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In October I measured the course of the IAU 100km World & European Championship race in Gibraltar held on 7 November 2010. There was a lead in which included a short loop of 1.310km followed by 19 laps of a 5.0639 km loop.
The course underwent several changes after I measured.
  • Before the race the specified two lanes 1.8 m wide within half the road in one section of Queensway were converted to two 3.6m wide lanes by using the whole road.
  • Also during the race two 1.310 km laps were accidentally run at the start rather than a single lap. The organisers compensated by shortening lap 12, by making measurements with a surveyors wheel during the race and introducing a new turning point. This also involved changing another section of road from running in the East half to running in the West half. Because the shortened lap 12 remained in place for 3 hours until all the back markers had passed the point, those runners who had already passed lap 12 had a further small saving of about 1.4 m on each of lap 13 onwards.
On 6 February I remeasured the race as run. I treated the remeasurement as a verification, so I did not include the SCPF in my calculations. Following standard procedures the course would only be PROVED to be short if the result came to less than 99.950 km. The 50 m margin being an allowance for possible measurement errors in my verification ride.

My verification ride took place in very stable temperature conditions very early on a Sunday morning with little traffic. I had previously studied the race video and still pictures on the IAU website:race pictures, so I had been able to confirm the correct placing of cones and barriers at almost every point which I had specified. Paint marks were still in place for the lap 12 turn, and at correctly located at other specified points (start/finish/initial 1.310 km lap turn) so I was very confident about following the exact route available to runners on race day.

The result was a length of 99.903 km, so I concluded that the course was short by 97 m and that any any other verifier would also be very likely to get a result less than 99.950 km and so also prove the course short.

See the IAU's statement on the remeasurement
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