Sure they do. I have been directed the wrong way on the lead of a bike and the RD apologized. I was given a drafting penalty which was rescinded when the description of the bike, kit, etc didn't match me in any way, shape, or form.

Happened to me 2 weeks ago at steelhead. Rolling out of T1 and a helmet sticker from transition gets stuck on my front wheel. I pulled over, ripped it off, and tossed it. A moto was following out of T1 and gives me a yellow card. I explained that it was not mine and the official apologized and told me to race on.

It was a road race and the corner worker called out to the pack “left at the cones, left at the cones!!!” I was making a move and taking a short (or at least I thought) flyer off the front. Then the second place dude turns left as I went straight.

It didn’t work or well for the pack when the organizer said “...so you took a left turn behind the leader....did you take a map...why didn’t you ask before the race...”

Yes I drove the route prior to the race and knew exactly where I was going. They did not

If you are a civilian on the road and break a traffic rule you might get a ticket. If you are an enforcement officer and break a rule, who is gonna give you a ticket? Without hard video evidence, such persons, whether referees or enforcement officers or any authority figure, they are infallible.

Yep. That’s what I’ve experienced.

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Not everything is as it seems -Mr. Miyagi

I was issued a DQ from a 70.3 race for supposedly crossing the finish line with a child (I didn’t have a child). Had to send the RD some pictures proving it wasn’t the case and got my result reinstated

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the world's still turning? >>>>>>> the world's still turning

Marshals...

Sure officials can make mistakes. It's like ref`n` a football game with a 1000 players & you're the line judge looking for ho!ding. Three officials work an NBA game & mistakes get made. Good officials will admit it when they stuff it up. In triathlon it's often when the head ref debriefs draft marshals calls can get tossed. How many competitors readily admit when they run afoul of the rules?

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#swimmingmatters
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
The Doctor (#12)

I don't believe any one wants to make mistakes, but as we all know they do happen. I've officialled at a few national level events (NZ) and there is a hell of a lot of pressure on, we just want it to be a fair race, but I've never come across a colleague who is just out there to catch people out for the sake of it.

Define mistakes?

There have been many times where I have been upset regarding others (and myself) that have received calls and then times where I have been upset for calls NOT being made. At the end of the day, it is no different than the sport of basketball, football etc where there is some leeway between the rules or how the rules are enforced. The context of the situation is often required to make a call and if there is anything that sucks is I think calls are sometimes made out of context.

For instance, last year at Wisconsin, being familiar with where males pros are passing athletes on the second loop it can get very sketchy. For the those without the context you also have the fastest riders mingling with the slowest riders and towards the end of lap 2 it can get very very thick as you approach the meat of the back of the MOP. The speed differences between Starky and back of the MOP can easily and consistently approach 2x or (30mph versus 15 mph). I was the one to ask and get on the record in the pro meeting "what happens if we find ourselves in a situation where we find it necessary out of safety to pass the yellow line". It is a question I ask a lot in pro meeting among other questions.

Fast forward to race day, and I won't even attempt to describe the entire situation as it could be a chapter in a book, but in short I was on very fast part of the course but after a very long and steep hill which has the type of people I am passing at this point exhausted. I am accelerating rapidly to get up to speed as that is the fastest way to gain some seconds. Riders were riding 3-4 deep and I was riding to the far left, almost right on the line. Someone flatted and was pulling off the side of the road but everyone shifted one spot to the left which pushed me over the yellow line. In that instant I gunned it. An age-group ref gave me a penalty, I would have to go back and look at the rules because it should be a DQ if anything. Regardless, the context is completely ignored. In addition all those riders not riding to the right could be given blocking penalties but the ref choose to issue the penalty who was trying to keep himself and others out of harms way.

Those sort of things just suck. Yes was it technically a violation, sure, but it wasn't in the spirit of the rules as we discussed in the pro meeting, but these AG refs don't come to the pro meetings they don't understand the context of a pro race. I did follow up with the pro refs afterward but never discussed it with the ref. I would love to know if they understand the situation and why the choose to issue a penalty and not 40 blocking penalties instead. If I was a ref I would never issue that penalty. I would be happy to work on better educating refs and working on the process of referring for Ironman, creating material, and testing so that we can avoid these situations.

