Petronas Perils #2: Weston's Bogus Rule Set

[guest]

One of the surest ways to tell how organized and legitimate any competition might be is to look at its rule set and by this measure the Petronas Beer Demo is so disorganized and bogus it’s a joke – a dangerous joke, but a joke nevertheless.

The bottom line: Mr. Weston wrote the rules and plans to compete in the competition for which he wrote these rules, yet he wrote the rules by himself, without review or input from anyone else and, with one week to go until the event, no one has yet seen those rules except Mr. Weston, and no one except Mr. Weston and Dwain’s Girlfriend will see those rules until this ridiculous excuse for a competition begins.

In other words, the APPEARANCE of conflict of interest alone should disqualify Mr. Weston from competing in this event because it’s easy to argue that he wrote the rules to match his particular skill set (something he regularly sneers at Dennis McGlynn for doing), and it’s hard to argue against that point because nobody else but Dwain’s Girlfriend gets to see the rules until after they get to Malaysia.

Think about that: A “world championships” and no one knows the rules until they get on-site. For you competitive aircraft skydivers out there (like Dwain’s Girlfriend), imagine practicing for even a regional skydiving meet when you don’t know what the rules are until you get there – and those rules are tailor-made, without review, to showcase the chief contender’s personal skills.

This laughable state of affairs goes back to my insistence to Mr. Lee in early June that we did not have enough time and money to do this event right as a COMPETITION, if for no other reason than that the rules could not be properly produced in that time frame.

To review: When I asked Dwain Weston to write the rule set for the proposed world championships, it was with the understanding that he would provide detail to my general direction and, specifically, put together the entire aerials portion of the document.

Then, after he came up with a draft that was acceptable to me, it was to be sent out to several different individuals with competition experience not only in BASE jumping but also in skydiving generally and even in diving.

These individuals were to provide their own input and feedback, which Mr. Weston would then integrate into the final product, subject to my final approval.

These rules would then be distributed to all competitors several weeks BEFORE they came to Malaysia so they would:

a) understand what the rules were;
b) be able to clarify any misunderstandings; and
c) practice according to the rule set.

You know, just like they do in REAL competitions.

None of this development process was used to create the illegitimate set of rules created by Mr. Weston for this-now bogus competition because:

a) there wasn’t time to do it; and
b) they STILL don’t know who’s coming and who isn’t.

Worst of all, to avoid having to share any credit with me for the development of the rule set, Mr. Weston declared in an email to me two days ago that he had removed all of my input and completely rewritten those rules by himself, without any input from anybody.

Consequently, this rule set and its current status – written by one of the competitors and unreviewed and unavailable ONE WEEK before this alleged “competition” goes forth – is written evidence of the general disorganization and illegitimacy of the entire enterprise.

I predicted this state of affairs months ago, and that was why I told Mr. Lee we had to scale this event back to a demonstration event only and NOT a competition because, from the standpoint of the rule set and other competition-related components, there was just no way to do it right.

Now these people are all proving me right, and maybe if this mess happens despite my best efforts, no one will get killed, but it WILL be illegitimate no matter who ends up being the “world ChUmp” because the whole sorry affair was based on bogus rules.