Slalom Rules Questions

[Hans Koraeus]

After the Swiss competition I had a rerun because of a cone misplacement. Now, several days after I have a question about this. It was a duel during the head to head. When we saw that the cone was wrong we did a rerun both of us. So now I'm wondering how to handle such a situation in the future.

The ISSA rules says...

25. RETRY
If a skaters run is interfered with because of people or animals on the course, or if one or more cones was displaced before starting the run, he should be granted a second try. This is normally done after all the other slalomers have completed their runs.

It's quite clear that I should be granted a second try but should my opponent also have had a second try? He finished his run correctly. Thinking of it now afterwards maybe he shouldn't. Imagine he did a very good run. Would he be forced to rerun? Or should he have the choice to rerun or not depending on how he did?

[Jani Soderhall]

My opinion is that you should be allowed a re-run because a cone was missing, or worse, in the wrong position. (And you did the right thing as you stopped the race and pointed out the missing cone. If you would have gone the end it wouldn't have been more difficult to justify and prove.)

I don't think that the other guy should have a re-run.

Of course this now leads to the following problems:

- The guy sees you dropping out, so he slows down during the rest of the run, giving him a slow time. You get a re-run and being alone on the slope gives you an advantage to race on your maximum ability without disturbance. Solution: everybody knows and understands the rules. He should keep going.

- Even if he didn't slow down you still have an advantage as you can race alone and don't have to risk any cones flying over to your side. Solution: Ok, sure you have an advantage, but misplaced cones should be rare. Once again if it's in the rules, we all know about it, and can accept it.


I think whatever we decide it would be good to have the same solution to several cases:

a) Where a cone was misplaced.
b) Somebody walking into the course.
c) Water from a fountain, or similar, coming onto the course.
d) No time is obtained for one of the skaters.


However a cone flying over and obstructing the course of the other rider is not a valid reason for a re-run. That is part of the game. Cones are flying all the time. There is no way you can decide if it really obstructed your course or not. Anybody would be able to claim that a cone came so close he couldn't make the course, and thus Dq'd.


Let's hear some other opinions. There are maybe other ways to look at this.

[Vlad Popov]

I have a question about the Italian Masters 1993 Euroskate (all three disciplines won by Daniel Ridoli)

Luca was meddling with him boards complaining it didn’t feel right. Before the contest Ridoli and Giammarco also wanted to lengthen the distance between the last ten cones (Special SL course). The course going downhill made it go incredibly fast in the end. Andi Sidler was not on their side though. He thought that you also have to use your head when racing. You cannot always just push all you’ve got. If the speed is faster then you can handle in the end you just have to hold back a little in the beginning. I agree and by the way it’s against the ISSA rules to do a thing like that. But nevertheless that’s what they finally decided to do anyway.

Did they change the course and changing the course was against the ISSA rules, or the rules did not allow to set courses where deliberate slowing down in the beginning is needed to make the gates at the end of the course?

[Hans Koraeus]

Ah, that's a really cult Slalom! article. It was really fun to read it again too. Funny also that I called my self "an oldtime skater" already then in 1994. Seems like the old-school term had not been invented yet?

Actually I had to search in my drawers for that Slalom! magazine to read more of that article because it didn't seem correct. There is nothing in the ISSA rules that stops you from changing the distance of the last cones before the race. Did I really write that? After finding the mag and reading the article I got it. Vlad your quote was not exactly correct. This was not the "Special slalom course", it was the parallell slalom or double slalom that the Italians called it for some reason. I forgive you though, Vlad, since it is true that the text was not extreamly clear on this.

For parallell slalom the rules are...

2.1 The first cone shall be placed no closer than 4 meters from the starting ramp.

2.3 Each course shall consist of a series of cones placed in a straight line. The distance between cones shall be 1.7 m (measured from center to center).

2.5 The number of cones should be exactly 36.

2.6 The finish line should be placed 0.5 meter after the last cone, thus creating a course of exactly 60 meters.

When reading the rules you understand why you can't change the cone distances. They are very hard and clear.
- "The first cone shall be placed no closer than 4 meters from the starting ramp"
- "The distance between cones shall be 1.7 m"
- "The number of cones should be exactly 36"
- "The finish line should be placed 0.5 meter after the last cone"

This was all so detailed and fixed to create a course that would be the same everywhere and so that you could compare results over time and between different competitions. The first cyber slalom idea I guess. There where no rule about running it on the flat here though.

