It will be difficult for France to win any WOC relay medal in the future. Thierry is the only French who can handle the 2010, 2011, and 2013 terrains. Maybe a bronze medal in 2012

An injury to one or more competitors should not cause a race to be voided unless it is palpably unfair and could have reasonably been avoided by the organisers.

The case where runners who are not injured become affected by an injury to another is different. It is the organiser’s responsibility to provide a fair race and in that sense they have the responsibility to deal with the injured runner – not the other competitors. Clearly in orienteering that is impossible – you can’t have marshalls across the whole forest – so we have accept that sometimes sport isn’t the most important thing in life – Rob appears to accept that but his inclination is to let the result stand – mine would be to publish the results but not declare a World Champion.

I’ve not read the rules but if the intent is to say that you must help an injured runner in all circumstances then I would say our rules aren’t really sound for holding championships at national or international level.

Rob’s assertion that if a competitor follows one rule then another rule doesn’t apply is not logical.

The other point about rules is that they are for guidance and interpretation. It is impossible to legislate for every eventually in rules and rather pointless to try. Life’s too short.

For example the World Championships is there to find the World Champion, not to rank everyone in order, although that’s nice also. Hence I personally would handle the situation differently when the top teams are affected compared with when teams lower down the order are affected. You can’t legislate that fairly – you have to take a common-sense judgement on the day. Of course I’d do whatever I could to help those teams get a result they can take back to their funding bodies, but it may not be possible to keep everyone happy.

From what we know so far, and taking the meaning of ‘unfair’ to be “was the competition fair or unfair”, here’s a handy table to cut out and carry around:

Twisting an ankle – Not unfair.
Swallowing a bee – Bizarre, unlucky, unjust perhaps, but not unfair.
Stopping your potentially medal winning run to help another competitor – unfair.

I can think of lots of other examples – the degree to whether they represent an unfair competition really has to be based on whether the competitor was at fault and whether the responsibility for causing or handling the incident could be deemed to lie with the organisers or soley with the competitor. So if the leading runner is bitten by a dog it’s probably just unlucky but if they get taken out by a mountain bike as there is a mountain bike race on at the same time then I’d say that is an unfair race – provided it wasn’t obviously the competitor’s fault e.g. the fastest route was coincident with the mountain bike route. If the competitor was actually lost but not out of bounds when the bike hit them then that’s an even greyer shade of grey.

Somehow I reckon it won’t be long before Switzerland win it for real and I hope it won’t be long before France do. Probably be a (little) bit longer before GB win again – our bee keeper has retired.

Such views by important governing bodies should, initially at least, be expressed privately and not for all to see. But since they so quickly voice their strong opinion in public, let us discuss their stance.

NOF point to IOF rule 26.13 as justification to cancel the result. That rule states:

“The organiser must void a competition if at any point it becomes clear that circumstances have arisen which make the competition unfair or dangerous for the competitors.”

Their argument, it seems, is because the race for the medals was spoiled, the competition should be cancelled – it is “unfair”. The counter-argument to their view is simple.

There are 13 sub-sections to the fair play rule in IOF rules. They need to be all read together, not one point taken in isolation. In particular, Rule 26.3 states “It is the duty of all competitors to help injured runners.” Because Nordberg, Smola and Gueorgiou followed this rule, the competition cannot be classed as unfair.

Sport is full of examples where winners on the day are lucky, and others can point to misfortune. We seem to have quickly forgotten what happened 12 months ago. If a competition is held solely to find the winner, then perhaps last year’s men’s relay result should also have been cancelled. Whether you are stung by a bee or fall on a stick, if some accident happens to the leader of the race, then yes, let us cancel the competition! What next, if the race leader twists their ankle in the finish chute and gets overtaken, the race suddenly becomes “unfair”?

So the winner on the day was not the best in the field. It happens in sport many times (e.g. the Australian speed skater at the Winter Olympics). It is unfortunate, but is the nature of sport, and not “unfair”. The organiser should be congratulated for allowing the results to stand no doubt in the face of pressure from some nations. They have done the right thing.