Men running outside of course. DQs coming?

I'd love to hear from a coach that was there how the course was defined in the pre-race meeting. To us, it seems obvious that the painted lines would have defined the boundaries. I took the hay bales as a pretty clear indicator too. But it all comes down to what the pre-race instructions were. That's what the coaches pass on to their athletes.

I've built hundreds of courses over the years - XC, road, trail, XC skiing. It's not that difficult to mark and set a course up in a safe way that forces competitors to stay on the course and not leave it to an official's judgement call.

You are all just being meany mc mean faces! How about you try running in a straight line with your eyes closed for 6 miles!! No doy doy thats hard but maybe you will never know how hard it really is hiding behind your keyboard, sickos!!

I mean, somebody who’s autistic and into running+statistics/analysis could probably do just that, plus far deeper and more creative analyses, PLUS whip up snazzy graphical representations of all data, well within an hour.

And I was under the impression that this site was teeming with those types of people…

The runners who cut the course short didn't end up running 10k

The solution is simple:

Declare all results, both individual and team, “provisional and subject to review.”
Appoint a neutral committee of 3 people (no more, no less) – one coach with no athletes in the mix, one athletic administrator ditto no athletes, and one outside, neutral person – possibly from a sports commission, etc.

Gather all the videos of the race you can find. Eliminate those that are less than clear.
Committee sits down and reviews all evidence. The course cutting occurred at a limited number of places, so the task should not be onerous.

Definition to be used:
“Unless impeded, pushed or otherwise physically moved by another runner(s), a competitor shall be deemed to have cut the course if he runs more than 1.5 meters inside the course guideline for five steps or more.”

When all the infractions are totaled up, and catalogued according to individual competitor, the offending competitors shall be penalized as follows:

One infraction: No penalty.

Two infractions: 5 second penalty to the competitor’s original, timed result.

Three infractions: 10 second penalty to original, timed result.

Four or more infractions: 15 second penalty to the original, timed result.

Individual placements and team scores shall be calculated based upon the revised timings and those revisions shall be published by the NCAA in a timely and transparent way. All-America nominations and other prizes or honors shall be revised accordingly.

Race organizers shall be cautioned to set future courses in such a way as to avoid both the temptation to cut and the possibility thereof.

This happens all the time and I’ve never seen anyone DQ’d. Probably done it myself at some point w/o realizing it.

Interesting presentation on Thursday at the USTFCCCA convention by Brett Halter of the University of Missouri, titled: From Concept to Championships: Hosting Cross Country at Gans Creek

You just summed up why there should potentially have been DQ's

It is normal on a XC course with so many athletes looking for position etc, for athletes on the inside of the pack/up against the "chalk" to step on/over the markings, technically running off course.

There is a big difference between that and running 4-5 feet inside the line on a corner and using that advantage to pass a chunk of the pack before just hopping back into it as if nothing happened. This is what we saw multiple times to either a) help athletes pass others or b) avoid chopped up areas of the course that others were disadvantaged by avoiding themselves.