telling tales out of school

I run the website for my racing club. I got a request forwarded to me
from another club member to adjust the results to credit a rider with
7th place in a Cat 4/5 race.

The racer sent us 2 voicemails and 3 emails requesting the change, in
the course of a few days.

I'm writing this to salute the enthusiasm of this new racer, and to say
that this anecdote expresses everything that's great about amateur
racing.

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."

On Apr 18, 1:29*pm, Ryan Cousineau wrote:
I run the website for my racing club. I got a request forwarded to me
from another club member to adjust the results to credit a rider with
7th place in a Cat 4/5 race.

The racer sent us 2 voicemails and 3 emails requesting the change, in
the course of a few days.

I'm writing this to salute the enthusiasm of this new racer, and to say
that this anecdote expresses everything that's great about amateur
racing.

For a while my wife and I were involved in coaching juniors on a small
entry level team. We tended to pick up inexperienced kids who had been
referred to us by other more elite teams. We picked up one such kid
and in our first conversation before a race, the first thing he wanted
to talk about was whether I could fix the result from the previous
week's race where he felt he been placed a lap down from his correct
placing. I explained that there was nothing we could do after the
protest period had expired and about how he needed to stay at the race
site to check his results. I watched his race and was impressed by how
tenacious he was even after getting dropped and having to ride solo.
He was riding with every thing he had in him. And when the results
were posted they had him a lap down from his correct placing again
which was very disheartening to the kid. I took him to the official
and we protested the result which was corrected. When I had a chance
to talk to the official alone, I suggested that the kid was faster
than he looked and that she might be making some false assumptions
about him being lapped because of his size. I asked her to please
watch him more carefully. Not that this matters, but ten years later
the kid is a 6 ft tall Cat 1 with U23 experience in Belgium.

On Apr 18, 6:14*pm, Bret wrote:
On Apr 18, 1:29*pm, Ryan Cousineau wrote:

I run the website for my racing club. I got a request forwarded to me
from another club member to adjust the results to credit a rider with
7th place in a Cat 4/5 race.

The racer sent us 2 voicemails and 3 emails requesting the change, in
the course of a few days.

I'm writing this to salute the enthusiasm of this new racer, and to say
that this anecdote expresses everything that's great about amateur
racing.

For a while my wife and I were involved in coaching juniors on a small
entry level team. We tended to pick up inexperienced kids who had been
referred to us by other more elite teams. We picked up one such kid
and in our first conversation before a race, the first thing he wanted
to talk about was whether I could fix the result from the previous
week's race where he felt he been placed a lap down from his correct
placing. I explained that there was nothing we could do after the
protest period had expired and about how he needed to stay at the race
site to check his results. I watched his race and was impressed by how
tenacious he was even after getting dropped and having to ride solo.
He was riding with every thing he had in him. And when the results
were posted they had him a lap down from his correct placing again
which was very disheartening to the kid. I took him to the official
and we protested the result which was corrected. When I had a chance
to talk to the official alone, I suggested that the kid was faster
than he looked and that she might be making some false assumptions
about him being lapped because of his size. I asked her to please
watch him more carefully. Not that this matters, but ten years later
the kid is a 6 ft tall Cat 1 with U23 experience in Belgium.

Not that this matters but in my neck of the woods the referee'ing at
U13 type soccer matches can be breathtakingly bad. At this time in
kid's lives I think sports bureaucracies exist solely to crush
enthusiasm. Well, at least the soft and pasty dads can strut.

tf

On Apr 18, 3:29*pm, Ryan Cousineau wrote:
I run the website for my racing club. I got a request forwarded to me
from another club member to adjust the results to credit a rider with
7th place in a Cat 4/5 race.

The racer sent us 2 voicemails and 3 emails requesting the change, in
the course of a few days.

I'm writing this to salute the enthusiasm of this new racer, and to say
that this anecdote expresses everything that's great about amateur
racing.

getting credit for a top-10 esp. when the rider is wanting upgrade
points seems reasonable.

2 voicemails and 3 emails do not.

I had a guy once ask me to change the way his name was spelled in the
results because he'd been in an accident and was trying to get an
insurance settlement, and was afraid that would prove he hadn't been
injured badly.

And once had a guy email me and voicemail (not 3 times though) me to
change his result from something like 47th to 39th.

On Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:28:25 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Apr 18, 3:29*pm, Ryan Cousineau wrote:
I run the website for my racing club. I got a request forwarded to me
from another club member to adjust the results to credit a rider with
7th place in a Cat 4/5 race.

The racer sent us 2 voicemails and 3 emails requesting the change, in
the course of a few days.

I'm writing this to salute the enthusiasm of this new racer, and to say
that this anecdote expresses everything that's great about amateur
racing.

getting credit for a top-10 esp. when the rider is wanting upgrade
points seems reasonable.

2 voicemails and 3 emails do not.

I had a guy once ask me to change the way his name was spelled in the
results because he'd been in an accident and was trying to get an
insurance settlement, and was afraid that would prove he hadn't been
injured badly.

And once had a guy email me and voicemail (not 3 times though) me to
change his result from something like 47th to 39th.

I managed my club's website for years, and was happy to change
spelling errors. Though when the errors were created by the riders
themselves (misspelling their team name in an online entry that became
the source info for our results sheet) it was annoying.

But results have to be corrected at the race. Riders need to learn
that and deal with it. I had one guy who wouldn't stop arguing with
me by email, and there was no argument from me other than "I run the
website, I'm not an official, you have to talk to an official. You
should have talked to an official at the event."

Annoying.

On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 01:37:50 GMT, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

I managed my club's website for years, and was happy to change
spelling errors. Though when the errors were created by the riders
themselves (misspelling their team name in an online entry that became
the source info for our results sheet) it was annoying.

But results have to be corrected at the race. Riders need to learn
that and deal with it. I had one guy who wouldn't stop arguing with
me by email, and there was no argument from me other than "I run the
website, I'm not an official, you have to talk to an official. You
should have talked to an official at the event."

Annoying.

And one other thing -- some of these riders were looking at photos of
the race that came out later and asked me to review the photos which
"proved" that the results were wrong. I like looking at race photos,
but still...

In article
,
wrote:

On Apr 18, 6:14*pm, Bret wrote:
On Apr 18, 1:29*pm, Ryan Cousineau wrote:

I run the website for my racing club. I got a request forwarded to me
from another club member to adjust the results to credit a rider with
7th place in a Cat 4/5 race.

The racer sent us 2 voicemails and 3 emails requesting the change, in
the course of a few days.

I'm writing this to salute the enthusiasm of this new racer, and to say
that this anecdote expresses everything that's great about amateur
racing.

For a while my wife and I were involved in coaching juniors on a small
entry level team. We tended to pick up inexperienced kids who had been
referred to us by other more elite teams. We picked up one such kid
and in our first conversation before a race, the first thing he wanted
to talk about was whether I could fix the result from the previous
week's race where he felt he been placed a lap down from his correct
placing. I explained that there was nothing we could do after the
protest period had expired and about how he needed to stay at the race
site to check his results. I watched his race and was impressed by how
tenacious he was even after getting dropped and having to ride solo.
He was riding with every thing he had in him. And when the results
were posted they had him a lap down from his correct placing again
which was very disheartening to the kid. I took him to the official
and we protested the result which was corrected. When I had a chance
to talk to the official alone, I suggested that the kid was faster
than he looked and that she might be making some false assumptions
about him being lapped because of his size. I asked her to please
watch him more carefully. Not that this matters, but ten years later
the kid is a 6 ft tall Cat 1 with U23 experience in Belgium.

Not that this matters but in my neck of the woods the referee'ing at
U13 type soccer matches can be breathtakingly bad. At this time in
kid's lives I think sports bureaucracies exist solely to crush
enthusiasm. Well, at least the soft and pasty dads can strut.

Refereeing in any amateur event is likely to be bad because refereeing
is _hard_. Myriad rules, very fast, very fussy judgement calls, only one
set of eyes in the case of most soccer games, and all in the hands of
some person who is lightly compensated.

It's not a shock that refereeing is hard and done badly. It's amazing it
is done at all.

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."

In article ,
John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:

On Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:28:25 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Apr 18, 3:29*pm, Ryan Cousineau wrote:
I run the website for my racing club. I got a request forwarded to me
from another club member to adjust the results to credit a rider with
7th place in a Cat 4/5 race.

The racer sent us 2 voicemails and 3 emails requesting the change, in
the course of a few days.

