Standard Protest From
Comments about this discussion:
Started
There needs to a standard Protest form that is part of the rulebook. Right now there is a version that if often used but only because it what has been used for many years/unicons.
But to my understanding it is not officially from the rulebook nor is explained in the rulebook.
It could be part of an appendix or the like.
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That's a very good point - I also think that the IUF should provide an official protest form for Unicona and explain in the rules what data should be requested in such a protest form for all other events. At all events where I am involved in organizing or running the event, I use the following protest form:
www.einrad-bdr.de/upload/file/IUF_Rulebook_Committee/Forms/VUni-Form_1.01.1_Protest_EN.pdf
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I really like this format. Clean and simple. Some of the language could be improved just a little for clarity and making it work for all disciplines just that much better. But it's really all there.
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I mainly use the form for the racing disciplines - but I am happy to adapt it to make it more general or to improve the wording :)
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At Unicon some people have no club, the form should be large enough to accept that. :)
Referee may not be the right term, in some disciplines, there is no referee, but rather a competition director.
Should protests be handled only by one person? In general, the rulebook is pretty vague on who should handle protests. I feel like there should be three people looking it up if it's a complex case. At least if it's a case that requires real judging (not just a timing mistake to handle).
I remember a complex case where a rider arriving for the podium in a long distance race hit another rider on the line, this one trying to remount. The rider lost the podium on this fall. And the director just said. "Naaah, I don't want to hear about it", or something like that. Not saying anyone was right or wrong, just that a single person should not be able to just brush away a complex protest.
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> At Unicon some people have no club, the form should be large enough to accept that.
That's right - you could simply leave the field empty if there is no club or change the name to “Country/Club” or similar. With "Club" the form would be more general I think and also usable for smaler events, where it is not that usefull to ask for a country.
> Referee may not be the right term, in some disciplines, there is no referee, but rather a competition director.
You're right, in some disciplines the corresponding official is called Chief Judge. But I think technically Chief Judge and Referee are usually the same "role". You could simply use both terms “Referee/Chief Judge” in the form.
> Should protests be handled only by one person? In general, the rulebook is pretty vague on who should handle protests. I feel like there should be three people looking it up if it's a complex case. At least if it's a case that requires real judging (not just a timing mistake to handle).
In all the years that I have been officiating competitions, I have not felt that it is necessary to have more than one Referee/Chief Judge if the person is suitably experienced. If we really want to have more than one person for this purpose, then the rulebook would actually always have to require that at least three people be appointed as Referee/Chief Judge. I don't think that's really realistic. On the other hand, the Rulebook does not prohibit the position of Referee/Chief Judge from being shared among a kind of competition jury with more than one person.
> Ich erinnere mich an einen komplizierten Fall, bei dem ein Fahrer, der bei einem Langstreckenrennen auf dem Weg zum Podium war, einen anderen Fahrer auf der Strecke traf, der versuchte, wieder aufzusteigen. Der Fahrer verlor durch diesen Sturz das Podium. Und der Direktor sagte einfach. „Naaah, ich will davon nichts hören“, oder so ähnlich. Ich sage nicht, dass irgendjemand Recht oder Unrecht hatte, sondern nur, dass eine einzelne Person nicht in der Lage sein sollte, einen komplexen Protest einfach wegzuwischen.
To be honest, I don't know if the referee in this case was aware of his responsibility and really suitable for this position. Every protest should be accepted or rejected with reasons - that's what the form also foresees. Of course, there are sometimes complex decisions, I've had to make them as a referee in the past, but as long as you as a referee always make a decision to the best of your knowledge and belief based on all the information available, I don't see a problem if the decision is ultimately made by one person.
As I said, this person must of course always be aware of their responsibility and the impact of their decisions and also be willing to make difficult decisions if necessary - if they are not, then they should not take on the position of referee or chief judge alone.
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> I remember a complex case where a rider arriving for the podium in a long distance race hit another rider on the line, this one trying to remount. The rider lost the podium on this fall. And the director just said. "Naaah, I don't want to hear about it", or something like that. Not saying anyone was right or wrong, just that a single person should not be able to just brush away a complex protest.
