Sprint Qualifications - A Dsq Disaster! but SAfricans all safe (maybe)

It's 11pm on Tuesday night - the Sprint Event Day. The Sprint Final has taken place and Linnea Gustafsson (SWE) and Daniel Hubmann (SUI) have been crowned World Champions. The extraordinary part however, is that despite the Finals now being all done and over, there are still no official results from the Qualifications held earlier this morning. We don't know the official final positions of the South African competitors in this earlier event (other than none of us qualified for the Final), nor do we know if any of us have been disqualified!

The DSQ's

The disqualification issue is quite important, as a large percentage of the field were initially disqualified due to issues of crossing uncrossable areas and boundaries. A rough count and unofficial comments suggest that about 11 women and 39 men were originally disqualified. Thankfully, hearsay has none of the South Africans in this list (so far). The primary error seems to be a lot of athletes accidentally or intentionally cutting across some lawns to the last control that had been marked 'out of bounds' (olive green) on the map.

Pic: The finish arena and the 'out of bounds' grass lawns that were marked in olive-green colour.

However, two other 'hot spots' were also noted, where competitors may have crossed an olive green flower garden (west of control 41) and two 'uncrossable' walls (near control 46).

Left: Control # 41 and Right: Control # 46 (images from Men's B heat)

It is unknown weather anyone has been disqualified for mistakes near #41, but the organisers did initially decide not to disqualify runners for crossing the walls near #46 as they said this would have resulted in over 100 disqualifications (over 50% of the field!!!), resulting in a ludicrous situation.

There is no need to point out that there has subsequently been a lot of upset people and heated debate. It has not been a good day for elite international orienteering. Matters were made worse by the imminent Sprint Final in the afternoon. With live TV broadcasts and hundreds of waiting spectators, no delay could be afforded and the organisers had to rush decisions without proper thought and process. At least to some degree, the main favourites and higher ranked athletes had managed to keep most of their noses clean and were all in the finals as expected. There were a few exceptions though, with matters getting more complicated when some runners were 'temporarily' reinstated and added to the final field, whilst others weren't (or perhaps couldn't be notified in time).

From a South African perspective, what is known is the following:
1) The qualification race took place in the town of Aix-les-Bains. Good warm weather, nice crowds and a nice mix of forest and urban.
2) Jeremy ran Heat A, finishing approximately 28th (before Dsq's) in a time of 19:13 (+4:04 to the winner). He is slightly worried in that he doesn't know whether he ran out of bounds near #41. He definitely didn't run across any flower beds, but a poorly drawn part of the map leaves a grassy gap that he thinks he may have run down. Otherwise a good run which he is fairly happy with, loosing some time in a few small places.
3) Nicholas ran in Heat B, originally finishing 31st in 19:32 (+4:30). There is also concern here as he cut down the edge of the cliff / wall to the east of #46. The big question is where is the edge of the crossable part of the wall (solid grey line) next to the road and which part is uncrossable (solid black line). Nicholas had a very good run, only loosing 10-15 seconds in total (controls 4 - indecision and control 6 - not accurate whilst attacking the control) and is very happy with all his route choices.
4) Michael is the only one who has kept his nose very clean. He doesn't have any worries and is confident he avoided all the areas for potential disqualification. However, he had problems early on, loosing time on some early controls in the forest section. This is his first WOC, so it was undoubtedly a big learning curve on his favourite event distance. He originally finished approximately 29th in 20:49, with many minutes of mistakes. All three heats had approximately 45 runners in them.

Here is Nicholas' map:

From Orienteering Maps

So an interesting day for the team. After all the confusion, we took time out to visit the two main control sites that were causing so much trouble to try and make sense of the confusion. To put it bluntly, the map in these areas is sub-standard. When a few orienteers make a mistake, they are probably to blame. However, when such large portions of the field (all elite athletes at the top of the sport and all of whom know the rules very well) make mistakes, there must be some other faults.

Control #41












Most competitors approached control #41 from the north, entering the lawns below it via the passageway near the water fountain. On exiting the tunnel and turning left, you needed to jump the end of a crossable fence and then avoid the olive green flowerbed en route to the control. The map indicates this will require you to run to the right. However...

 Pic: Jeremy points out a grassy area that separates the flowerbed from the adjacent hedge in front of the sidewalk cafe (which is indicated on the map in pink - also out of bounds).

Pic: The gap between the hedge and the flowerbed from the west. Control #41 was placed on the balcony of the casino in the background. Despite the gap between hedge and flowerbed not appearing on the map, also note the missing gap in the hedge!

Control #46

Competitors approached #46 from either the south-west (from the small dashed footpath) or from the south-east (along the larger brown footpath). The control was in the inside corner of the wall, with a significant drop that essentially also made it a cliff. Another nearby wall / cliff runs parallel to the brown footpath. Both walls / cliffs have a black (unpassable) and grey (passable) section to them. In Sprint Orienteering, this dictates whether you are allowed to cross or not.

 Pic: The view from below. The control was above the wall on the far right of the image. Jeremy is standing in a bend of the wall which seperates the uncrossable section to the right and the crossable section to the left. Jeremy and Michael both ran very far around the left (even around the tree) just in case.

  

 Pic: The wall / cliff next to the upper track. Jeremy stands at the point which on the map indicates the break between the crossable section (to our right) and the uncrossable section (to our left, going past the tree).

Pic: Just past the tree, in the 'uncrossable section' of the wall, there are two embankments where it is very easy to run down and up without realising you are crossing an uncrossable wall / cliff. At speed, most athletes would assume one of these two gaps is the break point between the crossable and uncrossable sections. The cliff / wall further to our left starts to get quite big and uncrossable from this left-hand gap.

A look back to yesterday

Monday was a public holiday in France, and was also the Opening Ceremony of the World Championships. It was a very good affair, with a few highlights like 100/200m French track athlete Christoph Lemaitre being present to unfurl the French flag. He jetted off the his own World Champs in Korea the next morning! The highlight for the South African team was walking into the arena first!!! 'South Africa' in French is 'Afrique du Sud', so we got the privledge to enter first just ahead of Germany (Allemagne) and Australia (Australie).

We'll get back to you on the official results of the Sprint Qualification... when they're finally available. At least the jury will get a good day to decide on things.