I'm writing this to salute the enthusiasm of this new racer, and to say
that this anecdote expresses everything that's great about amateur
racing.

getting credit for a top-10 esp. when the rider is wanting upgrade
points seems reasonable.

2 voicemails and 3 emails do not.

I had a guy once ask me to change the way his name was spelled in the
results because he'd been in an accident and was trying to get an
insurance settlement, and was afraid that would prove he hadn't been
injured badly.

And once had a guy email me and voicemail (not 3 times though) me to
change his result from something like 47th to 39th.

I managed my club's website for years, and was happy to change
spelling errors. Though when the errors were created by the riders
themselves (misspelling their team name in an online entry that became
the source info for our results sheet) it was annoying.

But results have to be corrected at the race. Riders need to learn
that and deal with it. I had one guy who wouldn't stop arguing with
me by email, and there was no argument from me other than "I run the
website, I'm not an official, you have to talk to an official. You
should have talked to an official at the event."

In this particular case, it was "number obscured" but our results
identified the team colors. Technically, this was for a club-level
spring tune-up event: no points towards the provincial championships,
though low-cat upgrade points are awarded.

Locally, some events are quite casual about publishing results at the
race site, and this particular event doesn't even have an obligation to
do so. So I can't begrudge riders who wait to read the results online,
since that's often their first chance to see them.

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."

On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 05:55:14 GMT, Ryan Cousineau
wrote:


Refereeing in any amateur event is likely to be bad because refereeing
is _hard_. Myriad rules, very fast, very fussy judgement calls, only one
set of eyes in the case of most soccer games, and all in the hands of
some person who is lightly compensated.

It's not a shock that refereeing is hard and done badly.

I agree that stuff canget tricky, with lots of demands and complexity
on officials, but some fo the officials where I live are just not very
skilled, despite being well meaning.

We had an event a few weeks ago that was almost two hours long on a
2.5 miles course. The break was away for an hour with 9 guys in it
and had 30 seconds for most of the race, then a minute for awhile,
then about 45 at the end. The officials mispicked some places,
putting on guy in the break who wasn't, and missing one of the guys in
the break.

A picking error at the finish is understandable - a rider's number
might be obscured by another rider (even if the finish is videotaped,
as this one was), or the picker just sees something wrong. BUT the
officals could have at least tried to figure out who was in the break
as it went by again and again (perhaps even noting rough splits).
This would've helped make the picking at the end easier. But they
didn't do that.

In another field on the same day the winner lapped everyone except for
3 guys left from his break. He crossed the line, followed by a small
group that had left the field but had been lapped by the winner, then
the remnants of the break finished, then the field. So the officals
called 2nd and 3rd as guys who were lapped but were "ahead" of the
remnants of the break until some spectators and riders explained it to
them.

This lapping didn't happen suddenly -- it happened over the course of
an hour in the race. If they would just take notes or watch the race
with the intensity of teammates watching it, it was very simple to
pick. But instead these guys just work the start and the finish and
are not very "on" during the event.

All this was in beautiful sunlight with 50-rider fields.

These same officials completely missed me out of a three-person group
that went past the start/finish three times ahead of the field in a
race several years ago. They put in some guy who didn't place at all
in my place. So they knew it was three guys and they didn't get my
number despite my riding by them in the clear several times. The guy
they put in my place is a relatively bigname local rider with the same
first name as me (though he looks totally different).

I can understand making errors in field sprints where many riders
cross the line at once, or in events with many hundreds of riders were
they are trying to pick deep, such as a stage race. That's a lot of
info to process. But this crew, despite being well-meaing, does not
"work it" *during* the events and messes up top ten placings all the
time.

It's amazing it is done at all.

Yeah, that's true.

wrote:
Not that this matters but in my neck of the woods the referee'ing at U13
type soccer matches can be breathtakingly bad. At this time in kid's
lives I think sports bureaucracies exist solely to crush enthusiasm.
Well, at least the soft and pasty dads can strut.

Ryan Cousineau wrote:
Refereeing in any amateur event is likely to be bad because refereeing is
_hard_. Myriad rules, very fast, very fussy judgement calls, only one set
of eyes in the case of most soccer games, and all in the hands of some
person who is lightly compensated.

It's not a shock that refereeing is hard and done badly. It's amazing it
is done at all.

Luckily they don't have an offside rule in cycling.