Reaction to the results of Sunday’s race in Seattle indicates that some fans are not taking some elements of boat racing into consideration when it comes to the officiating that takes place. I am offering some explanation, strictly from my point of view. During the Final Heat, an assistant referee in a helicopter radioed that he had seen something that should be reviewed. There was no penalty called. There was a suggested review. Unlike football and baseball, where the referee can run to the side of the field and review the video, that referee and his video had to be flown to the helicopter landing area and then driven to the pit area where it was met by the Chief Referee and reviewed. He ruled there had been no infraction. KIRO TV stated in the evening news that, “Fifteen minutes is just too long for a review.” Again, they are not considering the difference between boat racing and other sports where video reviews are used. All things considered, 15 minutes was pretty fast In our sport, if one of the leaders had failed tech inspection, that would not have been known for some time either. That’s why IndyCar racing announces official order of finish and penalties on Monday. NASCAR waits until Tuesday. The H1 rule book states that reviews and decisions will take place within a half hour of the completion on the race. The officials took half that long to review and announce the decision. Regarding the start – H1’s timing and video are synchronized. The light that comes on in the video does it automatically at 00:00. The clock you saw on the television coverage was started manually by someone in a truck in the pit area. As you can understand, a millisecond of delay or anticipation in hitting the button equals a boat length or more at the start. The referee was asked by the driver’s rep to review the start, as had been requested by one of the teams. He asked for the photo and it was delivered to him on a USB thumb drive. He showed it to the driver’s rep and then sent it back to the timer who was packing up the equipment at start/finish. He had no idea that fans had seen something in the TV coverage that appeared to show something different than the official timing photo. I informed him of the fans’ concerns late Sunday night. I got an email early Monday that said he had no idea of the discrepancy between the official timer’s start/finish photo and the manual clock in the TV coverage. Fans who are presuming that the manually operated clock they saw on TV is correct and the official clock operated by the timer is wrong are looking for a conspiracy where there is none. Steve Montgomery - H1 Media
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 15:59:19 +0000
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