After months of planning and preparation by race organizers and training by athletes, today’s XTERRA Ionia went off without a hitch, except, a volunteer apparently misunderstood the course and specifically directed a number of the lead athletes to pass by a loop. As you know the RD is most apologetic that this occurred.
Even athletes who inquired were told, “no go straight”, and so they did. After examining the results it appears that the difference is 25:00. Race management reviewed the matter with the XTERRA Ambassadors and the conclusion was that it would be unfair to disqualify participants for following an express directive from a race official. With that in mind, we were instructed to add the difference as a penalty to each of those believed to have taken the wrong path.
Here are the actual results without correction (used for awards) and the corrected results which are expected to be used for points.
