Following reports from a number of competitors on the brown, blue and green courses that control no. 125 was not to be found, the Planner and I checked the site and confirmed that the control was exactly where it should be. However, by the end of the event 17 competitors had failed to find it which seemed to point to something more than simple navigational incompetence.
The mystery was solved when a competitor reported that she had found the control literally buried under a mountain of leaves. Given its location it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that an earlier competitor had deliberately covered the control up. If this is what happened, then the person responsible should be ashamed of themself. With a bit of research it should be possible using the S1 software to work out who it was.
This was extremely unfortunate and not something I have ever come across in 20 years of orienteering. The only fair thing do to is to reinstate those competitors who could not find control No. 125 and deduct the times from the preceding control and to the following control from the finish times for all competitors. Cumulative times after 125 have not been altered which is why the splits show finish times less than the cumulative times at the last few controls.
It would be remiss of me not to thank on competitors’ behalf Planner Dean Field for what were excellent courses despite the technical limitations of Beverley Westwood, Organisers John and Sue Chaney, Mike Cope for sorting the results out and all the other HALO members who helped out on the day.
John Butler