design the gate

[djberriman]

Interesting idea but one wonders how any gate electronic or mechanical will cater for wind, water splash, half head, double entry (possible I guess), incorrect negotiation (possible I guess), someone catching the gate strings on the bank, split gate, displacement, hitting a dead gate, redoing a gate .....

would have thought the simplest thing would be to have lights by each gate on the bank perhaps (at international level) which light up as required (Green, Yellow, Red) to reflect the gates judges scoring.

I remember one event abroad WAS more interesting as everything was communicated by paddles and you could clearly see what was being awarded at every gate.

It says usable at all levels but fails to say affordable.....

[Nick Penfold]

I like the idea of two poles hung on strings from a spreader, like they use in....canoe slalom. Never had any problem with "understanding" what happened, only (sometimes) being sure of a touch. I don't think we'll find anything better, or as affordable.
However, if you want to have a go at the competition, go ahead!

[Canadian Paddler]

I can see teh attraction of a system that makes it easy for spectators to understand when a penalty is given and makes it clear instantly. Something like show jumping. If you hit the gate hard enough to dislodge a pole you have a penalty. If not, it is clear. Should reduce teh number of problems with disagreements over judging of 2 second penalties and hence teh frustration of paddlers.
Would allow faster recording of penalties for Olympics / Worlds / otehr televised events

BUT

• Must be able to reset fast enough for catch ups
• Must be proof against water touch
• still need to judge half head / no boat / wrong direction / deliberate displacement. All 50s so much more emotion in getting those penalties if you do not believe it is correct.
• able to be used at all levels - Hardly likely, a system suitable for World Champs / Olympics would be too expensive / need too much infrastructure to be used for a division 4
• must be robust enough to be used in training for those competing at that level. No point training to any other standard
• must be consistent in the level of force to trigger 'a touch'

So Good idea at top level, do not believe possible at introductory levels, love to be proved wrong.

Cant see moving away from pole on bit of string for a while yet.

[Nick Penfold]

I witnessed a trial, at Pau about 4 years back, of gates that had the pole linked to the spreader magnetically. Touch a pole, the theory went, and it would wobble, the magnetic link would break and the pole would drop 4-5 inches where it would be caught by a retaining string. It was re-set by pulling on the cord from the bank.
At its best it worked fairly well. But even water splash caused pole drops; light winds caused false (or premature) drops; light touches didn't trigger it. And as CP says, it was no help at all with judging 50s.

At internationals, the red and yellow bats are used not to signal between judges, but to show the penalties to the public and the coaches. The "transmission judges" use them, and because there is preliminary hand-waving between judges the showing of the bats tends to be delayed so the paddler is three or four gates on down the river before a touch is signalled. The international committee has never cottoned on to the idea of giving bats to every "primary judge" (usually the judge nearest to each gate, who decides the call) and encouraging them to signal, as far as possible, before the paddler reaches the next gate, which would help the public understand when and where the penalties are given.

[JimW]

It is really very simple but incredibly expensive to check 50's

Each competitor needs a unique RFID tag in their helmet which is coupled to DGPS (or whatever the latest highest accuracy variant is), each pole needs a proximity sensor and DGPS in the bottom and to be linked to a computer which can track in real time the location of the poles and paddlers and be programmed to watch for the paddler tags to pass between the poles (and in which direction), updating the gate line in real time to account for swinging gates. If the tag is in the centre of the helmet, then any time the tag passes outside of a pole will be recorded as a 50 - no matter how close the tag is, this might mean that a half head becomes more like 3/4 of a head but paddlers will get used to it in time. If the tag passes through the same 2d location as the pole (i.e. under it in the other dimension), well that can be the criterion for determining half head or not - the committee could spend hours deciding whether it should be half head or not half head if they wanted to, I'd say it is arbitary as long as it is consistent, competitors will learn to work with it.
The gate line is verticaly down from the bottom end of the pole, hence the GPS needs to be in the bottom tip of the pole, and only bother with 2d co-ordinate, ignore height.

The same tags can be tracked across start finish lines which again could be marked by beacons rather than needing light beams (for rafts to wipe out).

Judges need to watch for catch ups to whistle off if required, but there can be no confusion if competitors pass on the course, because their unique tag ID is recorded through each gate so penalties cannot be mis-applied and the timing will always be for the right boat.

