inter-school cross-country c'ships 2009

this morning, i officiated at the schools' national cross-country championships 2009 held at the bedok reservoir park for the first time. the finish point was at the running track of the temasek polytechnic stadium. last year, the venue was the s'pore botanic gardens. my association with the organisation of this event goes back to the days when it was held at the macritchie reservoir.

there was much spectator support, especially from this school - victoria school. they had spectators on the terraces as well as on the field facing the terraces. they had loud banners strung all over the stadium. (they finished champions in the 'c' division for boys; however, they failed to capture the 'b' division title.)


my duty was to check and verify the results captured manually and electronically. if you look at the above picture, there is a length of black wire strung overhead across the track. this wire is equipped with a device that will capture the competitor's number as he/she passes it. there is a tiny chip embedded in each number.



these two 'officials' are equipped with a tablet each, with which they use to record the competitor's number and the time the runner has returned. no stop watches are used at this meet.

there are also two video cameras, one on each side of the track, to record the actions as the runners run towards and past the finish point. this recording is needed when there is a disparity, when the manually recorded result does not tally with electronically captured result. in today's championships, the recordings came into use twice.



there were two teams, each comprising three to four members, recording the results manually. the two teams did not duplicate the recording of results. as there were six events, each team recorded the finishing positions of three events.




with this procedure in place, you can be assured that the results will be nearly 100% accurate because there are four layers of check. the determining one is usually the video recording.


out of the seven retired teachers who were enlisted to help at this meet, six were at one time or another teaching at balestier hill secondary school. one of them jokingly asked: is this balestier hill's cross-country meet?