The course was always exactly 60 meters (4m before first cone + 35x1.7 cone distances + 0.5 meter after the last cone).

So that was why it was such a big deal changing the distance and by doing so breaking the ISSA rules. And now when thinking more about it that is why the result list names it as "Double slalom" and not "Parallell slalom". Oh, yes! Wasn't that clever. Solved the whole problem without making a big fuss about it. A little diplomatic protest only to be noticed by those who cared about it. I bet everybody now reading it will just react like I first did. Ha, ha, those funny Italians calling the parallell slalom "Double slalom". Isn't that a funny little story for the Slalom History Archive?

[Ramón Königshausen]

Why should a course only have 36 cones? Had the people who made the rules too few cones?

Where can I get those rules?

rmn

[Vlad Popov]

I remember reading some discussions of Variable Cone Spacing in linear slalom. Some early Slalom! issues? Makes sense on steeper hills, no?


PS. Google spits this out as the first link for the following search:

ISSA slalom rules

[Jani Soderhall]

Why should a course only have 36 cones? Had the people who made the rules too few cones?

Where can I get those rules?

rmn

Ramon,

The precise course definition with 36 cones was an attempt to create a cyber slalom before "cyber" was invented. There was a strong desire (just like today) to create a course on which we could compare ourselves to others and compare an event one year to the one next year.

This rule was invented fairly late and wasn't tested much, so I don't think we have much statistics from the time.

At the same time we changed the rule for the starting ramp to be "at least 1.80 m". In reality only Hombrechtikon had such a ramp, but it was an attempt to push up the speed if races were going to be held on flat or fairly flat surfaces.

The old ISSA rules are still at www.pcpal.se/issa but it's time we review the whole package. It can't be use as is any longer.

/Jani

[Ramón Königshausen]

I find this an interesting rule:

At least 10 months prior to the planned competition the organizer should send the application for a contest to the ISSA president and vice president.

In my opinion:
If we follow this rule, our sport would become more serious, organized, popular and so on...

What do you think?

rmn

[Vlad Popov]

This rule was probably more important in the past, when most communications were done via fax, phone and mail. Plus, the East-West visas were often an issue, so the earlier something's announced and done the better the chances of getting a visa.

[Ramón Königshausen]

But anyway, I think there has to be something more official. Schedules should be planned yet.

rmn

[Rich Stephens]

In my opinion:
If we follow this rule, our sport would become more serious, organized, popular and so on...
What do you think?

I agree. I just can't for the life of me come up with how being more serious, organized and popular would make it more fun or provide more opportunity for participation (i.e. would there be more races? if so, when would we squeeze them in between all the races/events that are already on? well, at least in california there is so much going on already. which is probably one reason why a lot of californians are not all that enthusiastic about the idea of more organization and rules. ).

[Richy Carrasco]

As far as changing a course during warmups or whatever , At the Worlds in Morro , Jack Smith asked for a vote on possibly changing some of the spacing . I was OK with that ! If any changes to a set course take place, There should be a racers meeting with all who care to vote and decide it that way, No changes should ever be made to accomodate any one Racer. As far as cone displacement , The cone out rule should be ok when getting to the final 8 racers , After that the course should be walked over by the cone marshalls and there should be no cone out rule! Tough luck! I have witnessed this rule where there could have been possible abuse many times. If all the racers know that I think it will take a stratidgy away and make the best racer win....

[Hans Koraeus]

My personal view on...

Course setting
Normally there are selected persons (or person) for setting the competition course. They should be responsible for the course. When the course is set you need to run it to have an idea of how it works. Just setting it is not enough and changing it afterwards should not be seen as a mistake. That's fine trimming it. This so that the course setter can make it work as good as planned. Have a couple of selected top and low level racers to run it to get an idea of how it works. If racers are not happy they can give comments to the course setter(s) but it's always the coursetter that decides. At some point it will be decided that this is the course to go with. If still a racer is not happy he should be able to give a protest to the competitions jury committee that then will decide what to do.

Since time will not always allow you to do this at the same day you can do the first step to set the course as well as you can before the competition day. Then on race day you only need to do the fine trimming part. This can be done during the practice.

