by following the Technical link on the BOF Web site.

Planner

Having planned or controlled a major relay event on three previous occasions (Deffer, Clumber and Chatsworth) I convinced myself by saying yes to planning at Greno that it wouldn't take up much of my time. 500 hours of work later I am writing this report.

I started planning 12 months ago by walking around the area and tagging and photographing possible sites using the old map. The main problem I found was the lack of possible control sites bearing in mind in several areas I was looking for not one but at least three possible control opportunities for the gafflings. At this time Ian was planning on using the western side of the car park field as the changeover area.

During the latter part of 2002 it became clear that there was a better opportunity for the changeover field and Ian was in immediate agreement that it was more suitable. This meant quite a change in planning but meant less climb and gave more scope for a spectator control.

Once the map came back from Dave Peel we had more features but still not enough to maximise the benefit of the area for a relay event. Fortunately, with some persuasion, he remapped some areas particularly around the changeover field allowing the use of even more features. I also added some man made features such as hides to help navigation and use as additional sites.

I then got down to the main planning and realised it would be difficult to get a start finish and loop to allow a spectator control and still provide a readable map. In the end this was achieved by having a long uphill first leg for the longer courses, which fitted into my strategy of breaking the competitors up early, but allowing the later opportunity of head to head racing from the spectator control to the end should competitors still be together. Looking at the times I feel this worked.

As we got nearer the event the vegetation, with the early warm weather, made the area more difficult and we decided to reduce the lengths of the courses to keep within a 120 minute winning times. This gave the opportunity to use the Southern end more effectively and actually improved the courses. However, I have to apologise to the ladies as I seem to have over-compensated and the winning times were a little quick. I hope I am forgiven.

For the youngsters, I make no apology for a winning time of around 25 minutes. My aim here was to make an easy and enjoyable course and get them back quickly and safely to provide spectator interest before the elite runners came to the spectator control.

Overall I used 100 control units at 76 sites doubling up particularly at the first controls and those with an expected high usage. There were 36 courses with a maximum of 5 permutations for the longer courses with three variations for the first half and two for the second.

My thanks go to:
Dave Peel for his understanding of my need for features which he would not normally map;
Jonathan Emberton for his valuable assistance on the SI side and to Rod Ryall in help with the map and to both for help over the weekend;
Michael Napier for his calmness despite my attempts to make life difficult for him;
and finally particular thanks to Ian Watson, our Controller, for his support and advice. I felt we both had similar views on planning and controlling which made for a pleasant relationship without any panics or disagreements.

Richard Payne