I also think, that protests should be decided by at least 3 experienced competent persons, that were not involved in the contested decision. It is very important for fairness, that protests are responsibly and carefully processed.
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If we demand this, it would have a massive impact on the competitions - as I said, the Rulebook currently stipulates that a Referee or Chief Judge must be appointed for all disciplines. If we require at least three people to handle protests, three people would always have to be appointed to the position of Referee or Chief Judge or we would need to create new positions for that. I also have the feeling that such a regulation implicitly assumes that a single referee/chief judge cannot decide fairly and objectively, which is exactly what they are appointed for. The requirement that at least three people must decide on protests also undermines trust in the referee/chief judge to a certain extent.
Personally, before making such a far-reaching change, I would start by providing an official protest form that shows the need for a reason for accepting/rejecting a protest and explicitly include this need in the rules. And if it turns out that this procedure does not work, further steps can be considered in the future. But as I said, I have not yet had the experience that a single Referee/Chief Judge does not work in general.
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I understand your concern. I think the ref could be the first line of protests, and handle almost all cases. But I still think complex cases should be handled by more people. Usually there are obvious people who could also be consulted. Competition director, federation reprsentative,... The case rarely arises, but when it does, I think we should be ready for it.
Then, the ref could be the one deciding when a protest needs more people.
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As a unicon director (and other roles), I have been brought in to protest discussions where the chief judge or ref as not known how to proceed because it is such a complicated case. I do not think it is necessary to require more people be declared as officials. But the rulebook could mention that higher officials, like the director liaison, IUF liaison, and the unicon director themselves are people to consider consulting if the protest is complex and should not be limited to a single person's decision.
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Yes, that's exactly my point. Make official soemthing that's already happening.
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I think ultimately the point of having a referee/chief judge is to have a single voice of authority. Having appeals to a higher authority only advantages those who push for those appeals because they believe the next person is more likely to agree with them. A head director should not have more information available to them than the referee/judge, as the ref/judge is expected to use any available information as evidence.
The only possible exception, in my opinion, is perhaps that a rider should be able to protest that a judge is not impartial, rather than that they found in a particular direction. If that were found to be warranted, an event director may appoint someone else or handle the protest if they are in an impartial position.
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This discussion is diverting from it's original intention, which is to standardize the protest form. If the committee would like to discuss who and how many people need to handle a protest, that should be put into a different discussion.
Jan, what direction do you need to adjust/edit the form you already have to be more general/standard?
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Kirsten is right, we are moving away from what was actually the origin of this discussion, namely to standardize the protest form and finally make one available at all.
I think so far we have identified two things that should be generalized:
1. club should be generalized to country/club
2. referee should be generalized to referee/cheif judge
Are there any other things that you think should be modified in the form itself?
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Great discussion so far!
1. "Country/Club" looks like a simple way for riders to identify themselves; adding a club may help officials locate the best people to communicate with to reach that person if necessary. For these situations, it might be nice to gather contact information from national teams and/or clubs/groups in case protest situations arise.
2. As above, Referee, Chief Judge and possibly check out the other disciplines to see if there are other job titles in there.
This discussion makes me curious about which events generate the most/least protest situations. I'm going to guess Track as #1, followed by other races. As we develop the standarized form we should take care to make sure it fits to each competition discipline or includes notes/hints on how to use it when the situation doesn't exactly fit.
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Reviewing the form Jan linked earlier from top to bottom my thoughts:
- Event -> Discipline and Event (I know it's mildly obvious but it's good practice, the 6 disciplines could be listed so that the one filling it out circles the discipline. To me this is a way to visually see which discipline objectively has the most protests - organizers and IUF could find ways to to troubleshoot repetitive issues)
- Move "Regarding Competition" to the second position and rename ... but there is another discussion about clarifying these names.... so perhaps "event", "competition", and "discipline" can be adjusted according to that?
