Relay Mayhem

The day began with an early breakfast. With all of the competitors needing to be in quarantine by 9:00am and breakfast starting at 7:00am, the line snaked into the hotel lobby. Upon arrival at the Capitals Golf Course venue, however, we saw that had been unnecessary. The quarantine was still being set up, along with the course. Eventually we filled the quarantine tent and were entertained by Clive Allen's occasional announcements that he still didn't know when the starts would actually happen. That finally occurred around 11:00am, nearly two hours later than planned.

For the first time in many years, Team USA fielded full teams in both the Paralympic and Open categories with the following lineups:

Paralympic Team:
Leg 1) Curtis Schreiner
Leg 2) Matthew Pietro
Leg 3) Christ Rasmussen

Open Team:
Leg 1) Sharon Crawford
Leg 2) Clare Durand
Leg 3) Richard Y. Ebright

Sharon takes off in the mass start

The TrailO Relay course consisted of 27 controls. Each competitor solves exactly nine of the controls, with the first competitor having their pick of the lot and the second choosing nine more. The third leg runner finishes off whatever is left. The single time limit applies to the team as a whole. Each runner can use as much or as little as they need as long as the third leg finishes before the time limit has elapsed. Additionally, each team member solves one TempO station. Scoring is done by adding up all the TempO times along with a 30-second penalty for each TempO miss and a 60-second penalty for each PreO miss.

Curtis considers the controls

The Paralympic team planned in advance to split the controls chronologically, so Curtis started by completing numbers one through nine. Matthew quickly determined, however, that this strategy didn't make sense for him given the difficulty of the trails in his wheelchair. He instead concentrated on tasks closer to the start/finish and left those further away for Christ.

The mayhem continued as the Open team waited for first leg runner Sharon to return. The time limit meant each runner should use between 70 and 75 minutes. This mark passed and still no Sharon. Eventually, Clare was the only remaining Leg 2 runner in quarantine. Sharon finally finished, using a little over 90 minutes. She had run into difficulty solving a few problems and had also been caught up by a one-way route section that prevented her from returning to the finish as quickly as intended.

Christ working it out

Clare and Richard had been busily recalculating the time they had remaining per leg. Upon seeing the map, Clare decided to do the furthest out controls. She figured that, given the time pressure the team was under, it was best not to have Richard worried about covering a lot of ground. Going too fast can increase silly mistakes. Clare mispunched on control 22, where control labeling was intended to be shared with control 21. Christ was not caught by the same situation and he solved number 22 successfully.

As preliminary results came in, one control had been voided and Team USA found they were in reasonable position in both classes. Open was in 13th and Paralympic was in 9th. Russ Myer, USA Paralympic coach, had promised the team champagne if they weren't last and it was looking good for the guys.

It was now mid-afternoon and Richard and Christ were quarantined until after the third leg finished the spectator TempO control. This meant they had spent at least six hours in quarantine or on the course. And lunch was not provided in the quarantine.

Is that another Zero?

The final TempO control was set up to allow spectators to watch and learn whether competitors were correct or not on each questions. Paralympic went first followed by the Open class, in reverse order of results so far. The TempO solutions were almost all zero and this caught less experienced Christ, who answered none correctly. Richard escaped with only two misses (a common score).

Then came the big wait for protests. While most of the team headed back to the hotel, Clare and Sharon stayed at the event center to monitor the proceedings. They eventually left when the jury finally rode out into the field in a golf cart to check a number of protested controls. The jury didn't return to the hotel until about 10:00pm and they had voided an additional two controls. Three teams were also disqualified for rule violations.

When everything was settled and the final results came out, Team USA Open was excited to find they were in 10th position out of 19 teams and Team USA Paralympic had earned their champagne.

Relay Results