Hi!
First of all, the qualification process should be designed so that no one has a reasonable argument stating that he could not qualify due to non-fencing reasons.
Put otherwise, I think that a system which contains petitions to enter a restricted competition is an abomination. It increases the workload on the national office, it introduces unneeded subjectivity, it gives an opportunity for club politics to raise its ugly head, among other drawbacks.
It is presumably put in place in order to work as a safety valve for those who had valid reasons to claim:
"I did not make it at the qualifiers, but the rest of my season shows that I should be qualified anyway!" That valid concern is better dealt with by having a qualification system which allows qualification from many different competitions, preferably all that are sanctioned (all over the country) and sufficiently strong. For each competition, the top-X should be directly qualified, those in places X+1 to Y should be put in a
"for consideration" bucket, and those who place Y+1 or lower have to try at the next competition. At the end of the season, the qualification list comprises those who have placed in top-X in at least one competition, plus enough of the best of those in the
"for consideration" bucket to fill out the qualification numbers. But I have written more about that in previous posts.
That said, if one must work within a system that uses petitions, then one should have quite specific rules about what constitutes valid reasons for petitioning. Personally, I think that those should be limited to:
1. Non-fencing reasons for why the petitioner was forced by law not to attend, reasons which do not reflect badly on his fencing ability. In these cases, the petitioner must show that his disobedience towards the entity which has forced him not to attend would carry a legal sanction. Examples would be jury duty, military service, and a few other specific cases.
2. Medical reasons which totally stopped attendance at the time of the qualifier, but not do anything to his fencing ability at the time of the restricted competition. Examples could be flu, mumps, short-term injury, etc.
3. Petitioner could not fence in qualifier, because he had to be part of its crew (BC, ref, armourer, general helper).
4. Petitioner was preoccupied with something that was in the greater good for society
as a whole (not the petitioner himself), other than cases covered in #1. Examples could be blood-donation and the like.
Religious and other social obligations should definitely not be admissible as petition grounds. What next, petition because
"Relatives wanted me to go to little Myra´s baptism/birthday party?" How many religions are there, and if one acknowledges the holy days of one, when does one stop? The Christian holidays are there in the public almanac already, and since they in several cases are work-free days, they should be used for competition, so that people do not use up their precious few holidays. That does not go for other religious holidays, though. However, fencing NGB´s are not religious organizations, and should not encumber themselves with accommodating them. The religious organizations would not return the favor - have you ever heard of churches saying:
"we will not hold any services during Olympic Games/Superbowl/whatever, so that our sports-interested parishioners do not miss out. We will make up for that with extra services afterwards!" Ain´t gonna happen, and if they don´t want to do anything for us, why should we do it for them? It is just a perfect way to lose self-respect. To be religious is a choice, and part of all choices in life is to deselect something.
Whew. It is not often something on f.net makes me so steamed.
Anyway, those are my opinions looking in as an outsider.
Have a nice time!
Peter Gustafsson
