Links to results, Routegadget, splis and ranking points above. This was the final race in the Yorkshire Superleague, results here.

Planner's Comments

Apologies for the over long courses, especially Black, Brown & Short Brown. I got it wrong. There were various factors impacting upon that but I seriously underestimated the effect of the poor runnability. Thanks to those who, despite that, gave positive comments about the courses.

My grateful thanks go to those collecting in controls, even after running a tough course. Ian Cooper has been excellent as Controller. Plaudits should go to Jill Gorvett for her patience & skill in dealing with the irate householder. My patience had been used up on Saturday with him & I needed rescuing before my surging temper made things worse.

Colin Drury, Planner.

Controller's Comments

What an event!! As mapper and controller I guess I should shoulder some of the blame for the overlong courses. After my running Green about 6 weeks ago in a LONG time, we shortened the courses for a second time, but not Black-Short Brown as we thought the elites would still bound through it. Little did we know that they would be at the clashing SPOOK/SHUOC events or, for those that did turn up, suffering from the previous night's alcohol.

The elite winning time for a black course should be 67 minutes - it was 100 minutes (although impressive to see the first three within 2 minutes over a 10.7k course) and I guess that rippled through the courses. I probably think that the winners with this time of year's vegetation (brambles do seem to be sprouting in many English forests - global warming?) would do about 10 minute kms and that was about right in the end.

But the youngsters on Light Green to White did really well, although maybe my sympathetic use of secateurs helped.
It was interesting to see experienced competitors just after the start looking in the wrong area for #90.
Apologies to anyone who was disturbed by the irritated neighbour. He is well known in the area and we have been treading on eggshells while planning the event.

Sincere apologies to the young boy who was bitten by a walker's dog - we try to cope with safety but there are some things we cannot legislate for.

Several of us were left at 1530 awaiting control collectors returning from the woods with the SI units so we could establish where the one missing competitor (AIRE) had got to on his course and whether we needed to organise a search party involving the police. Thankfully, we finally made contact with him at home. PLEASE DO REPORT TO THE FINISH EVEN IF RETIRING - THE CONSEQUENCES OF NOT DOING SO CAN BE SIGNIFICANT, EVEN IF NOT TO YOU PERSONALLY.

Thanks to all those who thanked us for the event, even if they took long times.

Thanks to Colin Drury for replanning the courses and control sites many times - he put in a huge amount of work.

Thanks to Mark Chapman for his great organisation, it worked very well.

Thank you for coming,
Ian Cooper

Organiser's Comments

This was my first event as an organiser and I enjoyed it. This was made easy due to the processes put in place by SYOr. I also had great support from the controller, Ian Cooper, the Planner, Colin Drury, the start team, Neil & Sheila Sprot, Jen & Oli Johnson for the String Course, Martin Ward for the SI and Lucy Weigand for permissions. Then the SYO helpers on the day were impressive too as they worked their socks off. I was impressed with everyones help. Thank you.

There were 5 issues on the day that some of you may be aware of:
1. The bracken in the forest (I only realised the day before race day). I would like to promise you that SYO will never have event here before February as the frost and snow need to do their tricks.
2. The long courses along with the dense bracken caused a lot of retirements. We are sorry about this and I hope some of you saw this as challenge.
3. For the competitor who retired and jumped into his car without downloading. This cost us an extra hour at the factory. We had to wait for some of the controls to be collected to interrogate where he was. Although there was no more cars left, could this person arrived by public transport and also fall down a mine shaft? Unlikely but we couldn't leave site until we knew where he was. Thankfully he eventually picked his phone up.
4. The owner of the house being wrongly abusive to the 11 cars parked just outside the factory car park. This isn't his land but the factory's. We weren't preventing any access issues. The police had been informed prior to the event and I called them out. They arrived just as the last car moved. The police asked him to call them in future rather than threaten us. We all agreed to close the incident raised. I am sorry to those who were verbally abused and thank you for treading lightly with him.
5. I was very sorry to hear a young SYO lad was bitten by a dog. The dog owner should have come to the finish. Our first aider treated the boy and his Dad was going to take him to the hospital. Due to the other incidents I am unsure of the latest status here. This needs to be followed up.

Mark Chapman