I agree with Evan’s take re: challenging vs dangerous. There were at least 3 senior men (2 potential top 10 contenders among them) who were taken out of contention/DNFd due to various aspects of the course. Maximus Thiesen did end up in the emergency room after taking a spill in the ditch 200m in and Kevin Coffey got pretty banged up as well in the same fall.
I could imagine that some of the top dogs who show up to XC between peak seasons (people like CPT, Bruchet, Gay, Lalonde, etc.) may forego the race in favor of keeping their bodies intact on a course like this, whereas I wouldn’t see people backing off a tough but fair course (something like the 2019 Aarhus World XC course comes to mind in addition to the Plains and Kingston).
Don’t take my points as attestation to ‘liking’ the course-- I didn’t. I just don’t think it was as dangerous as claimed. Likely, being a slower masters runner in a race that is more spread out reduces the danger compared with the pace of the senior men/women-- I can’t comment on that scenario specifically. However, I imagine that getting a good line off the start is much harder in the senior races.
It does seem like the LOC took the course preparation far too casually-- especially for a venue that has never hosted a meet. Having a ‘test event’ should be a mandatory part of the bidding process IMO, and would probably light a fire under their asses to get the course ready. I know that Dylan Wykes was part of the LOC in some way but they did not seem to seek his input much.
It is really too bad the course was there. Mooney’s Bay, where the track facility is, is a much better facility, more central, has hills, grass, sand etc and they run LOTS of great meets there. Would love to see it there next year. As someone who can’t run very fast any more but can go up hill pretty well I need some vert!
With regards to people running the course “blind”, hard to do when the LOC asked athletes to stay off the course the week before:
Also, with people coming from out of town, that could also add to not being able to see the course ahead of time.
I do think that a test event should be necessary to host an XC national championship especially on a new course. Kind of nuts to think that the first time this course was used was for Nationals.
As someone who is intimately aware of the bidding requirements for ACXC I can attest that their bid package asks for a list of championship events that have been hosted on the proposed course. Seems to me they conveniently disregarded this for this event. One can only presume they had such a requirement in the bid package to avoid situations such as this.
We should also bear in mind that the course was actually changed from the original design just a few days before the event (for the better, as it happens, but still). Even if the course had been open for preview a week or more before, no one would have been previewing the course that actually ended up being run.