On the flip side, I always like feedback from the refs too and I am not afraid to ask things like "how was my draft zone." If I am riding with a group of guys I never went to have the shortest distance between myself and the person in front. It is constantly changing and it actually takes a significant amount of energy to stay a legal distance. You ride enough with the same people and you learn who has the shortest and longest zones but you never know if that is just their eyes and what they perceive or if they are trying to push the limits. But then there is the one or two athletes who you actually know they are taking advantage of it and it is like, man, why can't that person get a penalty.

By and large I think this is why we need some different divisions. I don't even know why a ref was back this far in the race. We need completion, competing, and for a living categories. More resources spent for those competing and less (or none) for those completing. By and large, except for the blatant occasional littering, most individals want to follow the rules.

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I work with a race company and we house/hang out with the USAT refs on race weekends. I've seen/heard of athletes appealing a penalty successfully over draft zone, double yellow infractions as you mentioned. Most penalties stick though.

As an official I can fully say that we're human and make mistakes from time to time. That being said most violations are the result of people not thinking because their heart rates are too high, or from ignorance because they don't fully know/understand the rules.

I've overturned calls by officials at protest on competition juries before. in the specific case, the official made the right call based on the rule book, but we overturned the penalty based on the context. Generally I tend to find (and this is not always the case) that officials that also do/have raced tend to do better with some of the context pieces, than those who only or primarily officiate. Again, that's a generalization for sure, because I know officials who have never raced that get the context well, and those who have extensive racing experience who follow the letter of the law and miss the context piece too... In any field you have some that get things better than others, and some who are more punitive... In general the last thing I want to do is call a violation, so anything where I am not positive of an infraction I won't likely call.

As a racer, I can think of one specific case where the official was definitely in the wrong with their instruction, I continued to race as I would (and based on the verbal instruction committed a violation, but in reality no violation was committed), suspecting I might be facing a DQ, when I passed my wife (who was spectating) on course I told her to hit an ATM to have money ready to protest at the finish. Fortunately they didn't call a violation, and I didn't have to go through the protest hoops...

And the whole idea of cops giving cops a pass, I would say is the opposite with officials... I make sure I am on my best behavior, because I will never live down the chirping I would get if I got nailed for violations when I am racing from officials that know me (and I get trash talked/threatened about being called for stuff before races...).

I officiated swim meets in various capacities for a number of years. There were mistakes now and then but if they are pointed out while it was still possible to fix, we would fix them. Also, on calls involving some nuances in the rules, officials are almost always willing to listen to a calm, rational presentation on how they are interpreting the rule incorrectly or applying the incorrect penalty to the particular infraction.

But, a "mistake" is quite bit different than a judgment call you don't agree with or the official says he saw "X" and you simply think he should have seen something else. No sane official is going to reverse legit judgment calls or just change his or her mind on what they saw simply because someone is pissed off by it. Their JOB is to make those kinds of calls. Part of being an official in any sport is having the balls to "call 'em as you see 'em" and stick to your guns.

Not sure if this counts or not, but YEARS ago I had a volunteer course official send me off course on the run (I was one of the first amateurs and some pros were up ahead just out of sight). I didn't see them when I came around the corner to an intersection (I knew the course from the maps)...but in that short instance of maybe a couple minutes to 1.5 minutes...the course official got to the intersection just after the pros were out of sight (he was late I guess!)

He sent myself off course along with a couple others (discussed on an old thread here), onto a dirt path that led us BACK to the start of the run. We looked for anyone to tell us where to go as we were confused to all hell at that point--nobody from the race production company to ask they weren't to be seen. So we ran back on the regular path which added that first mile onto our run again. It was about a 14.5 mile run or just under that. The race director apologized and offered a free entry to any of his races after that as a gesture. Apparently, the rules of the course owners (the City) did not even allow for any signs to be put into the ground like arrows, chalk or anything.

I was on PR pace that race, all my splits were setting up to be a career finish for a half iron & first amateur. Well...let's just say I've boycotted their races for probably a decade on purpose. Even though I knew the course, I didn't want to risk getting DQ'd not following the course official's direction, thinking maybe they had to change the run last minute--later finding out he was a volunteer who didn't know squat. But yeah, they were wrong. End of story, it's been probably 10 years maybe, I've actually signed up for a couple of their races as they've now put on over 500 races and figure they'd have their act together by now. Besides, I've been giving WTC my money a bit too long now. I'm mixing it up!

