Print
Racer Productions, organizers of the Can-Am Grand National Cross Country Series, would like to explain the situation that took place during the 10 a.m. bike race on Sunday morning at the weekend's Klotz Ironman GNCC. The 10 a.m. course featured two sections of trail located very close to each other. When the first section of trail became bottlenecked with traffic, riders began to explore new options to get through the section. A few riders accidentally found themselves on the second section of trail, which, again, ran very close to the first section.

GNCC course marshals were patrolling the section as well, but it was very difficult to tell which riders were supposed to be on the first section of trail and which were supposed to be on the second section. Riders that ended up jumping from the first section to the second wound up skipping several miles of the track, and their lap times reflect that. Over 100 riders ended up with short lap times in the morning race, which indicates the bottleneck situation was extreme, and that our course was not designed well enough to handle the traffic.

When one rider decides to find a new line and save time, the rider is responsible for that decision. When over 100 riders do so, we feel that some of the responsibility must go to those who built and maintain the race track. In other words, we at Racer Productions shoulder some of the burden for this situation, and can't fairly blame it entirely on the riders.

To that end, we did not disqualify riders who accidentally ended up on the new section of track. Instead, we added 15 minutes to their lap time, which is the amount of time they saved by missing the section, with a small penalty added in. Most of the riders with short lap times didn't deliberately decide to cut the trail. They had simply gotten confused since two sections of trail came so close together.

However, if a rider made the same mistake twice-and ended up with two or more short laps-we pulled the rest of the short laps from the rider. Mistakes happen, but they shouldn't happen over and over.

Our track crew then fixed the section for the 1 p.m. race and no problems were reported.

We apologize for the delay in results, plaques and awards for our 10 a.m. Sunday morning race, and we hope our racers understand the situation. We're willing to admit mistakes when we make them, and we also apologize for any troubles they might have caused.

If you were not able to stay to pick up their award as a result of the delay in finalizing results, please email us and we will ship your award to you. Email Jessica Coombs, jessica@racerxonline.com

See you at the races (next year)!

- Racer Productions



Share