Why is it that when some riders are timed out on sections in the Colin Appleyard British Championship the team reports say ...APPARENTLY timed out. It was shirty who said it last year about Ross Danby, and this year it was team Atom refering to Michael Brown. Both riders were definitely out of time. Ross' minder seemed to think he had over 30 seconds spare, which cleared up where the error lay in most peoples minds. To me, "apparently" implies that there is cheating. Maybe some riders are looking for excuses, but if it wasn't for all the observers at all trials giving up their time, then the riders wouldn't have the sport they enjoy today.

but if it wasn't for all the observers at all trials giving up their time, then the riders wouldn't have the sport they enjoy today.

But there again if it was not for the riders I would have no where to go on a Sunday to observe.

Through experiance most riders in the BC know if they are out or pretty close to being out of time, but maybe the 'minders', 'press' have a different type of watch.

I have never had a problem with the rider.

I "timed" at Brimham last year and only had one rider query how close he had been to the gate. In that case he had cleared the major obstacle's but had not just cleared a minor one and was at least three metres short of the end gate. In order to avoid confusion I blew the whistle as I started timing and blew when out of time if the rider was still in the section.

Yea so did we but still had queries. We also found that most of the minders didn't start their stopwatch when the whistle was blown. You could hear the "beep" at least 5 seconds later with some minders.