Processes

Protests and appeals

The competition arrangers will designate an Appeals Committee that will hear and make decisions on protests and appeals (collectively referred to as appeals) within the competition. The Appeals Committee should consist of the Tournament Director (who will chair any Appeals Committee meeting, but will not have voting power) and an odd number of voting members, at least 3. No more than one person from a country can be a member of the Appeals Committee. At least a senior judge, senior skipper and a member of the Technical Committees should be included in this committee. A member of the same country/delegation as the appealing party may not process a protest or appeal, therefore a reserve member must also be appointed in advance. The reserve member has the right to attend and hear all other protests and appeals where the appealing party isn't their country/delegation so as to ensure consistency, but they are not allowed to vote or voice their opinion during these appeals.

The Appeals Committee can hear protests on:

• A scoring error related to data entry or calculation error
• A decision by the Tournament Director or other tournament officials that is unfair or inconsistent with published IJRU rules
• Calls for disqualification of an athlete or team that grossly abuses IJRU competition rules.
• Scores in speed and multiples events only if it has an effect on ranking or pertains to the top ranked entry
  • For speed and multiples events, each delegation is allowed appeals with a deposit set by the organisers, in some cases the organisers may choose to assign each delegation a number of appeals tokens instead.
  • If an appeal is successful, the deposit or appeal token is returned to the delegation; if not, the deposit is not returned and the appeal token is consumed.
  • If appeal tokens are used, delegations may submit more appeals than they have available appeal tokens, if the delegation runs out of appeal tokens before all of their appeals are processed, the processing stops.
  • These appeals will be processed from highest-ranking to lowest-ranking

Appeals will not be accepted on:

• Other decisions or ratings of judges

Event Organiser Discretion

The event organiser must specify if deposits, appeal tokens, or neither are used and the details for their use, such as how much the deposits are, and how they will be paid. Or how many tokens are available per delegation and what the process for distributing them are.

It is allowed to make appeals on matters or scores pertaining to your own, and/or another delegation.
A delegation may not make an appeal for results if they do not have entries in the competition event, age-, and gender category the appeal relates to.

A successful appeal on speed and multiples scores is one that changes the score of the top ranked entry, or if it changes the rank of another entry. To determine if the ranking would change, the re-counted entry score is compared to the results as they were before any other appeals were successful. A delegation may mark multiple appeals as related, to determine their success, the re-counted scores of related appeals are compared together against the results as they were before any other appeals were successful.

To make an appeal the following process should be used

1. The delegation head coach or designated representative discusses the issue with the Tournament Director. The Tournament Director will propose a recommendation (and may consult with the full Appeals Committee, but this is not required). There may only be one designated representative for appeals per delegation, who must speak English or provide a translator.
2. If the designated representative does not agree with this recommendation they will have a set time from the official release of results to submit a written appeal to the full Appeals Committee. The appeal window for each official release of results will be defined and communicated by the Tournament Director with the official release of the results. The window must be at least 15 minutes. The appeal window can be cut short if all delegations sign that they will not be making any appeal before the end of the appeals window.
   1. The appeal must include contact details to the designated representative, and a description of what is being appealed.
   2. If an appeal pertains to an entry, the appeal must include the competition event, entry number, and athlete name(s).
   3. For appeals of scores, the score believed to be true must be stated.
3. On protests or appeal of other matters than speed and multiples scores, the designated representative will present their case to the full Appeals Committee, and the Tournament Director will present the recommendation they made.
4. On appeal of other matters than speed and multiples scores, the Appeals Committee will meet in private, discuss the issue and vote on the issue. A majority is required to overturn the original decision of the tournament director. The Appeals Committee is allowed to call additional people who are party to the appeal to ask them questions, such as the coach or athlete a protest is made against.
   For appeals on speed and multiples scores, the Tournament Director or someone they appoint will select judges to re-count the video according to the video replay process, the result of this count will be the appeal outcome.
   note

   If video replay is not available for the competition, or has malfunctioned for the entry, the Appeals Committee will ask the designated representative for a video of the entry. This video must be filmed from the coach's box, with a still camera, where the athlete(s) are clearly visible throughout the recording, and the video shows the entire event: from the start of the timing track to the end of the event plus three seconds.

   note

   If an entry has already been re-counted due to another appeal or on the request of the Tournament Director the result of the previous recount will be used.

