Just got word that a runner for Lee Summit West (MO) girls wore her timing chip and a teammates at the NXN Midwest regional in Terre Haute, IN which put them in 2nd place overall. Corrections should be made shortly, as Palatine XC Club (IL) will officially be awarded 2nd place.
Simply crazy!
US Olympian Galen Rupp commenting on the NXN format and the influence of NXN. He even makes a lug for the 2003 Central Catholic team. http://id.milesplit.us/meets/59472/videos?id=8279
Actually all of the girls had their correct chips on; the problem was that there was a mistake in scanning the chips.
Is a runner issued two chips?
Each runner had two chips (one for each foot). The runners wore the correct chips, but the chips were scanned into the computer incorrectly. One girl finished from Titan XC (Lee Summit West) and the results had her teammate .2 behind her (she finished later). Other incorrect times and places for the Titan XC were listed in the results. None of this was the fault of Titan XC, but instead the chips were incorrectly scanned.
I should also clarify that Titan XC turned themselves in to make sure the results were correct. That meant that even though they were announced as 2nd at the meet, they are only hoping for an at-large after finishing third.
The incorrect announcement of second place could have been avoided if NXN wasn't holding on to the results and not releasing them. Nike's fight to have some suspense led to incorrect results which could have been fixed before the awards.
How were the chips "incorrectly scanned"? You wear the chips and they are read as you cross the mat. I don't see how if you are correctly wearing the chips assigned to you that the mat can misread or incorrectly scan one chip and attribute it to another runner on the team.
The runners don't hand the chips in as the exit the chute as you do with a racing bib, so again I fail to see how there could be an incorrect scan.
They may have been incorrectly scanned prior to the meet by the timing company when they assigned the chips certain numbers and runners' names.
Boy Wonder wrote:
How were the chips "incorrectly scanned"? You wear the chips and they are read as you cross the mat. I don't see how if you are correctly wearing the chips assigned to you that the mat can misread or incorrectly scan one chip and attribute it to another runner on the team...
Spend a day working "chip matching" at any reasonably sized race and you'll be amazed that the timing companies do as good a job with getting the right chips to the right runners at an almost 100% rate. If this race used Champion Chip the chip numbers are stamped on the spine of the chip and are often very difficult to read.
It's not a point of the runner wearing the chip incorrectly. What obviously happened is the runners were given the wrong chips after the chips were assigned by the timing company. Any finish line scoring system can have weak points and this is one of them with chips.
In this particular case, this should be easy to resolve. The timing results should show the 2 teammates finish times almost identical twice (first runner finishes, later the second runner finishes).
I understand now. It was at the front end. Makes sense as you have explained it.
With talking to meet management this is what I gathered.
The chips that company scanned into the system where correct. MD timing and the meet management sat down today and reran the chips and they read correctly.
The head of MD timing and a meet director DID use the lynx system to read the bib numbers and corrected the results.
Not only did two of the runners wear different chips two different runners wore the wrong bib. That was varied by the teams coach during the review of the lynx video.
My question is if it was the timing company’s fault would there have been other teams that had chips read wrong? I believe once they got the final entries they scanned the number of chips that they needed and then assigned the bibs!
NO OTHER TEAM HAD THIS PROBLEM!!!!!!
This timing company has never had a problem timing other races/events. I think they have worked several road races, triathlations, high school meets, and youth XC event throughout the Midwest.
I heard that the results at the Indiana high school state meet the week before were amazingly slow- maybe a problem there also...but I don't know if MD did the timing at that meet?
I've been to many of the events that MD does...and I won't say they mess up a lot,...but they certainly aren't very fast with results considering the technology they have use of. (Chips & Lynx)
You can go to the NXN Midwest page and watch the video of the finish. The LSW team is in blue and the uniforms read Titan XC TF. I wrote down the bib numbers from the video and they are in this finishing order: #184, #180, #181, #183, #186.
If the coach "looked" at the video with the nike people like NXN Fan/coach/parent said they did and confirmed that the bibs that the runners had on were not on the correct girls then the final revised results show that. The finishing order on the results with the bib number are: #184, #180, #181, #182, #186.
I would have to say that the girls mixed the chips up and bibs up somehow before the race.
NXN MW Fan/Parent/Coach wrote:
Not only did two of the runners wear different chips two different runners wore the wrong bib. That was varied by the teams coach during the review of the lynx video.
The girls all wore the correct bibs. Each bib has the runner's name on it (though you can't see that in pictures). No girl wore the wrong bib.
A similar thing happened at NTN-SE in 2007. I coached the team that eventually won the race, but prior to having the results announced, I got to see the preliminary results, which showed us in second to Thomas Jefferson S & T. During the time between when I saw those preliminary results and when they announced the team results they re-checked the results and found that one of Jefferson's guys was in the wrong place--he and another guy had mixed their chips. They reviewed the results, changed them, and we won that meet. The difference is that the NTN qualifiers were not affected, and results were neither leaked nor announced to anyone other than myself and (I guess) Jefferson's coach.