Some teams walked, other teams got rides. Fair?I had the privilege of covering the Rafting World Championships the past few days for Lead Adventure Media. The location on the Rio Pacuare was spectacular as expected, and the course was truly world-class (all of it, and especially the slalom), but there was an underlying issue which should not have existed and which affected the event overall very negatively.
I’ve been part of many sporting events in nature, where logistics present a great challenge. I have seen things run extremely well in the face of overwhelming natural obstacles, and I’ve seen them run poorly, using the lame excuse that “nature is just uncontrollable”.
But I have rarely witnessed such disregard for the athletes in terms of the situations they were presented with outside of the confines of the defined racecourse.
And I was not the only one appalled by things like the utter lack of nutrition provided the teams in the guise of meals (hot dogs for dinner?), the challenging sleeping situation in tents on muddy ground, and the inequality in transportation to and from the river.
Team captains and vocal team members had much to say about it as well. They also had a lot of positive things to say about the overwhelming natural beauty of Costa Rica, the worthiness of the whitewater racecourse, and the positive energy from staff and volunteers.
But nearly every team had extremely critical opinions about the planning and organization of the event itself.
The most glaring point of contention was specifically regarding the moral dilemma racers found themselves in surrounding transportation up a steep, muddy, 5km hill from the river getting to the busses back to camp.
While the unofficial ruling was that transportation was reserved for judges and spectators, and competitors all had to walk, a large number of racers hitched rides on whatever motorized vehicles they could.
Race management and racers (who apparently believed the rule was written in stone) were heard saying things to the tune of “Everybody has to walk, so it’s equal for all teams, therefore it’s not an issue affecting the competition.”.
And therein lies the moral issue. NOT all teams walked. Some did, but many didn’t.
And for those who did walk up that hill every day, a lot of them chose to do so primarily because of a moral decision they had made to follow the rules (unwritten and simply rumored) in the spirit of equality and sportsmanship.
Yes, the hike out was strenuous, challenging, and exhausting, but if the rule was that all teams had to walk, then the fair and right thing for all teams to do was follow it. Or so went the rationale.
But a lot of athletes did hitch rides, on whatever they could – on tractors, in trucks, on ATV’s.
Many other rafters though – having been convinced that walking out was the right thing to do – just sucked it up and hiked, slipping and sliding in their gear, lugging their paddles 3 miles up the steep muddy hill in the dark.
Now, I know it’s competition, and having been around Adventure Racing for a while, where these types of unwritten “loopholes” are ever-present, I’m aware that the mentality of the teams and athletes plays a big role in the outcome of the situation.
For example, I know that Mike Kloser (captain of Nike’s adventure racing team), someone I personally respect and admire as an athlete, would absolutely NOT have walked. No way in hell. He and his team would have done anything legally allowable by the authority of the nation of Costa Rica to get themselves a relaxing ride up that hill.
Because their mentality would be, “Yes it sucks and it’s pointless and exhausting, so we’re not going to do it if we don’t have to. And it’s obviously not a strict ‘rule’ that teams have to walk, so why on earth would we walk? Leave the walking to the stupid teams. We’re riding and resting.”
And technically, that attitude is correct. The point of being there was to compete within the rules, and win. It was a competition, and at the very highest level for the sport of Rafting.
There wasn’t a “rule” about getting rides or walking though, because it wasn’t part of the actual competition! And yet this non-competition aspect impacted the actual competition more than any other single thing.
A little bit of logistical planning would have prevented this from even being an issue. But it wasn’t planned better, and as such, some people that I spoke with played it off like walking was a fun little twist in the competition, like it was now some sort of adventure-race-slash-rafting-world-championship, and since ‘everybody has to do it’ that somehow made their lack of logistical planning ok.
The problem presented was less for the teams with the attitude of “no way we’re walking”, and more for the teams who felt like getting a ride was somehow cheating. It put them in an unnecessarily difficult situation, where they found themselves having to make a tough moral choice.
Right or wrong, they were convinced that walking was the rule – perhaps owing to language barriers or just outright bad information from volunteers – and thus decided to take the high road, literally and figuratively, and do the right thing. In their minds, the morally right thing.
To those teams, getting a ride was cheating. So they would rather wear themselves out hiking in the mud, than cheat.
In other words, misinformation and bad planning led to teams making a moral decision which taxed them physically, in a situation that had nothing to do with actual competition, and should never have existed in the first place.
This in essence led the ‘less moral’ teams to gain a competitive advantage through extra rest, because they frankly didn’t care what the rumor was about the rule, they didn’t want to walk and were getting a ride at all costs. Especially given there was no punishment for it.
Of course the argument from management I imagine would be that the Japanese men won, and the Czech women won, and those teams walked up the hill every night (that I witnessed), therefore people who are whining about it should just shut up because it obviously didn’t affect the outcome of the event.
I disagree. It had a definite impact on many of the teams I talked to, both physically and mentally. How could it not?
And that type of external distraction should never be the most memorable, defining aspect of a World Championship event, in any sport.
Athletes are always going to do whatever they possibly can to gain a competitive advantage. But they shouldn’t be forced into situations where failure on the part of race management brings about a new arena of competitive strategy for the racers.
For some teams, if strategy meant shelling out a lot of cash for a driver and a hotel room so they didn’t have to sleep in the mud with 300 other athletes, well, that was their play.
Or if it meant piling as many people on an ATV as possible – safety be damned – to get a ride up the side of a steep muddy mountain and save an hour’s worth of strenuous energy exertion, well, then that was their play.
The thing is, that little bit of extra rest might mean the difference of just 1 second on the slalom course, which might mean the difference between 8th place and 6th place in the Slalom event, which might mean the difference between finishing in the Overall Top 5 or not.
And maybe if the team landed in the Overall Top 5, their sponsors had extra bonuses for them, or they’d get automatic inclusion in some other event, or they’d get a parade down main street in Minsk.
But even if there was nothing tangible to gain, the bottom line is that something the event organization screwed up on, which wasn’t even part of the competition, shouldn’t have affected the final standings! Rankings are kept because they mean something, they’re important, to everyone involved.
So even if the managerial oversight and physically brutal hike out only affected one team, and that hypothetical team dropped from 18th to 23rd because of it, that is absolutely wrong and that team – while still responsible for their own performance – would have a legitimate gripe.
It’s a blight on the the race organization for putting these athletes into a confusing, frustrating, and ultimately very physically taxing situation.
Depending on the mentality of the teams and just how ‘rule-abiding’ they were, teams either chose not to do what they were led to believe was cheating, and thus suffered, or they ignored the unofficial rule and gained a competitive advantage in the competition. That, from something OUTSIDE of the competition.
With nearly 50 teams, this logistical oversight definitely affected the outcome of the world championships as a whole, and is directly traceable back to poor planning and execution by the race hosts.
What the athletes said in their interviews was spot-on: the location was gorgeous and worthy of hosting a world championship caliber event; the attitudes of the volunteers and staff, and their enthusiasm for helping the athletes, was commendable; but a number of logistical oversights and their subsequent impact on the racers, was a total disgrace.
And it’s too bad – because even just fixing the problem of post-race transportation up the hill would have likely changed the overall attitudes of the teams which are now going to be leaving with a negative memory of the event.
This World Championship event should have left athletes and spectators with great memories of the friendly people, the beautiful location, and some of the best competition whitewater they’d ever seen.
Instead, what many will take back to their countries is a memory of a poorly planned and logistically unfriendly event which in their own words, made it seem more like a meaningless local event than a World Championships in paradise.
