Relays. Some days are better than otters

Saturday, 15 July 2006

We didn’t think it was possible, but the relay had even more difficult terrain than we’d encountered so far.  The map is posted in the gallery.

After the very long, long in which Paul didn’t ride and Alex ended up taking it a bit easier after an early mistake, we thought this would be a good start for us.  Both Paul and Alex were relatively fresh and raring to go for the relays.  All three had ridden without big mistakes in the complex middle distance terrain and were confidently looking forward to the challenge in the relay.  Paul had even found what he suspected, and turned out to be, the first and 2^nd relay check points out in the forest when riding parts of the B-Final.

But it was not to be.  In fact the day turned from bad to worse, to laughable as we managed to find new and inventive ways to DNF.  Out of 6 riders in two Aussie teams 4 of us didn’t finish.  At this point it’s important to say that Carolyn and Steven were the riders who finished.

So what happened?

Paul started strongly on a medium length split and rode with only a few small mistakes.  He came back 20^th, but the courses were split with up to 5 minutes difference, and we were only behind 10^th by about 2 minutes.

Relay confusion

The problem was the 5^th check point.  We had resolved as a team to check our codes carefully.  Paul did this religiously, but mis-read 338 which he found, as 335, which he should have found.  The offending check point is in the picture below.  Number 329 on the lake was common and then it split to the three.  We were not happy with the closeness of the check points or the numbers and their placement on the map, but there was nothing we could do after the fact.

Alex went out without knowing but Paul was sent to what they call the ‘cry wall’ which we got to know as the ‘wailing wall’.  The organisers confirmed our worst fears – that Paul had mis-punched and that we were out of the race.  Fortunately the organisers were very slow at stopping disqualified teams and we all got to ride before they started stopping teams go out.

Alex also raced very well, only dropping a minute or so on the flying Mika Tervala.  He pulled us up to 7^th place.  At least notionally.  But then when Paul went to apologise he found that Alex had mis-punched 3 check points and one of these didn’t have the verification pin prick in the back-up paper.  So he too had DNF’ed.  This was mostly a feature of the emit system used for punching.  It’s far harder to use for MTBO and the card must be put into the check point the right way up.  It seems Alex had put it in upside down, and it didn’t register or mark the paper.  As a result of all the problems at this WOC the MTBO Commission meeting Thursday has resolved that EMIT should not be used for MTBO major events any more.

This left AJ to race.  Adrian knew that our team had DNF’ed but fortunately got out on the course before the organisers starting stopping teams.  As usual he raced fast and sure and had a great ride, bringing the team up to 4^th place. (One has to wonder what other riders wonder when someone like AJ catches them?)  Which the finish announcer called briefly, then quickly added that Australia was disqualified.  Then it transpired that AJ too had missed a check point at the same place I did.  He found 335 instead of 337, although, in fairness, I’m sure he would have checked his codes more carefully if he knew we were still in the race.  So I guess you could say we showed great potential, but didn’t really get there.

In the 2^nd team, which quickly became our only team in the race officially, Steve also rode really well on first, finishing about 2 minutes behind Paul, on a long split.  Carolyn rode really well on what was a long course for women, at one point catching the New Zealand team.  Dave went out but he too had trouble in some of the most detailed parts of the map and punched a wrong check point.  Both teams DNF’ed in the one race.  We’re still scratching our heads in disbelief too.  Especially after being 4^th fastest.