On behalf of the WGPSSRC I post hereby the reaction to the Record protest by Kean Rogers:

It has always been a fundamental philosophy of the WGPSSRC to make it as accessible as possible for speed surfers to claim records or record rankings. The main purpose of the rules is to verify that adequate proof of the claim is presented.

The WGPSSRC rules state that records holders will be ratified and named after January 1 2010. They establish that from September 2009 a published ranking be set up. The rules do not preclude claims relating to attempts before these dates that may be ratified later if they comply with the rules. The WGPSSRC will consider any other claims made for before September 2009 if they can satisfy the committee with appropriate evidence.

The WGPSSRC has reviewed the claim by Dr. Tom Chalko for 16/05/09 and has confirmed that it does comply with the rules and has fully satisfied the requirements for ratification. In particular we confirmed that:

1.  The required GPS’s were used in the proscribed manner, that the correct firmware was used and that the file handing and witnesses after the session were as required.
2. There was a question about the Date Stamp and Time Stamp on these GPS units. It has been determined one of the GPS units had the wrong time zone was entered into the settings. This does not invalidate the data in any way but led to some confusion when the record session was posted by the timekeeper. The posting has since been corrected.
3. The rules clearly state that a record attempt and claim must be announced on the forum. It does not state that the attempt must be announced before it is made. (An amendment to rule 5.1 is being formulated after feedback and requests from GPS-SS members which will simplify and clarify the requirements). The reason why a rider needs to announce a claim on a record is to allow other riders the opportunity to protest against a record being claimed by a GPS-speedsurfing or GPS-kitesurfing member while it is being considered by the WGPSSRC. Tom Chalko failed to do so and so was in violation of the rule. The WGPSSRC also failed to check if Tom had posted a claim on the record forum. The WGPSSRC subsequently advised him to post the claim after ratifying the record as the records are new and everyone has to get used to them. The WGPSSRC will pay close attention to record claims in future and will send a message to a rider if he or she forgets to post a claim on the record forum.
4. It was announced on GPS-SS as far back as late 2008 that GPS records would be sanctioned as from January 2009. The fact that the WGPSSRC had not announced the final rules at that time or started publishing the record rankings does not preclude any sailors making record attempts and claims as long as those claims can satisfy the rules of proof of speed that were subsequently published.
5. There was forum and on the beach discussion as far back as late 2008 about the proposed main technical requirements (two GT-31 GPS with the same firmware, witnesses and secure handling of the files at the end of the session) and anyone who was interested could have known these requirements from this discussion or by asking the obvious GPS-SS members. Many members did make enquiries and started to go through the procedures in anticipation of making claims in early 2009. As it happens, there has only been one claim made for a date before the rules were finally published but there could well be others.