2 second penalties are much more tricky because a pole can be hit by the bow of the boat, or tip of paddle at just about any height so wehre to fit a pressure sensor?. Perhaps with extensive trialling and by measuring pole accelerations as well as position it would possible to determine acceleration rates consistent with wind or water moving the poles, so that such motions can be ignored, and then whenever the a paddler tag is within 2m of a pole, any faster accelerations of the pole could be counted as touches?

As for making the current visual interpretation by judges more easily understood by spectators, that is trivial - fit a bar with 3 lights (green, yellow and red would be my suggestion, defualt green for clear, yellow for 2, red for 50) and give each judge 3 buttons to record touch, 50 or clear the gate again ready for next competitor (probably best to have red and yellow revert to green after say 10 seconds anyway, but have a clear button in case the next paddler is catching up). Of course, you then probably need a judge for each gate otherwise judges will need a panel of buttons for several gates and mistakes could happen....

Do we really want/need so much extra wiring to run for events though?

Cost
We looked into simple transponders for kite buggy racing a while ago (unique ID, just needs to record correct start and completed laps), as I recall the transponders were going to cost in the region of £600 each, what I describe above would require even more complex transponders - does anyone think £9 bib deposits are going to cover it? On the plus side no need to swap bibs when you get promoted, just list the paddlers tag ID in the new division. If the scoring software was set for the class, you might even be able to use the same paddler Tag ID for all classes and it would apply to your K1/C1/C2 results depending on what class was racing at each time. Obviously both paddlers in C2 need their tags to race and the software needs to understand how to score a C2 differently from solo boats.

You could even monitor whether competitors have stayed on the water until 2 more boats have finished - automatic disqualification by software, that would stop them!

[jjayes]

It would be good to keep a open mind on this and see if anybody can come up with something that really works. The are some clever people out there.

I once saw catastrophic human judging decisions that cost a British paddler a MK1 win at a world championships, I was his coach and and after so much work it was very hard to take for us both.

I was also awarded a penalty at a World Championship by a British judge who later apologised to me saying that he had to be harsh as he was a British judge and I was British paddler, but he was really not sure he had made the right decision, he just felt under a lot pressure at the time from the foreign judges. I do not know how I managed to walk away from him and not say anything or even swear a little! This just goes to show what a emotive thing judging can be to some people and what effect it can have on decisions they make. I am certain most judges do the very best they can and remain impartial and we should all continually thank them for it.

Having a technological mechanism make the decisions would at least be easier to blame for a penalty you are awarded that you did not think you actually got. A video back up could also give some indication in the event of a protest.

The importance of effective and accurate judging can not be over stated when you consider the commitment, including financial that many paddlers put into their training and racing. If a effective system can be found it may be worth the extra expense to not let the paddlers dedication go to waste through bad judging.

The biggest problem with human judging is tiredness, judging stints need to be as short as possible which I know is easier said than done by organisers with a lack of volunteers on hand.

[CeeBee]

So could we have poles that are touch sensitive? There could be the basic pole with some sorts of touch sensitive wrap around (no idea if such a thing exists but feel it must). The wraparound would be split into a grid of say 1 inch squares and when that cell in the grid was touched, the action would be recorded onto a chip with the grid reference and transmitted back to base. The action would also generate a flash at that grid reference and an audible alarm (which could be a programmable option).

There would also be a camera system either internal to the pole or mounted above the pole on the spreader on the gate so it can be played back to see if it was water or the paddler.

This reminds me of the game where you used to move a hook along a metal wire and had to try to get from end to end with touching it. If you did touch it, it bleeped.

[djberriman]

The problems I see with what has been proposed in this thread are:-

Any touch sensitive pole would pick up water splash and may miss a light brush of a cag. Any other form of mechanism might be affected by outside influences (wind, rain etc)

If you include electronics and water things are bound to fail, then you'll have arguments about whether a pole was working or not, perhaps only one part of it has failed and it depends where the touch is, even the timing gates which aren't subject to much abuse (they don't get hit like poles) sometimes suddenly stop working and then start working again. Imagine how careful you would have to be whilst building the course with state of the art poles, then all the testing to make sure every pole is working correctly on course, fancy sitting in the huge stoppers testing them?

The focus of this suggestion from the ICF doesn't seem to be about making things more accurate just more engaging for the audience which can be done in much simpler ways.

This will also only deal with touches, so there is still the 50's to deal with which will more confuse the audience than engage them.