If it's an open class competition the course will have a larger difference between top and low level that has to be taken into account. If you have a separate Pro and Am class you can set better courses for the race field since top and low level difference is less.

The cone problem
The biggest problem in our otherwise so simple and straight forward sport. There has been a lot of problems with this and many ways to try and handle it. The old ISSA rule about cone marshals is an often used system. This is not a bad system if we lived in a perfect world. I.e. having well trained and experienced cone marshals. This is the same problem as in soccer on low level matches where you have amateur line judges and they only need two persons. In slalom we have to come up with at least 12 beacuse who is prepared to sit the whole day on the side lines with full attention of what is going on. It's not the fault of the cone judge. We can't expect of anyone to sit hour after hour counting cones without doing mistakes. With this system you have to do as in tennis. Changing them in intervals. It's not the fault of the cone judges in general when it doesn't work. It's often the fault of the competition organizer that has too high expectations of what you can demand of a cone judge and that has not understood the practical problems with this system. It's easy to do since in theory it works so good.

Richy is actually proposing a system that we used at the Swedish Championships in Stockholm this year (2004). We only had one cone judge per course. This person was alone responsible for the entire course. After each run he rolled alongside the course and made sure all cones where still in their marked places and on the same time counting those that where not. This worked fine since the person with this huge responsability took his work very serious. No risk to fall asleep here. Here are some plus and minus with this system.

+ Less risk with cone counting since only one person involved.
+ Less risk with cones out of position since they are checked after each run.
+ You get rid of all these cone judges just standing in the way of people who want to film or take photos. The course looks cleaner.
- Risk to start conversation with people while counting cones. You may forget where you where. Can be solved with a counting device in your hand.
- The longer the course the more work. But this I guess is the same for all systems. The more cones and the longer the course the bigger the risk for mistakes.

Also here though it might be a good idea to have two persons per course during the long competition day so that they can take it in shifts. Even a cone judge need to take a bite and rest now and then. But even so that will only take four cone judges for the competition for parallel courses with only two working at the same time.

This system is not good for long GS or Super-G courses where it would be too much work to run up and down the course. Here the many cone marshals may be hard to avoid but at least such courses are never parallel.

[Rich Stephens]

I have a question. With this single cone judge system, are all cones misplaced counted against the skater?

If there are multiple "cone heads" along the course, there is a chance they will notice that a certain cone wasn't hit by the skater in that lane but was knocked over by a cone flying over from the other lane. It would seem to me that it would be hard for a single individual standing in a single location during the run to be able to view that, so when he rolls down the course to count cones, he's going to have to count any cone not in a circle as against that skater regardless of how it was displaced. How was this issue handled in Stockholm?

[Hans Koraeus]

Rich, you are pointing out a very difficult issue that has one more angle to it. Let's take both of them.

1. Cones hit by cones jumping over from the other course.
These cone hits should not be counted of course. If you have a very long course this might be difficult with one cone judge standing on the top or bottom of the course to see. With our course it was possible to see. It did happen. But what we noticed was that even if you see it how can you be sure. Things happen very quickly and sometimes there are lots of cones flying. Are you really sure? Well, no. Sometimes a racer had the feeling one of his cones where hit from the other course that we didn't see. Could we be sure we didn't miss it? Well, no. Conclusion, this is hard to see in some cases. Specific cone judges or not.

2. Missing a cone
This is also something that happens and that can be hard to see. With all the criddling going on and cones flying around can you be sure he passed the standing cone on the right side. Well, no. It's almost impossible even for a trained eye because it happens so quickly. This is not easier with a specific cone judge either.

The advantage with fewer cone judges is that you can have more experienced judges. Would you feel assured if a poor 10-year old boy standing as cone judge said "I think you DQ'd". You would not and even if you asked him nicely "Are you sure?" he would probably say "No, i'm not sure" even if he was. Then again would you trust that more experienced cone judge. Maybe a little bit more but if you felt you didn't DQ you will probably not trust that he saw it very well either.

The solution
The solution of all those things mentioned above can be solved and we did solve all of them without hesitation (Almost). These things above does not happen very often but they do happen. The only way to come around any hesitation from judges and riders themselves is to film the races. So when problems occur you can show the race and deal with it right away. This is actually a big help for the riders. Often you hit cones that you don't feel and you can almost swear you didn't take that cone. When you look at the film then you can walk away knowing it was correct instead of cursing the cone judges.