- Protesting Club -> Protesting Club or Country
- Protesting Person -> Contact Person for Protest (This should be the club leader or country representative. For countries without a defined representative it needs to be clear who is allowed to be the contact person - which I think the Freestyle Committee has been discussing)
- Move contact information request to below the name of the contact person
- "A protest is filed against for the following situation:" (small adjustment)
- "List the section from the IUF Rulebook that is being citied for this protest"
- Separate the sections for "Date and Time" and "signature" - can be on the same line but difference boxes
- In the US we use the language "for Official use only" for sections that are to be filled out by not you. I like this language and would like to use it but only if it makes sense across languages
- "Official's Decision"
- Use the same language as above for the Explanation
- I like both "protested upheld" and "protest rejected"
- Referee -> "Official"
- Same for date, time, signature for the official section
- And I really like the second page being all lines for more information/space.
Much of this is small language adjustments and mild reformatting. If it doesn't make sense please let me know. I am typing kinda fast.
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Thank you very much for the detailed feedback.
To point 1.: I think this makes perfect sense for a Unicon form - for the vast majority of other competitions it is actually unnecessary to ask for the “section”, as usually only disciplines from one section are offered anyway. (For example, I would understand 100m as a discipline and not track, track would be an “section” for me).
I would therefore agree to include the fields for an official IUF form, as long as it is only mandatory for Unicon. In other words, if we want to make general requirements for a protest form for all competitions, then asking for the section would be optional information for me.
To point 2.: By “event” I mean something like “Unicon” or “German Championship Track Racing” - so the form is currently structured in such a way that it asks for general to specific information. The further up, the more general, the further down, the more specific. That's why I have the competition so far down.
To point 4.: I can understand the rewording.
Apart from the rewording, however, I wonder whether every rider at a Unicon even knows who the official representative of their country is? How is this representative determined and communicated? Is it ensured that this representative can always be contacted to file a protest? I think we may need a separate discussion on this, as these questions have nothing to do with the actual form, but with the question of who may file an protest.
To point 7.: The current wording together with the checkbox were intended to reflect the fact that not every protest may refer to a specific section of the rulebook. If there is a connection to the rulebook, the checkbox should be ticked and the relevant rule(s) named. Otherwise, the checkbox can be left blank and the situation can simply be described directly. I don't know whether this will also be clear with the proposed wording or whether this gives the impression that a section from the rulebook must always be mentioned.
To point 10. and 13.: I don't like the use of the term “official”, as the rulebook defines completely different officials for practically all disciplines and not all of these officials should handle protests. According to the rulebook, either the Referee or the Chief Judge is responsible for this, which is why I would have used the wording “Referee/Chief Judge” in the form.
I'm fine with all the other suggestions.
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I am also in favor of having a standard Protest form, and the one proposed by Jan is indeed a good basis.
I think we should also discuss a bit how much the Protest form should be advertised. Reminding explicitly the competitors beforehand would probably be too much. But I would remind explicitly the event directors about the Protest Section of the Rulebook and the protest form, and about passing the information to the Referees/Chief judges in their event.
Concerning the detailed points listed by Kirsten:
Points 1 and 2:
I agree with "The further up, the more general, the further down, the more specific.".
Precising "Unicon" or "Blah blah blah championship" is only useful if the protest forms are archived for a long time (over a month). Is it usually done for Unicon? If one wants to capitalize on the protest forms to enhance the events, then they should be archived in some way.
I guess the protest forms would rather be on paper than digitally filled in so having boxes for the 6 disciplines is probably useless. The competition field (100m, Basketball B) will be enough to retrieve the information if needed.
While at specifying things, I would say "if nec. Heat/Game/Battle" to be compatible with most disciplines.
Point 4: Finding their country representative within two hours for countries with hundreds of participants (like the hosting country) may be challenging (and too much work for the representative). The question of the persons allowed to file a protest thus deserves a separate discussion. Concerning the form, and since it is designed for various kinds of events, I would keep something informal like "Contact Person for Protest" or similar.
Point 9: One (at least I) risks to read "for Official use only" as "for official use only" (with official as an adjective), which would be misleading. I would prefer "for Referee/Chief Judge use only" (or the current formulation).