Technical Director Update
August 14th, 2008
Wow, what happened? The last time I sat down to write one of these, the season had just started and now we are looking at the road season winding down and CX beginning. This will be another update with a random assortment of materials.
Officials Fees and Invoices
I hope by now you all know that we did change the mileage reimbursement rate to forty-six cents per mile. I changed the officials invoice spreadsheet to reflect that and reposted. You should be able to get it by going to:
http://www.usacycling.org/forms/officials/
Look for the document called 2008 OfficialsInvoiceSheet (061708).xls, and be sure to read the instruction page before doing anything. I think it is sufficiently idiot- proofed so that it would be difficult to destroy, but it was taxing my fledgling excel skills to protect the various cells so that you could not accidentally overwrite the formulas.
If the event is a National Championship and the checks are going to come from Colorado Springs, please remember we need receipts for things like parking and tolls. Also, each tab on the sheet is for a particular official and must be signed if mileage is being claimed. Payments to officials from National Championships often gets delayed for lack of these things.
Waivers and Occurrence Forms (does this look familiar? It should)
While most of your jobs as an official have to do with managing bike races and generally doing the types of things that got you into the sport, occasionally you will be faced with the task of managing the post-event paperwork trail. This becomes absolutely critical when there has been an injury to anyone associated with the race. We must have a properly filled out occurrence report and copy of the injured rider’s signed waiver as soon as possible. In very serious cases, such as any transport to the hospital, the same documents should be immediately faxed to our insurance carrier. The info is on the report of occurrence. The insurance company is Philadelphia Insurance Company (phone – 800-765-9749, fax – 800-685-9238). If you have not cleaned out your officiating supplies in a few years, you might still have some occurrence forms with K & K on it, which means you definitely have old forms. Please take as second to load those two numbers into your cell phone database.
Consider this last one part of the Greatest Hits. It seems we are still having problems with this. Many Chief Referees have failed to submit paperwork in a timely matter and we still have problems when riders are transported to the hospital and we have no paperwork.
Fifteen Minute Protest Period
At the risk of telling you there is no Santa Claus, many people seem very confused on what the fifteen minute protest period is. Here is the rule:
1N6. Results. At the end of the race, the Chief Judge will inform the riders of the time and place where the results will be posted or announced, and the Chief Judge shall be available there to resolve any protest. Prizes may not be distributed until all protests have been answered and at least 15 minutes have passed since the results were announced
That is about it for the rule. It says you don’t hand out prizes until at least 15 minutes have passed since you posted results. The rule was written to protect organizers so they would not have to wait forever to have their award ceremonies and pass out the prizes. In a sense it is a CYA for them so that if later a rider comes up and wants to protest, the organizer cannot be blamed for giving away the rider’s prize to someone else.
However, that is not what the rule seems to have become. It has mutated into something else. Many people believe the rule means, “no results may be changed after 15 minutes.” Others act as though this means, “officials no longer have to do their jobs after 15 minutes.” Both are far from the truth. It would often be silly to stand on wrong results just because of the 15 minutes. Let me give you an example. There was a well known race a couple of years ago that takes place for several days and has many categories. The results were posted. Points were at stake for an overall title. Money was at stake on the day and for the overall title. An hour or so after the cat 3 race was over, a rider came up protesting that he was not on the results. He believed he finished in 5th. His number was something like 328. On the posted results, they had a 323 listed in 5th place, along with a name of a rider who was a master having competed in the 35+ race and not in the cat 3 race. The rider in question pointed out that the rider they had listed was not even in the race. He was told, “sorry, your 15 minutes were up 45 minutes ago. There is nothing we can do now.”
That is clearly an extreme example of the wrong usage of the “fifteen minute rule.” In that case there was zero downside to changing the number, reposting, crediting the rider with his points, and giving him the prize, since the prize had not been given out, since the master rider never came to the awards ceremony for a race he was not in. It was also much easier, especially in a hectic day with multiple categories for the officials to blow the guy off and not have to redo the results, but that was not a very customer-friendly decision.
The extreme in the other direction would be when someone comes up well after the protest period and wants to say they should have been in the top whatever but the results were posted, and there were no protests. The prizes have been given out, and there is no tangible proof. That is certainly a good time to invoke the rule. It is clearly too late for that rider. Had he shown up in time, the CJ might have been able to get information from other officials or other riders and seen if that rider really was there at the finish.
Unfortunately we often are caught in the middle somewhere. This has even happened at top level races, even National Championships. Mountain biking often has such issues because so many categories ride at the same time. Many times the results are posted, medals are given out, and then we realize that someone was listed in the wrong category. The error at putting them in the wrong category may have had nothing to do with them. When the error is discovered, it turns out that instead of finishing 26th in the master men 35+ race, they really won the 55+ race. For these situations, there is no easy answer as to how to handle it. Sometimes, the correct answer is, “sorry, your fifteen minutes are up.” Sometimes the correct answer is to fix the results, even if that means the next day. Maybe the money and medal has left the building, but the BAR points or series points could be fixed.
My point in all this is to make sure officials realize that there is NO rule that says, “results may never be changed after 15 minutes.” Of course, the corollary to this is that once you do start changing results, you have to be very, very careful as you are taking your first step down a potentially slippery slope.
Upcoming Clinics
It is time to start thinking about the Annual Official’s Conclave. While it is difficult to get a good consensus on a time, most thought it would be useful to do it in the late fall, when everyone is well done with the road season. That also gets us out of the Olympic scramble, board meetings and other things that keep us busy. As always we want to poll our studio audience about when it should be and what clinics should be offered. The only clinic I am 100% dedicated to offering is the Mountain Bike National Commissaire course. We have had several candidates patiently awaiting this and they have been waiting for so long that we will hold this even if we have only one confirmed student. Of course I would rather find a time when we can get more than that. It would be a boring course for one. Other possible clinics would be the road level A course and perhaps even the motoref A course, which we have put off for a year or two now. We may offer a BMX level C class. Anything is possible at the moment. Rather than building it and hoping you come, we are asking what we should build.
So, please drop me a line and tell me the following:
- When you would like to see the course be
- What clinics you would wish to attend
That is it for the moment. Have a good end of the season and enjoy watching the Olympics. Yea Kristin and Levi!!!!
Shawn Farrell
Technical Director
sfarrell@usacycling.org
