Tri officiating and Lance's excursion

Triathlon Forum
1

Dan!

Great essay on officiating!

I do believe that USAt chief of referees Charlie Crawford singlehandedly saved the Ironman as a nondrafting and fair event with consistent enforcement and clear application of the rules. No longer are there mutterings about lead pack using media vehicles for a tow. This is good. That said, watching Armstrong’s excursion with shock and awe, that was the first thought I had: If he were in a triathlon, the referees would have put him in his place – DQ’d.

Then I thought for a moment. OK. Lance stops 60 feet down the grass. He cyclocross-carries his bike back to the place where he left the course. He gets going again and loses a minute. That about right? He pushes hard to the finish and cuts it back to 30 seconds lost to Ullrich and Hamilton et al. He has a day to rest and blasts the time trial Friday and mops up in the Pyrenees.

It’s still an incredibly better fate than Joseba Beloki. Way better than poor Fabio Casertelli. But I think that initial reaction we shared says a lot about the nature of our favorite sport. I don’t know the solution, but in this blinding light of revelation, it seems unfriendly, nit picking, rigid. I like the notion that triathlon’s practitioners do not complain about difficult conditions, are honest, have an innate sense of fairness and generosity, care about the environment, and are unafraid of a challenge. I see all of those qualities a lot.

But I also see a tremendous amount of suspicion about drafting, drugs, and other usually unprovable violations that depend more on a self-absorbed view of the universe. Unfortunately, in quiet off the record whispers, I’ve heard far too many vent derisive suspicion of others. It’s a smudgy charcoal cloud hanging silently over a sport that pays far too little to its best practitioners and requires a commitment that goes beyond idealism.

Baseball and NASCAR and tennis seem to have an impulse to cheat built in (Sammy Sosa corked his bat. Shoeless Joe threw the 1919 world series. Center field spotters spies fed Bobby Thompson the next pitch) and rely on umpires and refs to weed out the rascals. Golf, on the other hand, has an inbred integrity shared by nearly every professional but most revealing, not by Bill Clinton.

Since Lance’s excursion did not grant him an advantage, it was a spur of the maneuver dealing with a potential catastrophe, I am very glad the Tour de France jury shared the reasonable person’s POV and he can go on and win or lose on his own merits.

But ultimately, if the rules for such a situation were clearly set out, Lance would have hightailed it back and won anyway. Since this incident was unprecedented, they were open to interpretation, and the refs made the right call.

Thank God.

I share with you the impulse for a reasonable solution. Having seen dozens of crowded Ironman and half Ironman bike courses first hand, I know that many triathletes are caught in an impossible cluster and given draft-position penalties that are in no way intentional. I know that if many women did exactly what the rules suggest, they should stop and park for five minutes (drop back for seven meters immediately! Again and again and again and again!) every time they are passed by a pack of overweight guys taking advantage of a temporary downhill.

I am for intelligent discretion by informed referees and knowledge of the rules by the competitors. That of course is an ideal world and is on its face ridiculous.

Timothy Carlson

2

“Lance stops 60 feet down the grass. He cyclocross-carries his bike back to the place where he left the course. He gets going again and loses a minute.”

More likely the chase group would have waited for Lance to get back on his bike and caught up to them. Cycling is a more “gentlemanly” sport than triathlon. Had the chase group not waited on the race leader after the crash there would have been “repercussions” in the pelaton the next day.

3

"I share with you the impulse for a reasonable solution. Having seen dozens of crowded Ironman and half Ironman bike courses first hand, I know that many triathletes are caught in an impossible cluster and given draft-position penalties that are in no way intentional. I know that if many women did exactly what the rules suggest, they should stop and park for five minutes (drop back for seven meters immediately! Again and again and again and again!) every time they are passed by a pack of overweight guys taking advantage of a temporary downhill. "

Tim,

I am glad that you have said this. I hope that you will broadcast these thoughts to a broader audience.

