You just finished fourth in a hard-fought heat, about two lengths back from the third-place finisher. Only the top three advance to the final. Your cox immediately has his hand up to protest that the third-place crew finished in your lane. He says this prevented your planned move in the final 300 m. The referee does not dispute that the crew was in your lane, but she states that in her judgment this did not affect the final outcome of the race, and therefore takes no action regarding your complaint. You disagree. At this juncture, your proper response is to inform the referee that you intend to protest her decision. The referee will signal your intent by raising a red flag, which informs the judges on shore that the race is under protest, so the results are not to be released as final. Lodging a protest initiates a systematic process of mediation and adjudication intended to resolve the complaint one way or the other. Rules 2-605 and 2-606 describe the procedures for the proper filing of a protest. You will have one hour in which to prepare a written statement of your protest to turn in to the chief referee (or other designated official), normally accompanied by a $25 deposit, which will be returned if the final ruling is in your favor.

Although not in the formal rules, some regattas utilize a designated ombudsman who will first attempt to resolve the complaint through mediation. The only constraints placed upon mediation are that the rules must be adhered to, and the proposed resolution must not unfairly advantage or disadvantage one crew relative to another. You will have the option to either accept or deny any resolution offered by the ombudsman. If you deny, then the protest will be referred to the regatta jury. In the absence of an ombudsman, the protest will be directly referred to the jury. The procedures for conducting a jury hearing for the purpose of resolving a protest are described in Rule 2-607.

Whether through mediation by an ombudsman or adjudication by the jury, the objective is to resolve your protest in a manner that restores the overall fairness of the race. The first step is to confirm that outside circumstances did potentially alter the final outcome of the race. In the scenario described here, confirmation would be provided by the referee’s testimony that the crew did, in fact, move into your lane. Assuming that the referee corroborates the lane violation, the question is whether this unfairly impeded your progress and caused you to finish one or more positions further back than you otherwise would have achieved. In most instances, the ombudsman and/or jury will rely heavily upon the testimony of the referee who observed your race. She will be asked to clarify her judgment that your final position was not affected, based upon criteria including how far into the race you were when the crew moved into your lane, the distance of separation between the offending crew and you and her observations of your continued progress (e.g. did she observe that you had to noticeably slow or alter course to avoid imminent collision with the offending crew or that wash from the crew had noticeably affected your stroke cadence and rhythm?). It is not uncommon for a crew to move into another’s lane, but this does not automatically compromise the fairness of the race. A ruling in favor of the protest requires, first, objective evidence (typically reported by the referee) that the protesting crew’s progress was hindered, and second, that there was a reasonable likelihood, based upon this objective evidence, that this may have altered the outcome of the race.