Neil Roberts
On page 18 of XC 125, we reported that the 2009 British vice champion Neil Roberts was caught submitting tampered tracklogs to the UK’s cross country league a few years back.
We apologise for any distress this may have caused Neil, who wrote to us to explain what happened. Neil writes: “For safety reasons, I landed a few hundred metres in [airspace], to avoid rotor. The farmers were friendly and the guys on the [military] base were fine.
“My innocent mistake was not wanting to bother my hosts with bureaucracy and form filling, as this might embarrass these guys, who told me I’d have to write to the Ministry of Defence in London and that [they] would have to complete a report.
“[To avoid that] I innocently reduced my flight to save all [parties] the hassle. Your report implies I cheated to gain multiple advantages. This is not the case.â€
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Tags: Competition, Neil Roberts, UK
October 7th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
This story is very much in conflict with the article in Cross Country magazine, page 24, Edition 105 from 2006.
I think XC Mag should reproduce the original text in its entirety, and we can judge for ourselves from that. There is a big inconsistency in my view between the comments Neil makes above and the findings of Richard Westgate reported in the original article.
Neil allegedly threatened the BHPA and the comps panel with legal action (quoted from same article in XC Mag) so it seems like the apology from XC Mag editorial team is a very prudent one.
I’m sure Neil can resolve the inconsistencies between the two versions. Please can he clarify where the two different track logs came from or if they were from the same instrument?