I was there when this happened. The ribbion where already handed out and the girl paid no protest fee. The rules are the rules they go for everyone. once ribbons are handed out that is the final placing after the 30 min period. And one must submit a formal protest and pay a fee if that did not happen then the protest can’t stand.
You seem to be confusing an inquiry with a protest.
You can always (as long as you START within the permitted time period) make an inquiry to the TD, without filing a protest or paying a protest fee.
If you do not like the TD’s answer, you can make an inquiry to the GJ (who can over rule the TD).
If you do not like the GJ’s answer, THEN you can put up your money and file an USEA protest. The organizer will assemble an “Appeals committee” who will listen to the evidence/concerns.
If you don’t like that answer, you have one more option, which is to file a USEF protest (a second, bigger, protest fee), which will result (IIRD) in your case being hear by the USEF Hearings committee.
In the case at hand, what counts is when she STARTED the inquiry. If she started it within the permitted time period, and was sent off to get her evidence, it wouldn’t matter whether she got back with the evidence before or after the official "protest period.
The awards people should not have been handing out ribbons if there was an open inquiry, but sometimes the right hand does not now what the left hand is doing (e.g., the awards person does not know there is an open inquiry).
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Adding that, no, there in no rule that says “once ribbons are handed out that is the final placing after the 30 min period”.
In some cases, the final results can be changed up to 3PM the following day (See EV 118.3.f).
Yes I used to forget mine a lot but lately I’ve been putting it on now that Ive been in placings, they will take helmet cams! They have to have physical proof of time change. This year at an event a girl got 15 time somehow got it taken off but gosh she was flying for training, she really seemed to have been 15 seconds ahead. There was a normal time riders passed each other and she passed way sooner than the rest. Still got it off without proof somehow.
In British Eventing the horse goes through a timing point before each fence and this is recorded on the score sheet by the fence judges. Hold times are quickly calculated and there are rarely disputes about time XC since one error is quickly identified by the times at the fences on either side. Start and finish times are also checked by the first and last fences as a back up.
Setting aside the particulars of the situation in the OP, I don’t understand why a watch is considered evidence at all under any circumstance.
The watch is under the custody and control of the competitor.
There is no way for the TD to know:
1-if the watch presented as evidence was even used by the competitor presenting it.
2-if the watch presented as evidence was started immediately at the start box, stopped immediately upon crossing the finish line and not tampered with thereafter.
There is nothing stopping me from, as a matter of course, always having a friend run a separate watch while I’m on course and stopping it just before it hits optimum time. I could then present it as evidence if I incur time penalties.
There is nothing stopping me from seeing my time penalties and recreating a watch that shows a plausible explanation for the error and then presenting it to the TD to challenge my penalties.
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[QUOTE=NCRider;8997055]
Setting aside the particulars of the situation in the OP, I don’t understand why a watch is considered evidence at all under any circumstance.[/QUOTE]
Look at it as the difference between “I didn’t take that long, I just know it!” and “I didn’t take that long, my watch says so!”
I don’t trust human time perception in the heat of competition farther than I can throw it, but if somebody shows up with something unexpected on their watch there’s probably either something to it or they’re explicitly and intentionally trying to cheat. (I also don’t expect the latter too often, but it’s possible I am way too prone to believing the best of people.)
I don’t see how a watch alone would be sufficient evidence either. But this has been an interesting thread, and I will always check my times and add up my dressage scores from now on.
As a fairly experienced JJ, I have found that JJ’s tend to over compensate when they decide on the restart marker. I always told the rider when I was going to restart the time, but I allowed for a horse not being up to full galloping speed when they when by the designated bush (or whatever it was).
I might give the rider a second or 2 before I restarted the stopwatch, just to make sure I did not penalize the rider for something that was out of her control.
If course there is the other argument that the horse had a chance to catch his breath, so he would have more ‘gas in the tank’ for the rest of the course. But that mainly applied to upper level divisions. If a pre-novice or a novice rider ended the course with a horse that was gasping and exhausted, then the horse was just plain unfit for the job expected of him, and I have called the TD to talk to the rider in such a case.
Just remember that, as an outside observer, you do not know what is going on behind the scenes.
The TD will have checked with the timers.
If the timers say “there is no doubt about that time”, then presenting a watch is not going to make much difference.
On the other hand, if the timers say “‘something’ happened as that horse was finishing and I THINK that time is right, but I can not be 100% certain”, then presenting a watch MIGHT make a difference.
[QUOTE=Janet;8997951]
Just remember that, as an outside observer, you do not know what is going on behind the scenes.
The TD will have checked with the timers.
If the timers say “there is no doubt about that time”, then presenting a watch is not going to make much difference.
On the other hand, if the timers say “‘something’ happened as that horse was finishing and I THINK that time is right, but I can not be 100% certain”, then presenting a watch MIGHT make a difference.[/QUOTE]
But here’s the thing, a watch shouldn’t make any difference at all under any circumstance because it proves nothing. It’s not evidence. Unless you can show it’s your watch, you started it when you started the course and you haven’t touched it since you stopped it when you crossed the finish line, showing some random watch to the TD should have no probative value whatsoever.
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