National 10 banjaxed by timing failures

No result as time trial stopwatch fails, reports James Shrubsall

- James Shrubsall

No result was announced for the men’s National 10-Mile Championship after timing problems emerged midway through Sunday’s event near Wool in Dorset.

With around three quarters of riders having finished their effort, word began filtering through that the timekeepers were having problems with their equipment running slow, and they would be unable to give a reliable result at this stage.

“One of the timekeepers’ stopwatches failed, and that meant the top 50 couldn’t get a result,” explained Drag2Zero rider Alan Murchison – who was one of that top 50 and had hoped to win his age group.

“The times just were all over the place. Chris Fennell had done a ‘16’. With all due respect, it wasn’t a 16minute course, so the times were wrong. It became quite apparent that there was some sort of mistake.”

Murchison added: “The main thing is, you’ve got to sanity check it... this is run by volunteers, who give up so much of their time. After the event, it’s very, very easy to be an expert on it.”

There were calls on social media to move to chip timing for National Championship TTs, including from last year’s National 10 champion Dan Bigham – something Murchison said he would support.