I think the organizers are to blame. The turns should've been both posted and roped off. They should have seen this coming. I mean hay bales are often put on courses to jump over!
The women didn’t have a problem with the course. It’s really not that hard to stay between the lines.
100%
This country is fascinating - there is an excuse for everything isn't there. "It's not the runners fault - the organizers should have erected a 10ft high wall of hale bales topped with electrically charged razor wire".
After seeing this, I would have loved to have just seen someone say screw-it and just scooted through one of those apex's using the spectator paths and cut 100 yards off the race. Fundamentally zero difference to what those guys were doing anyway.
The women didn’t have a problem with the course. It’s really not that hard to stay between the lines.
Maybe others can confirm, but I’m pretty sure that there was a 2k loop on the course that the men ran twice that the women didn’t run on at all because of the differences in distance. The women just ran the 3K loop twice. Were the guys running off course on that 2k loop?
The 2000m loop shares about 1700ish m with the 3000m loop. They share the first ~1300m and the last ~400m of the loops. The 2000m just has a ~300m cut through the inside of the 3000 loop to rejoin the end of the 3000m loop. Pretty much all of the cutting was done on turns that are either part of both loops or part of the 3000m loop. So
Disappointing to watch on the replay. Big difference between men’s and women’s races. Big difference between blatantly cutting the course and being pushed a few steps inside because of the pack. Unfortunately this is one of those things that once it starts to happen, everyone does it. My hat is off to the runners who made an honest effort to run the course. Women seemed to have no problem following the rules.
Bring in 3rd world cheaters to run and people are surprised when they cheat by cutting the course.
Not surprised by cheating athletes with no moral character. Just dissapointed, again, at poor leadership that can't figure out how to put on a fair race. No course control + lack of strategically positioned officials = temptation by those with no moral character.
Im not a rookie.
This post was edited 21 seconds after it was posted.
I said this on another thread, but the same thing happens here in the midatlantic area in road races with prize money.
The ethiopians and kenyans travel in a van to any meet that has prize m, oney sign up on race day, their handler makes a stink about why we won;t let them in free, always short changes the volunteers at the sign in desk, so that we are forced to track them down before the gun to say either pay the fee or leave. Of course it was always an honest mistake.
We video all of our races and caught their groupcutting the course throughout the race and we DQed them showing the video to everyone at the awards ceremony since they were making a scene. They;ve been banned at any race we manage or time.
Yes and Messaoudis involvement has a potentially massive impact on the title.
At 22min10 seconds into this race (7.7km), Messaoudi is in the lead group which is running 3-4 guys across. So this is not the peloton with 15-20 guys all compressing onto each other which might put pressure on the guys "on the rail". At 22:20 he cuts inside a corner and not just the chalk, but inside one of the parallel placed hay bales which clearly is oriented in such a way that it's not a "hurdleable obstruction"
He probably runs a good 10 seconds inside the course around that curve which if you watch the footage, allows him to avoid this sloppy, beat up section of the turn that the main pack (with Hansen, Samuel in it) need to conversely run 5 feet wide to avoid.
This can't be legal? Now it matters big time because he was 5th - the next scoring runner for OSU (their 6th guy) was 86th - more than the entire New Mexico total. If he is DQ'd (which he should be), they don't win the title. The question then becomes did anyone from the NM team do the same throughout the race but based on the 3-4 guys they had up in the 20 for the majority of the race, I didn't personally see anything - they seemed to be well inside the race course.
So I was in COMO today, and just now had a chance to watch a replay of the entire race… what a joke. There is no excuse for running out of bounds for as long as some of these guys did. At one point, people standing at least five feet off the line had to jump out of the way of some runners cutting the course. One runner in the first 2 minutes of the race was so off course he actually ran behind some spectators. And those arguing the course wasn’t properly marked? That’s 🐂 💩. It was very clear where the course was and wasn’t.
It was so bad and so frequent, that if the NCAA doesn’t DQ anyone, they should place an asterisk by this year’s team results to denote that final standings could not be properly tabulated due to rampant course cutting by multiple teams.
One last thing… a big shout out to the Harvard runner who finished last today. That’s a circumstance in which one might be tempted to take a few shortcuts, but each time we saw you, you were between the lines. Bravo to you for a brave, HONEST effort!
Don't have any valuable information to add, but just gotta say this is crazy to watch and wild if nothing is done or said about it by the NCAA.
How many "no calls" are made that blow the outcome of a game, meet etc...these days? Constantly hear about officials being reprimanded a day or two later, after the fact. Nothing gets changed.
This is another example of how societal values have warped due to a lack of agreeable standards to live by. You know, the kind of truth many are not being taught any longer. Most people still know the difference between right and wrong but have a twisted interpretation to meet their personal standards and moral codes because they want to win at all costs vs winning honestly and losing with dignity.
Win or lose, good sportsmanship always wins. Everyone moves forward together from there. Not the wa, things are going these days. Bubba effect everywhere.
More Officials are weak in moral character because of fear of social repercussions by those lacking in truth. I dont think the meet officials believe they did anything wrong today but the fact is, they didnt plan well enough to do things right and then follow through with the written rule. Maybe they dont care, dont think it matters that much, figure its on the athletes to sort it out, know that everyone will forget after a short time etc... and all will just settle for a mediocre to meaningless experience.
The real advocates speak up and are shut down by social pressure or chastised for speaking the truth. What are their options? Stick to good moral standards or fight fire with fire? What are you willing to do, not do, live with?
Start with who do you want to to be (moral code) then find the people and path to get you there then let the things you want to have come to you. Not in reverse order that most of society operates under.
I feel like people are losing the plot. Focus energy on limiting the amount of foreign athletes allowed to compete for a team, and then also emphasize the previous status as a pro, and then also some sort of age limits. That's what was egregious about this meet. Not a damn corner of the course where the runners obviously were trying to avoid slippery and muddy turns. Give it a rest. It's cross country, not track, TFRRS doesn't even rank XC times. You guys are raising hell in this thread for literally no reason.
I was at this course a few weeks ago for the Missouri High School State Championship. They had all those turns roped off with flags. For whatever reason, they decided to take them down and put down hay. Makes no sense. The course cutting was sickening to watch as a fan.
