Controllers Comments

This must have been one of the easiest Controlling jobs I have taken on. Firstly I was very familiar with the area having Controlled a British Schools Selection Race on the area in November 2005. Secondly I was overseeing a very competent Planner in Andy Thorpe. Finally, with Ian McMillan on hand to update his already good map there was never going to be any problem in that area. In the end I think I only had to recommend one minor alteration to Andy. I found no errors in control placement or labelling and felt generally redundant until I could help collect controls.

It was good to see a handful of British Squad members at the event to show us mere mortals what sort of time was possible on the courses. Well done to the Johnsons who just pipped their rivals. It would have been good to have a longer course but, due to size of the area, this would have led to excessive repetition.

All comments about the courses I heard were favourable except for one which just goes to prove you can’t please everyone all of the time. Apologies to the lady who did the white course with her 4 year old grandson. I’ll take on board her criticism that it was too far between controls 6 and 7 and that maybe there should have been an extra control to keep the interest of the younger competitors.

There was one problem caused by a technical problem with the SI gear. This meant that we ended up with two finish boxes which were not correctly synchronised. Hopefully the results of those whose finish times were effected (by something around 15 seconds) will have been corrected by the time you are reading this. We apologise for this error which has not effected the top three places on any course except yellow. In hindsight one finish box would have sufficed and I’ll recommend this in future for events of this size.

Predicting the number of entries for an event on Christmas Eve was problematical, particularly given that there were no other events on anywhere in the country. In the end the turnout was somewhere in the middle of our range of expectations and certainly justified putting on the event. Thank you to all those who turned up making our efforts worthwhile. Well done to Andy for his efficiently produced courses and Alistair for his proficient organisation.

Charlie Adams (SYO)