Ken Finch

Candi,

Ultimately you have to use your own judgement here but I'd consider pretty heavily the "15 minute rule" in considering honoring the protest here. I think there's a good reason for this rule in general. I think if you allow teams or racers to come home, and start combing through the photos posted on the web looking for infractions of competing racers, you'd really be opening a can of worms.

Who's to say the team filing the protest didn't commit the same infraction? Or maybe they just weren't unlucky enough to get caught on camera?

This is not to say that the centerline infractions weren't committed, I think it's pretty apparent that the majority of teams, if not all of them, committed this infraction. I'm pretty sure ours did. I'd certainly consider the number of teams that were photographed doing this as mitigating circumstances at least. I think I'd give a pretty hearty warning to everyone in general and let the results stand.

Just my opinion of course.

Ken F.

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Subject: Rules- The letter of the law? Intrepretation
Date: 05/14/2007 02:18 PM
From: Candi Murray
Scenario
A team time trial. Times are posted at the start. Long drive home and the
wonderful OBRA photographers start to post their wares. A 2nd place team
notes that the team that beat them by a mere 7 seconds is photographed over
the centerline in no less then 4 pictures. Protest is filed. Results are
posted on the web 20 minutes later.

What to do?

OBRA rules state

15.1.2 Unless instructed by the Chief Referee, all riders must stay to the
right of the centerline

11.1 No rider shall benefit from his or her misconduct. No team shall
benefit from its misconduct, or the misconduct of one of its members.

12.3 Protests concerning incidents during the race will be presented to the
Chief Referee in writing and accompanied by a fee of $10, which will be
forwarded to OBRA. They must be submitted within 15 minutes of the
protester's finish

Presuming this is a standard "though shalt not cross the centerline" event,
it's a DQ. 6" centerline violations in the corner would be applying rules to
apply rules. This is flagrantly cutting the corner and the distance. If
the photographs were the only four turns that they cut, its probably worth 5
seconds at best. Since we all know that if this happened in the
photographs, it happened at 90% of the opportunities on the course.

If the violating team is disqualified does every team evidenced by the
photographs get disqualified? Or just the one protest acted upon?

Do we allow the 15 minute rule from acting on the matter. Are results really
formally posted at the event or is the on line results the final results.
Its obviously not in everyone's interest to allow results to stand when
there is flagrant cheating. The UIC allows "evidence"
after the fact to be submitted and disqualification to happen significantly
later.

So many things to take into consideration.

Any help?
Candi