My thoughts from the two angles and the fact that by UCI rules for CX course widths and being a national champs with commisaires.
I want you to think about this statement for a moment, because you're not the first person to jump on an internet forum and criticize us over the width of the CX nationals course, pointing out that it needs to be at least 3m right throughout.
First, if you were actually at Essendon Fields you'd know how problematic this would be. But think about for a moment what would happen if we, as commissaires, turned up to a venue run by a promoter, they've laid out a course, despite the fact that we were given course maps of how it was going to be a month or so earlier - and you say to them "no, you have to change all this. Your whole course, it doesn't meet the rules. The race will not be run like this."
And in many cases there there's no way you're going to get a full 3m width for certain sections. This part of the course was actually fine - but there were other sections, particularly on the hilly side of the course, if you ran it 3m wide not only would it not matter, because only one line is going to form anyway, but the far side of that 3m is going to be 50-80cm lower than the high side because of the way it runs across the hill.
It's a silly thing to suggest. While the rulebook is there for certain things, coming in as a commissaire and making demands for the course to be fixed in ways like that is not only not going to happen, but it doesn't help in trying to make the teams under the Event Director, Technical Delegate and Chief Commissaire any easier.
Add to this these particular organizers - hell, when I (as a commissaire at the event)
suggested - not instructed, but
suggested to one of their guys while he was putting bunting out at the round they had earlier in the year - so that we wouldn't have to adjust it later - ie, make it easy now in case it becomes a problem - that he run the bunting at about 1-1.5ft high rather than the shoulder height or so he was putting it up - so it doesn't get caught in the wind as much and so it doesn't get caught on riders handlebars when they run wide, the event manager came over and absolutely blasted me, another commissaire, and the chief commissaire in a way I've never had occur at an event ever! Some event organizers are easier than others to get along with, and some, even though they've only been running CX events for 12 months, think they can't learn from others who may, or may not, have been doing it for, well... a tad longer than 12 months
Basically, pick your battles. "The course is only 2.88m wide, you need to go re-drill all those holes and find another 1.2m width in this section of course" is not one of them.