You are right - The no-drafting rules are great, but at certain points of time and place in many races( Big Ironman races in particular) they are asking the athletes to do something that is physically impossible to achieve. In this situation, who’s responsibility is this? The Athletes? The race organizers? My suspicion is that no-one who takes this sport seriously drafts intentionally. Just about ALL of the drafting I have ever seen in 20 years of watching and participating has been either inadvertatnt or people in the situation above - essentially too many people on too little stretch of road in too short a time period.

As for what would have happened with Lance and what would have happened if this happened in a large high-profile triathlon - my concern is that the athlete would be DQ’d out-right, on the spot by an over-zelous race offcial. How does that advance the sport?

4

I think this talk about having to draft is all the equivalent of everyone driving cars with cruise control and trying to pass each other using only cruise control. Of course the car on the right has to ease up a little and the car in the left lane has to pick it up a little.

It’s pretty simple— If someone passes you, then you should fall back out of their drafting zone and wait to pass them again. If you pass someone, pass with authority and pick it up a little as you go by. Since you can legally draft for a few seconds as you pass, you can suck into their slipstream, then use it as a boost to go by them in a hurry. If everyone follows these rules there will be no drafting.

The alternative is ITU races, which are really not interesting to me.

5

In regard to this topic I had a little brush with a race official this past Sunday. As I was walking my bike into the transition area there were two race officials checking bikes for handle bar plugs and inspecting helmets. My helmet is a bell with very thin straps which I like (Its older but I continue to use it because of the straps). “The official looks at me and says you have a problem this helmet is not regulation you modified the straps”. The helmet is stock I did nothing to it I replied to him. My thoughts were holly shit this dude is not going to let me wear my helmet, where will I get one that fits, I drove 4 hours, stayed in a hotel room, paid my fee and because this dude assumes that I modified my helmet I cant use it, I’ll be out of the race. Well Like anyone else would do it that situation, I punched him. Just Joking. I explained to him that it was never modified it is somewhat old but not modified. He let me race with it.

This guy was going to make a bad decision about a stock bell helmet! He didn’t, but his first response was way off base and it startled me.

The Tour has good referee’s because the guys are experienced, your average volunteer at a local Tri race may not be experienced as alluded to in earlier posts and my situation sunday. The Tour only has 5 referees traveling with the riders but a million camera shots they can use after the race is over. They made the right decision with Lance. In my case the right decision was made but my helmet was guilty before innocent because of lack of experience which caused one startled racer, by the way the racer got even more startled when the rear tire on his disc flatted while walking away from the official into the transition area. I should have read into the Karma and not raced.

6

I had a great hour long conversation with Charlie Crawford at Ironman CDA a few weeks back. We were just chatting while waiting for Kona registration to begin. We discussed a lot of rules stuff and the fact that they didn’t do stand downs at CDA.

Anyhoot, what was most impressive in talking with Charlie (and has always impressed me about him) is that Charlie uses his head when he officiates. He follows the rules, but he also looks at the situation and applies it to the rule. For example, he mentioned to me that there was a section on the bike that was a log uphill climb, but because it was and out and back, people were descending on the opposite side of the road. (I wasn’t racing, so I didn’t see this hill). So Charlie told his officials that there would be no calls made in this section. Why? Two reasons. First - safety. The motorcycles did not belong on that hill with all the bikers going up and coming down (at high rates of speed). Two - no competitive advantage. The guys climbing were not gaining any real competitive advantage and the guys descending, according to Charlie, were mostly just trying to stay in control.

This is the difference between a good official and a not so good official - they take the situation into account. Granted a purist might say that a rule is a rule, but there are obvious situations that often change those rules.

In the tour, with Lances situation, the right call was made and Lance wasn’t punished. I think that Charlie and co. have made many of the same “sound, logical” decisions in Ironman as well.

Fortunately in Stewarts case, this official didn’t DQ him for wearing the “retro” helmet (just kidding Stewart), but upon Stewart explaining the helmet was older and that it was a stock helmet and didn’t violate any safety issues, allowed him to race.

We need more officials out there who “think” rather than react to the letter of the rule specifically as stated. We shouldn’t begin bending the rules, but we should consider the circumstances. As Fleck mentioned, you typically can pinpoint the blatant cheaters or the ones who are trying to invoke a competitive advantage.

Dennis