I had two absolutely asinine calls against me at MiTi this weekend. I’ve never received a penalty in my life, and the race director explained it as the result of an “overly aggressive” official (this woman penalized me for having an entire draft line AT MY BACK, and had this demonistic smile as she wrote down my number, with another penalty delivered to me for drafting where it should have been for a guy blocking me. I was unable to fight this as I was trying to make a transatlantic flight directly after the race). She seemed to have the entire Rulebook ass backwards but they wouldn’t throw the penalties out, although they twice called to say they were going to throw out at least one penalty, and then reneged. Bad, bad form, and they admitted they had had previous complaints against this same official, so there is clearly an underlying issue here. Cost me first overall in the distance I was entered.

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The only way to avoid disappointment is to not try anything at all.

Awesome race officials will listen to their participants. I'm fallible and so is my team, but after years of putting on the 33rd Annual Tinsel Triathlon & 5K, we've done well, and, I give that credit to the fact that we listen ...As a race director and owner, I'm only as awesome as the triathlete!
Cheers

Here it is. The post I was fishing for.

My MiTi experience has always been stellar until last weekend when I was surprised to see I’d been penalized for various infractions. I questioned it, and the race official dropped one of the penalties.

I still question the other infractions....but admit it turns into a “he said, she said@ thing. The referee seems to be confident that I made a mistake (maybe I did, but I doubt I crossed a double yellow line) so I was wondering if referees ever admit THEY made a mistake.

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Not everything is as it seems -Mr. Miyagi

Reading through this thread brought back so many unpleasant memories and reminded me why I walked away from the USAT officiating program.

Officials are the red-headed stepchildren of the triathlon world, treated mostly as an unpleasant afterthought by race directors and looked upon with derision by most age group athletes. Sure, there are a handful of athletes who get the idea of a competitive environment with enforcement of the competitive rules but most don't believe they are capable of violating any rules (see all the persons saying "I've never committed a penalty in my life.") or should not have to be bothered.

As for mistakes, I'm guessing officials make about the same amount of mistakes as anyone else being required to make dozens (hundreds?) of decisions quickly on the fly. I will say this: in all my years of officiating (multiple sports) I never once worked with anyone who didn't want to get the call right.

Frankly, I'm a little suprised that most federations have not abandoned providing officials to AG (non-elite) events as there seems to be so little upside to it.

Ex Cat 3 USAT here. Totally agreed. Every one bitches about drafting, but when you actually penalize people for it, they get nasty. Case in point. Reffed a local race and watched 3 guys on the same local club trade pulls on and off for 25 miles. I got emails, phone calls, begging, threats, etc. Each saying "it was the other guys drafting off ME", why did I get penalized. I've NEVER got a penalty before. And I was never with those guys." Ridiculous. I get guys coming up to me "didn't you see those guys, why didn't you penalize them". Sorry, we can't be everywhere and see everything. Everybody is guilty but themselves.

As a Ref we are taught to write down descriptions of the violation. Kits, bike brand / color, helmet, place on course. I even brought a camera with me. I also would never write a BS penalty like people bunched up on steep hills for drafting.

Anyhow, to the OP. "RACE OFFICIALS", in terms of those who make sure the rules are followed, are NOT responsible if you go off course. It is YOUR responsibility to know the course (read the rules).

If you get waived the wrong way, it the RACE DIRECTORS fault and YOUR fault, NOT the Race Official.

Thanks for your reply, and believe me when I say this, I respect what you do out there on the course, and wouldn’t want your job. Sounds like it’s very thankless, and you are “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t”.

Having said that, my original post/question was intended to put the feelers out and see how others feel about race officiating in our sport. It’s been good to hear from both athletes and officials alike.

Seems to me that race officials agree that’s it’s possible for them to make errors in judgement. Athletes, on the other hand, feel as though when push comes to shove, officials are more likely to say,”athletes, in the heat of battle, with elevated heart rate, are more likely to not realize they are committing an infraction. We officials, as objective, outside observers, call ‘em as we see ‘em.”

It is my belief that athletes and officials are both equally capable of miscalculation. Troubles occur when an overzealous, power hungry official doesn’t take context into consideration when calling a penalty. I realize that these occurrences are the exception, rather than the rule, and certainly don’t want to paint all officials with the same brush. I simply want them to realize that a few bad apples in their cart can ruin an athletes day profoundly.

Just as they “want to make the right call”, we athletes “want to abide by the rules”.

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Not everything is as it seems -Mr. Miyagi