Decisionmaking process about the WOC Relay 2009

Aron Less on attackpoint.org:

I was the Secretary General of WOC2009, so here is the inside view of what happened:

I was warned quite early by one of the refreshment guards by phone, that a big accident happened to the Swedish runner on the course. He lost consciousness and needs medical treatment asap. In 5 minutes, I was on site with an ambulance car. Being the first car there was quite a special situation. The situation was much better, than expected - Johansson did not lose his consciousness, but had big pain in his leg. Thierry Gueorgiou was holding his hand strongly and they all were quite relieved, when we arrived. Johansson managed to talk to us and in under 10 minutes, he was inside the ambulance car. The strange thing is, that we had 3 other accidents happening at the same time, but fortunately none of them was like this.

When I got back to the finish (~ 1 km), my humanic side insisted, that their is no possibility to have the race results as they are. In the meantime I knew, that the situation is not that easy.

The Organising Committee immediately started talks about what to do with the situation. The IOF Sports Director came to us immediately, telling that the IOF's view is that this is a very sad situation, but a result is a result, and it should be kept. It was quite clear, that we only have two very simple options:
1. Cancel the results, as it was 'unfair' in a way (based on IOF Foot-O Competition Rules 26.13.).
2. Keep the results as they are and give recognition to the teams involved.
We knew, that whichever decision we take, there will be a lot of people, who are clearly against the decision.

First, we asked the three teams' officials involved in the rescuing mission, but they didn't give any clear answer. Then we asked the three teams, who eventually got onto the podium because of the situation. Two of these teams were hesitant about what to do (they wanted to talk to their runners first), the third one was clearly in favour of keeping the results (his competitors were not happy of the medal they earned this way, though). So we got no clear input from the teams.

As time was passing quite fast, and the Organising Committee itself was divided in the question, we decided to have a vote. The vote resulted in a tie, and thus the Chairman's vote was decisive - and it was to keep the results as they are.

I informed all the teams involved about the decision, and we agreed with those, who happened to be on the podium, that they will not cheer, not stand up on the podium and will receive their medals in their hands. At that time, they seemed to have all agreed on the situation.

Two of the three teams involved in the rescue mission were a bit upset though, when they heard about the decision. They wanted to hand in a protest (referring to section 26.13. in the IOF Competition Rules), but after some talks, they decided not to hand in the protest.

Once again, I must say, that it was a very strange situation, where any solution would be far from ideal. We tried to follow the rules as much as possible, but still the communication now is more negative, than it was in the arena.

A lot of team leaders came over to me (Sweden included), that we made the right decision. Cruel as it is, but I'm quite convinced, that had it been the other way round, we would have received much more criticism overall.

we, the WOC2009 Organising Committee still think, that this decision - although still not a good solution - was better than the other one.