Rebuilding result lists after a mistake

[Hans Koraeus]

Concerning a problem if a racer advances in a head to head competition by mistake.

This can create very sensitive issues. And of course mistakes can be done. I mean, shit happens. We can never avoid it. The difficult thing is how to deal with it. And especially since friends of ours are involved it makes it even harder for all of us. The positive thing with mistakes though is to make us all learn from them. That way we can all try to avoid them in the future. And if they happen again we know how to deal with it. Then it has not to be on the shoulders of the racers involved to make these sensitive judgements. And it could help the race organizer to get some backing in his judgement.

First, if anyone involved in or affected by such a scenario do accept the mistake they also accept the results whereby the results stands as they are. Grace goes to those loosing anything by the current results.

Secondly, if one of the involved or affected don't accept the result and therby the mistake then a protest should be given to the race organizer that has to solve it the best and most fair way possible.

The most fair way is not just making the people involved happy. It should be fair for everyone affected. With a mistake like this it is impossible to know exactly how the outcome would have been. But there are things that we can know for sure and there are others we just have to treat according to some sort of fair logic. When people loose in a head to head they are placed according to qualification. When people win they advance to next level for a new match. Such a match cannot be known unless it really happened. In these cases the qualification placement could be used to decide the fictive outcome. It's hard to explain in neutral terms so I guess I will just make an example.

Background: Racer A advanced in the head to head against Racer B by mistake in the 1-16 rounds. It was found out much later when the competition had finished. Racer A finished 3:rd (after qualifying as 4:th) and Racer B finished 13:th (after qualifying as 13:th). Race organizer decided to place them both on third place.

Solution: In the current case what we know for sure is that both Racer A and Racer B could not have got third. If really trying to rebuild the result list with what we know Racer A would have got 9:th and by that pushing down racers on place 9-12 one place to 10-13. We also know that Racer B could have got place 1-4 or 8. From here we can only continue with some fair logic. In my opinion in simulair cases like this the most fair solution is to use the qualification placement as judge. In our case this means Racer B takes place 8 and racers on place 4-8 moves up one place to 3-7. This solution makes no judgement on the people involved and is neutral.

But. If there is no protest from the involved and everybody accepts the unfortunate mistake the results should stand as they are. If there is a protest then I propose the above solution.