The Shimano British Downhill Series went down this weekend at Fort William. It was a big weekend of racing on a big mountain. Big terrain, big weather, big riding. Whilst I’m always happy to pick up the BDS organisers on things they could improve I would say that genuine problems really are few and far between. Generally, issues that are within the control of Si and the team are very rare.
This weekend however, there was a problem with the timing. During finals the timing system broke, meaning the timing guys had to hastily arrange an alternative system and make it work quickly, at the top of a mountain and in bad weather. There was a big delay during race runs, there was confusion at the top over start times and inevitably the race finished later than expected. There was also difficulty getting times for some of the expert field who (as far as we know) haven’t had their run times yet.
In response to the problems, the timing company have issued a written apology. Good on them I say. The system broke. They did their best to fix it and they acknowledged their mistake.
Let’s learn from it and improve for next time. Agreed?
“On behalf of our timing team, I would like to apologise to yourself and all riders for the inconvenience and frustration that our delays caused you yesterday. You all deserve a smooth, uncomplicated service when you contract us to manage the event timekeeping, and the 40 minute delay incurred was unacceptable.
We believe that you deserve an explanation for the delay which occurred when a critical software error whilst preparing start list for run 2 left us frantically analysing the issue and attempting to resolve it. Unfortunately the team could not rectify the problem swiftly and thus set about setting up another database in order to continue with racing.
I’m sure you know that technical problems are aspects of any business, but that does not change the fact that your schedules and plans were irreparably altered.
We can report that this issue had no effect on the results or timing data and although we are still not able to access run times for a handful of the riders in the Expert Class for the seeding run we are working hard to resolve that and ascertain exactly what caused the problem in order to rectify this and return to provide the professional level of service we strive to provide to the Series and riders.
Once again, a full apology to yourself, riders and staff for the delay.
David Jones”
Did you race? What was your experience of the delays? Tell us below in the comments …
