Jipped at Snowshoe (24 hrs of..that is)

"Nate" wrote in message
om...
Ah yes. Once again it was time for the 24 hours of Snowshoe. Mud,
roots and pain. I love this race. And this year was no exception,
however....

I organized a team to race Co-ed pro/am but decided to jump over to 5
person open since there was no competition in pro/am. Pam and I had
never ridden with any other riders on this years team, so we wondered
what we were in for. Everyone seemed to be pretty fast, or so they
said : )

I had noticed a few days before the race that a team racing under the
name West Virginia Homegrown had raced in the Expert Class the
previous year (named Hammerheads) and finished 4th out of 23 teams.
This year they had the same team plus one guy's wife. In the 5 person
open, your team may have 1 expert male (no more), at least 1 female,
and any other males must be sport riders. So I e-mailed Laird Knight
of this situation. The response was: We will bring this to their
attention.

At the race, the course was actually quite dry this year and more
rideable for many. We entered our team under the name Pray for Rain,
mainly to **** off those with no sense of humor.

During the race, things went as good as could be expected. We had
one very fast rider, myself and another guy were about the same
speed, and my g/f Pam and another very fast woman. Our mechanic
swapped the rear wheel between my bike and Pam's each lap, (I trashed
my crossmax the week before) and swapped eggbeaters between the other
rider's bikes as Stuart's broke right before his lap. Our second lady
was putting on make-up before her laps as if to hook up with some stud
on the trail. She showed up to her first lap without her scan-in card
but with some other team's baton!?!?! WTF??? She put out fast lap
times, so I didn't care about anything else.

During the race, the W.Va. Homegrown team was in the lead (of our
class) the whole race. No surprise there. So during the last hour of
the race, I personally found Laird and talked to him about the
sandbagging situation. He told me that the team right behind us in
3rd was going to protest the Homegrown team until they found out they
too could be DQ'd for sand bagging, so they withdrew their protest.
So I paid the $50 and put in the protest against W.Va. Homegrown.
Laird said to make it fair, I may as well file a protest against the
3rd place team too. Even though they weren't beating us, I figured
it was only fair.

After talking to the other teams under protest, Laird was somewhat
feeling guilty for not doing something about this situation before the
race, so the Homegrown team could at least switch classes or modify
their team. So after lots of controversy, (and the Homegrown team
protesting us) Laird decided to keep the final results as final.

Laird knew he screwed up pretty bad and decided to give our team extra
prizes to try to quell our anger. He even offered to refund our
team's entry fee, but I felt that was too much -- I can be a softy
sometimes. We know Laird and Elizabeth and didn't want to be complete
jerks about the situation...

At the podium, Laird apologized for the situation involving the 5
person open category to the crowd. We shook hands with the 3rd place
team and took our spot on 2nd place. When W.Va. Homegrown was called
up, mutterings of "sandbaggers" and the such were heard around. Only
2 of their riders shook our hands before hopping onto the podium.
Their team was told to consider themselves experts in the future.

Even though the ending results were jacked, we all had a good race
and some fun to boot. For all those who skipped out this year for
fear of too much unrideable mud, you guys missed out. And believe
me, there were still plenty of slick technical sections for the
sickos (myself included) who like it hard.

If I am still here come next year, Pam and I will surely be there
again. Damn, this is a great race.


Cool race report. What's sandbagging? And what exactly did they do wrong
again? They had more than one expert?

--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

Cool race report. What's sandbagging? And what exactly did they do wrong
again? They had more than one expert?

--
Phil, Squid-in-Training


Sandbagging = Racing in a division that you're too good for when you should be in the next division (or two) up.
--
Slacker

(Nate) wrote in message . com...
snip

Lard is a bungwad.

JD

big snip

Sandbagging really sucks. A few years ago some buddies and I entered a
12 hour race in GA as beginners. We were all borderline beginner/sport
riders but none of us had ever done a multi hour event so we figured
beginner class would be about right. We had an unusually good race (no
mishaps whatsoever) on a day were it seemed everyone else was having
problems. We ended pounding the entire beginner *and* sport class, and
actually placed in the top 5 of the experts. We felt really guilty
about it and everyone was calling us sandbaggers. We even tried to get
the race organizers to move us up to expert class with no luck.

Anyway, I don't know how someone could do it intentionally. We all felt
like we were ruining everyone elses race and it really made it hard for
us to enjoy the otherwise fun race.

Anyway, I don't know how someone could do it intentionally. We all felt
like we were ruining everyone elses race and it really made it hard for
us to enjoy the otherwise fun race.

To solve the problem, everyone should enter expert.

--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

Phil, Squid-in-Training wrote:
Anyway, I don't know how someone could do it intentionally. We all felt
like we were ruining everyone elses race and it really made it hard for
us to enjoy the otherwise fun race.


