Transcontinental Race No. 8 - TCR8 - #TCRN08 - 2022

I think precedent is the one here for that border crossing. It was allowed a few years back so you could assume it's allowed now by precedent. And if not, then the burden fell on TCR to communicate it was no longer acceptable in the race manual. One could assume that by including banned roads they should include a banned crossing. I feel the burden falls on the event and not the rider in this case. In the end it's a fun event for amateurs, not professional racers.

I haven't read his post yet, but I read the summary that he put on facebook, which was very interesting, so I think I know where he is coming from.

I looked into the border crossing extensively. I did a route going via it and one going the normal way round, via Sarajevo. The illegal crossing saved 15km and 1400m of climbing. I absolutely would have used it was legal. I researched it and found that, to use it, I would need to ask for permission in advance and go to police stations on specified dates. Because I couldn't do that, it was not legal to use it. All riders could have done the same research.

I don't think you can use the precedent point either, because things change - both the actual rules and the way they are interpreted by authorities. For example:

• In 2019 as part of my planning I looked at routes taken by riders in the past. I saw that Josh Ibbet went round the Osikek bypass in Croatia rather than through the town when he won in 2015. I routed that way, relying on the precedent. When I got there, I found that part of it was motors only. I don't know if it had changed from 2015-19, or if Josh just rode through the sign. Either way I didn't think I could rely on citing that precedent, I turned off and went through the town.

• Immigration and border security has become a much bigger deal in Europe in recent years. Illegal crossing that was ignored in 2016 might have had consequences in 2022. Especially if they were say middle eastern or African, rather than white Europeans. It didn't, but there was no way of knowing that beforehand.

Somewhere Mikko said something on this along the lines of he would be prepared to break almost all the rules of the road under certain circumstances, but he would not cross a border illegally. I agreed with that, being an illegal immigrant, which the guys who took it were, is not the kind of risk to take on lightly, certainly not to gain a few hours in a bike race!

Personally, I got 3 and a bit hours of penalties. And my finish was recorded 20 minutes late. I didn't bother appealing because it would bump me up from 66th to 63rd or something, so not worth giving them the admin. But reading the facebook post it looks like I could have got almost all of mine removed as they were a bit scattergun in how they applied them.

I was a bit irked that my main one was a self-report where I got off the road as soon as I realised, at the first junction and it saved me maybe 5 minutes vs the alternative, but they penalised me for having been on the road for 30km rather than the actual 3km, but I didn't bother appealing it so can't complain (other than moaning here of course!)