5. The decision of the Appeals Committee is final and will be communicated to the designated representative, it cannot be further appealed.

Event Organiser Discretion

The event organiser must communicate if video replay will be in use for the event.

Appeals on speed and multiples scores that would change the ranking in medal or qualifiers positions will be handled before the medal ceremony. Other appeals on speed and multiples scores may be handled later, but before the results are published.

If corrections are made after awards are distributed, athletes will not be required to return any incorrectly given awards, but they may choose to do so as a show of sportsmanship.

Substitutions

Substitution of an athlete in an event will be permitted within the following guidelines:

1. The Tournament Director is notified immediately of any substitution.
2. The substitute athlete is not currently competing in the same competition event in any other age or gender category.
3. The substitute athlete's gender and age must fall within the parameters of the competition event in which they are substituting for a freestyle event.¹
4. If substitute athlete is a member of another overall team, the team into which they are substituting an event will not be eligible for an overall placement
5. If a gender or age category change occurs with the substitution, any overall entries for the team in which the substitution is occurring will be nullified.
6. Substitution must be requested by the delegation Head Coach or chosen representative.

For DDC performance, substitution is not allowed. However, in case of an injury or other reason accepted by the Tournament Director the team may be allowed to compete with fewer athletes than originally registered for the entry. This decision will be made by the Tournament Director.

For DDC speed, substitution may be allowed in case of an injury or other reason accepted by the Tournament Director, it is however only allowed to substitute in another athlete from the same performance team as the speed entry. This decision will be made by the Tournament Director.

Injury

If medical staff appointed by the Event Organiser determines that it is too dangerous for an athlete or team to proceed their competition, they will be withdrawn from competition until it's been proven that they are fit to continue competing. If this determination is made during an entry, the athletes are participating in it will be stopped and the athlete(s) will not be offered to recompete at a second time.

Examples of dangerous conditions includes but is not limited to:

• Athletes landing on their head, spraining their joints, dislocation of a joint.
• Other injuries that renders the athlete unable to get up, make them stagger, or otherwise hinder their ability to move normally
• Injuries outside the competition floor that renders the athlete in a state where they're unable to compete, including unsafe levels of available energy or nutrients.

Starting order

The starting order of entries for the first round will be randomly determined separately for each division. In the final round, the starting order is seeded by increasing qualifying score.

For DDC speed in the final round, the teams will be lined up based on their qualifying score in the order 4th, 2nd, 1st, 3rd from stage-right.

The DDC performance finals (freestyle battle) is held in four heats, two teams battle in each heat. For the first two heats the starting order is based on their qualifying scores. For the second two heats the starting order is based on the teams' results in the first two heats. Within the first three heats the team with the lower qualifying performance score will start. In the final heat either team may start, but after 20 seconds if neither team has started the team with the lower qualifying performance score will start.

1. The top 2nd qualifying team meets the top 3rd qualifying team.
2. The top 1st qualifying team meets the top 4th qualifying team.
3. The teams who lost the first and second heat. The winner of this round place 3rd total, the loser places 4th total.
4. The teams who won the first and second heat. The winner of this round place 1st total, the loser places 2nd total.

Withdrawal

If an athlete/team doesn’t show up on the competition floor within 1 minute of being called it will be considered a withdrawal from the event. It is the responsibilities of athletes and coaches to follow the competition progress even if the tournament runs ahead of projected schedule.

Footnotes

1. At the discretion of the tournament committee, a change in age or gender division required by a substitute may be permitted if enough prior notice is provided and judging panels can be adjusted for the given entry. ↩