To solve the problem, everyone should enter expert.


Or just don't give out prizes, race for fun.

Slacker wrote:
Cool race report. What's sandbagging? And what exactly did they do wrong
again? They had more than one expert?

--
Phil, Squid-in-Training



Sandbagging = Racing in a division that you're too good for when you should be in the next division (or two) up.

In flyball, we handle that situation by establishing a breakout time
based on the seed times submitted by each team. Once the divisions are
sorted out, the breakout time for each division is set at one second
faster than the fastest seed time submitted for that division. If your
team runs faster than that, you lose that heat (and any title points you
might have earned). Do it three times in a day and your team is
automatically DQ'ed from placement in your division. Only in division 1
- the fastest division - is there no breakout time.
If you do a bad job of calculating your seed times, or have to sub in a
faster dog, you wind up having to hold your passes to avoid breaking
out. Not only is it not fun, it's really hard to do, as the dogs will
speed up to try to make up for your slow releases (yes, they know it's a
race).
So I assume that there's nothing like a "breakout" provision in 24 hour
races?

Kathleen

out. Not only is it not fun, it's really hard to do, as the dogs will
speed up to try to make up for your slow releases (yes, they know it's a
race).

Flyball? Dog racing? Sledding? What is it?

--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

Phil, Squid-in-Training wrote:
out. Not only is it not fun, it's really hard to do, as the dogs will
speed up to try to make up for your slow releases (yes, they know it's a
race).


Flyball? Dog racing? Sledding? What is it?

It's a relay race. Four dogs run during any given heat, but there can
be up to six dogs on the roster. Each dog runs down over a series of
four hurdles, triggers a spring loaded box, which fires out a tennis
ball. The dog catches the tennis ball, returns over the hurdles, and
the next dog goes. The first team back with four clean runs wins.
At tournaments, starts are signalled with a light tree, and there are
electric eye sensors that monitor the starting line for accurate starts
and passes.
In a perfect start, the dog's nose crosses the starting line at the
exact moment the light turns green, preferably with the dog already up
to full speed. The amber, amber, green sequence takes exactly 2 seconds
to complete. I release Zane 53 feet from the starting line with the
first amber light. Our start delay is typically in the .003 to .007
second range (He crosses the starting line, already going full-tilt
boogie, no more than .007 seconds after the green light glows).
In a perfect pass, the outbound dog's nose breaks the start beam as
soon as the inbound dog's nose crosses. Too soon, and it's an early
pass, and the offending dog has to re-run. Too late, and you've cost
your team time. And as I mentioned before, the dogs don't cooperate
well with attempts to slow them down with late passes, or starting too
far back.
All in all, it's great fun for the handlers and the dogs. But, as in
any sport, there are people who take it way too seriously. Hence the
anti-sandbagging rules.

Flyball FAQ: http://www.flyballdogs.com/FAQ.html
Flyball Home Page: http://www.flyballdogs.com/

Kahtleen

"Kathleen" wrote in message
...
Phil, Squid-in-Training wrote:
out. Not only is it not fun, it's really hard to do, as the dogs will
speed up to try to make up for your slow releases (yes, they know it's a
race).


Flyball? Dog racing? Sledding? What is it?

It's a relay race. Four dogs run during any given heat, but there can
be up to six dogs on the roster. Each dog runs down over a series of
four hurdles, triggers a spring loaded box, which fires out a tennis
ball. The dog catches the tennis ball, returns over the hurdles, and
the next dog goes. The first team back with four clean runs wins.
At tournaments, starts are signalled with a light tree, and there are
electric eye sensors that monitor the starting line for accurate starts
and passes.
In a perfect start, the dog's nose crosses the starting line at the
exact moment the light turns green, preferably with the dog already up
to full speed. The amber, amber, green sequence takes exactly 2 seconds
to complete. I release Zane 53 feet from the starting line with the
first amber light. Our start delay is typically in the .003 to .007
second range (He crosses the starting line, already going full-tilt
boogie, no more than .007 seconds after the green light glows).
In a perfect pass, the outbound dog's nose breaks the start beam as
soon as the inbound dog's nose crosses. Too soon, and it's an early
pass, and the offending dog has to re-run. Too late, and you've cost
your team time. And as I mentioned before, the dogs don't cooperate
well with attempts to slow them down with late passes, or starting too
far back.
All in all, it's great fun for the handlers and the dogs. But, as in
any sport, there are people who take it way too seriously. Hence the
anti-sandbagging rules.

Flyball FAQ: http://www.flyballdogs.com/FAQ.html
Flyball Home Page: http://www.flyballdogs.com/

Kahtleen


One tactic I saw was since hurdles are set to the dog with the shortest legs
each team had one dog with really short legs. Which makes for a funny
looking border collie. It was a segment in a show on the breed.

Mike