Quote Originally Posted by MorganW View Post
This is a difficult area.

But consider this for a moment.

You are the organiser of a Long A category fell race in mountain terrain. You give your race, quite rightly, an ER designation. But you chose to do nothing to check on the experience of competitors.

The unthinkable happens and there is a tragedy. Surviving relatives are advised to have a go (legally) at the RO.

One of the questions the Coroner will ask (never mind the barrister for the family in civil proceedings) is, what steps did you take to to check the experience of this particular, and other, competitors? (Because that goes to your credibility as a race organiser.)

Do you want to answer "I didn't have any system at all" or do you want to be able to answer that you did have a system, and then allow your legal/advisory team to argue about its validity/worth in the particular case?
Then they ask how did you vet them? What qualifications have you got to vet them..

In Fell running box ticking is all too common. Look at the leadership in fell running? How can that compare to a 10 day ML to take people out on fell walks in the same terrain? Have a fatality and they'll bring in the experts and rip it to shreds.. either do things properly by the book or not at all. I do worry we see too much of the inbetween, good intentions but could end up making the situation worse and providing false sense of security.

As I said earlier, statements of competence and risk are commonly used by the BMC (Can you do X type questions) - they do not vet experience to allow an adult to use a climbing wall.. if a participant makes a mistake and gets injured and there was no fault of the wall or staff then there is no comeback. The BMC is a professional organisation which has been dealing with a high risk sport with great realism for many years. Maybe the FRA should look to them for guidance. At the moment the FRA seem to look to UKA rather than the BMC/MLTA's for guidance, for me there are times when the BMC/MLTA's would be more appropriate partners to work with. - leadership in the mountains for one...