If the target is to ensure judges are correct (and I can't imagine how I'd feel if I were robbed of a world/olympic medal) then I don't think this is the answer. The problem is I guess you would really need a hawkeye/goalline type system that can accurately predict what happened. The problem being the paddler and the gates are both dynamically moving and the poles could be spinning. Unfortunately such systems hideously expensive. The current systems such as hawkeye and goalline only deal with one moving object - the ball whose travel can be predicted.

I guess this is why the icf experimented with fixed/hinged poles recently with no touch penalties.

but lets hope there is someone somewhere out the with enough interest and some amazing ideas and technology.

Will such technology ever be deployed beyond the very highest levels of the sport I doubt it, but I'm very willing to be proved wrong.

[boatmum]

I wonder if there is any mileage in having like a mini gate-scoreboard above the gate so that when THE JUDGE gives the penalty 2 or 50, it shows above the gate the penalty was awarded on. The audience can then see where the penalty is. As it would be one of two penalties it neednt be too exotic in construction. But whoever operates it would have to be quick, but something like this might be clearer than judges bats for the audience.

Otherwise if there is a big screen showing the action have the gate numbers shown at the bottom of the screen too with the penalties showing. That technology is available already.

[jjayes]

In both the high jump and pole-vaulting athletics events there are sometimes cases where the bar is moved by a athlete touching it but it does not dislodge and the athlete is deemed to have cleared the bar. Various records are often set in this way, including the current mens high jump World record and the womens pole vault world record.

If we accept the same principal in slalom then this would give a much greater chance of somebody inventing a system that judges a pole touch, be it either mechanical or electronic in design. There could also be a acceptance of severe water touches caused by the athletes equipment that dislodge the pole could also be counted against the athlete.

[davebrads]

I think that it would be better to have a system whereby it doesn't matter if you touch the gate. This makes sense if you consider that the object of canoe slalom is to be the fastest around a set course. The only practical way of marking that course up to now is to use suspended poles, the problem with that is that they can be moved by the paddler, potentially allowing the paddler to modify the course to their advantage, and the only purpose of the penalty is to discourage this.

What we need is some way of marking immovable points on the water that the paddler has to get their boat round. I haven't got any further with this thought though but I thought I would put it up here in case anybody can think of a way of achieving it.

BTW when I say the purpose of the penalty is to discourage modifying the course, that is exactly what I meant. I got my best ever result in a kayak some years ago by deliberately paddling into a pole to move it and gain a minimum of 5 seconds advantage over the rest of the field who hadn't spotted this option. Although it was really deliberate displacement it wouldn't be caught by the rules as I moved the pole with my body, and therefore I was already inside the gate line before I moved the pole. I can't believe that there have never been other similar situations, but I have never spotted them myself.

[jjayes]

Dave,

you mentioned...

"I got my best ever result in a kayak some years ago by deliberately paddling into a pole to move it and gain a minimum of 5 seconds advantage over the rest of the field who hadn't spotted this option. Although it was really deliberate displacement it wouldn't be caught by the rules as I moved the pole with my body, and therefore I was already inside the gate line before I moved the pole."

Thank you for your admission. Can you please let us know the date and division of the event? I will then check on the following to see what action can be taken to take into account your admission with reference to the results.

The Limitation Act 1980 (c. 58)[1] is a British Act of Parliament applicable only to England and Wales. It is a statute of limitations which provides timescales within which action may be taken (by issuing a claim form) for breaches of the law. For example it provides that breaches of an ordinary contract are actionable for six years after the event[2] whereas breaches of a deed are actionable for twelve years after the event.[3] In most cases, after the expiry of the time periods specified in the Act the remedies available for breaches are extinguished and no action may be taken in the courts in respect of those breaches.

We could then debate a suitable punishment to be taken against you for infringement of the rules. If anybody has any ideas on this please post?

[jjayes]

For my own admission, I was once given a very big compliment by a section judge at a Grandtully event. As I approached the main drop I was caught by a boil and was pushed to one side of a downstream gate on which the judge was in line with which made it difficult to see both poles. I finished the course and was very surprised to learn that I was given a clean run. One of my fellow competitor protested that I missed the gate and a investigation ensued. The section judge came back with the answer that "Jim would not miss a gate like that". Although I thanked her for her comment and faith in my abilities, I admitted the penalty.