Impacts on Gliding

Impacts on the Sport

Competition is put in jeopardy when rules and appeal processes don’t work – this is the current status quo for World Gliding Championships. Being able to quantify performance results is at the core of competition. If you can’t be confident of having valid results, it doesn’t mean much. The penalty and appeal debacle of the Women’s Worlds has exposed fundamental failings in our sport.
A history of inadequate rule writing for live tracking and confusion over whether or not it should be banned lead to the publication of contradictory and deficient rules. The Australian pilots were blamed for not understanding an intention to have a rule to limit access to live tracking. But competitors can’t be expected to know about opinions and intentions for rules and can only follow the published written rules. The appeal processes should have shed this light on the faulty justification for a penalty, but failed to do so. The appeals fell foul to bias and disregarded fair process.

Deficient competition rules

Since the introduction of FLARM in 2004, pilots have been using it to gather data on their competitors. With the introduction of the Open Glider Network (OGN), ground crew have been monitoring progress of all competitors and passing on information to their pilots. Questions were asked at IGC meetings over many years to encourage some action on this issue, but no agreement was made and the practice continued. The February 2018 IGC plenary meeting discussed the use of real time tracking and did not resolve the issue and the July 2018 world championships in Poland and Czech Republic had Local Procedures that required teams to register their FLARM on the OGN which supported the practice of real time tracking as they could no longer hide their signal. This enabled all teams to use real time tracking.
The 2019 IGC plenary meeting saw a number of rules discussed, some attempting to limit the use of real time tracking and others to remove the benefit of tracking by changing the start rules. Two rules were adopted with immediate effect, but both rules were removed from the 2019 draft edition of the rules by the IGC Bureau prior to the WWGC. So, the published rules did not prohibit the use by pilots of real time data. But, a contradictory rule in the Local Procedures that required organisers to display the gliders with a 15 minute delay stayed in place. It of course makes no sense to provide for a 15 minute delay in the organisation’s public display of tracking data when teams have the ability and are allowed to receive live tracking data continuously.

Competitors blamed for deficient rules

The opinion of those who condemned the Australian team was that there should be rules such as those that were proposed and removed just prior to the competition and that the Australian team should have been aware of that, especially since the organisation was required by the Local Procedures to have a 15 minute delay. The fact is that there were not rules prohibiting live tracking and the pilots were not aware of this opinion or intention. It is an obligation on organisations to have rules that can be simply understood by competitors and teams and the benefit of a decision on breach of rules should be given to competitors when rules are not clear.

Bias and lack of process for impartial hearing

Members of the competition organisation, the Jury at the competition and the IAT had a clear conflict of interest since most of them were members of the IGC and held a position that the rules to prohibit live tracking should have been in the published version. Their personal opinions and roles in IGC had the potential to compromise their impartiality, and it did. As a result many aspects of a fair process were disregarded and a concerted effort was made to justify the penalty despite questionable grounds for doing so.
The Australian pilots were also deliberately deterred from appealing to the FAI and to ICAS. This is evident in a letter sent by a member of the IGC Bureau to the GFA Board members saying that they should not appeal and suggesting that Australian pilots could be banned from WGC and the 2023WGC at Narromine could be withdrawn.

The Organisation, Jury and IAT all cited rules that were not relevant or only partially quoted and distorted. In its conclusions, the IAT determined that the Australian pilots were not guilty of unsporting behaviour. They did determine that a rule was broken but the cited rule did not apply to pilots or other team members as the rule only referred to a requirement as to how the organisation should publicly display tracking. Despite this, the IAT disqualified the pilots using words such as ‘irregular conditions’ and ‘reprehensible’ to justify its decision even though this terminology did not appear anywhere in the rules.

It can happen to you, it can happen again.

While the shortcomings of WGC rules and appeal processes are not acknowledged, this injustice to competitors and lack of validity in competition results can happen again. It can happen to any pilot and team member. To ensure that future WGC competitions have integrity and are valid, there needs to be some key changes.

 Air Sport Australia Confederation (ASAC) suggested changes

ASAC is of the view that the contest jury and the IAT appeal were poorly managed. The IGC has recognised the incorrect jury process and has established a Remote Communications Guide, which comes some way to addressing the current issues. The main concerns of ASAC regarding the IAT were the unreasonable length of time the appeal took, the lack of independence of panel members, the lack of transparency about what information was sought to make its decision, and the barriers created that impeded a further appeal to ICAS. Below is a list of changes that might address these concerns.

  1. That the time period in which to lodge an appeal against a jury decision be reduced from three months to one month without having to supply all the evidence within this time. This would allow the tribunal process to begin as soon as possible, After the appeal sumission deadline, an additional two months or so could be given for the appellant to gather and subit their evidence.
  2. The panel must be chaired by a person and contain a second person from a discipline other than that to which the appeal relates. The third person could be from the same discipline, but all three have to be completely independent of those involved in the appeal.
  3. The panel should be appointed within 14 days of the appeal being lodged.
  4. The panel should hand down its decision within three months of being appointed. If needed, the panel chair should be able to seek an extension of time from the CASI President.
  5. In conducting the appeal, the panel should advise all parties of the sources from which they propose to seek information to reach its decision, and they should advise parties of evidence gathered and allow parties to provide further evidence to clarify or rebut what they receive.
  6. If a party wants to make a further appeal to ICAS, then that appeal must be lodged with ICAS within 21 days, but this period must be extended to 42 days if the 21-day period includes any significant recognised public holiday period.
  7. If an appeal to the panel concerns a dispute over interpretation or application of any rule, then the panel members must be aware of and apply the principle that the obligation is on organisations to have rules that can be simply understood by any athlete or team official as per the principles set out in the ICAS case of USA Shooting and Quigley –v-v UIT 1995 (for more information about these principles and the case see ‘A lawyer’s perspective)’.