Comments on: Mixed Sprint Relay: A Quick Note About Forking

By: Graeme Ackland

Graeme Ackland — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 23:10:32 +0000

I agree they could have done the forking differently. But the problem here is that the forkings are unbalanced, not that they fork men vs women. The problems you mention would still be there even if the course was designed for teams of all men.

By: Jan

Jan — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 22:54:26 +0000

Sure, the advantage of seeing other runners ahead leads to bigger time differences than the difference due to forking men vs women, but as long as you can make good courses without forking men vs women, I can not see a good reason to do it? In this example there are many other better ways to fork than done here, the rest of the course for the women is unforked except for a minute difference for a control in the middle of the course. Why not have two forkings at the first control and rather introduce better forking at other controls? It looks like the course setter put all energy into this first control…

By: Graeme Ackland

Graeme Ackland — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 22:32:10 +0000

That’s a bit of a cheap shot Jan – obviously I’m not proposing unfairness just for the sake of it.
Forking is unfair and so is following, but we happen to know how unfair forking is. Forking men vs women would be fairer if people are unfairly gaining more than 2 sec by following/chasing. Do you think so?

The ideal is for everyone to run t an invisibility cloak (which could still be seen by IOF on TV, of course). Until we can do that, we’re stuck with forking.

By: Jan Kocbach

Jan Kocbach — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 08:15:46 +0000

Different opinions is a good thing; if only people agreeing with the author would write their comments, that would not bring the world forward. So thanks a lot for your comment.

If you have a very good course setter/controller, you can get away with forking men against women. The problem is that if you open up for it, you will have situations were you can get very bad results.

For the mixed sprint relay it might actually be an even bigger issue if the time difference for the longest and the shortest forking on a leg is large (e.g. 20-30 seconds which we have seen some times), as the ones with long forking in the start of the relay can use that to their advantage in the end of the relay.

My point, however, is that you should work as hard as you can on fairness issues in all steps to ensure the best possible result. If you allow some “small unfairnesses” here and there, it can add up to a lot in the end – especially if the organizer/course setter/controller is not 110% competent ….