triflorida wrote:
Since we're all wearing timing chips, how about a camera and a timing strip every 10 miles or so, maybe more often on a dragstrip like Texas or Florida. You cross that strip within some prescribed time (ie, 30 people crossing within a few seconds), it flags them all for penalties. Surely one person can review to see who's at the front, and the rest get penalties. Maybe review the last 20 seconds to ensure somebody didn't sprint to the front to be the one who essentially got the time bonus. I think you'd have to ignore the signal from 2-3 people crossing closely as it would take all day to review who overtook who and if they had enough time to drop out of the draft zone, but I think you'd eliminate large packs. I don't know what the limen should be...5 people in close proximity? The only loser I see in this is the person/people who got overtaken by the pack as they approached the timing point, but I think the packs would break up before then. Surely the effort to reform the pack--and break it up again before the next point--would dissuade some cheaters. I think for some, the penalty tents actually make drafting worse in that they know they can draft all day unless they're caught. The old way of not knowing until the end might make people more cautious all day. I say that because the only drafting penalty I ever received was at Placid in '03. I'm not questioning the official, but I never knew I got it until I saw the 4:00 tacked onto my results. ...or does this create the more dangerous situation of daring people to go around the timing strip into oncoming traffic so their number isn't tagged?
Yeah not sure about that. Possibly? You do get situations with people legally drafting i.e using the full 25s to overtake, so I wonder if you'd end up with people unfairly getting penalised. Last year I was racing in a 70.3 a few trains, the TOs broke them up, like 15 or so, but only penalised one rider as far as I could see. I got told that's all they can do, one at a time? As soon as the TO was gone, the pack reformed. I was hoping he'd get them all. Why can't he? A GoPro on a motorbike would be great, 1min of footage, he drives off, films the next bunch, then moves on. They review the footage and penalties are added retrospectively. Like you said - The old way of not knowing until the end might make people more cautious all day. In Western Australia, the drafting isn't too bad, people are penalised. It seems to be a small proportion of top level Agers, mostly the stronger runners, weaker riders and a large proportion of MOPers 5hours+ for a 70.3, nothing to lose type of crowd. On Sunday I'm hoping for top 5, should be top 10 at least, so a 5 minute penalty is a disaster, definitely not worth it. As long as the penalties remain at 5mins and chances of getting pinged are low, people will cheat. Increase the penalty to 10mins, ping lots of people and ban athletes who get penalised more than say twice in a season. Drafting will disappear overnight.