You're the keeper of scores in a competition, and you award the wrong person..
 

Recently there was a competition here in town for a car club for 'best in class', and the award was given to the totally wrong person based on a math error on the part of the meet organizer.

She chose to retroactively withdraw the award from the 'winner' and assign it to the actual winner almost two weeks after the event. There was no prize, so this was really just a 'bragging rights' kind of thing. I didn't personally know either driver, so it really doesn't affect me at all, but it occurred to me that I wouldn't really know what to do in her situation. One one hand, I'd really hate to take a winner spot away from someone who wasn't the winner (nothing feels worse than realizing you've celebrated winning erroneously) but on the other hand I'd feel bad for the person who actually won but felt bad that they hadn't.

I'm not sure if having a prize amount would change my decision.

I think I would ultimately have to correct my error, but boy would I feel terrible about it.

What would you do? Would it matter if there was a substantial prize as a result of winning?

Prize or not, I'd just let it go.

The real winner has most likely already accepted the loss. especially if a couple weeks have gone by.

The fake winner has already celebrated and taken the prize.

I'd see it as a "no harm, no foul" type of situation, I think....

I think the organiser did totally the right thing.

Had there been a prize, to not give it to the correct person would have been some sort of fraud, I imagine.

Unless the person who won cheated - the result has to stand in my opinion. I think this organiser did the wrong thing. You cant change a result once its been called (unless the person who won is disualified)

Admit the mistake and recognize the true winner.

I agree with this.

There is no point to having any type of competition where there is a "winner" if that winner is declared in error.

Would you like to win something, only to have others with knowledge of the competition know for a fact your win was false?

Winning fair and square is the only way to win, otherwise what you are celebrating is false, whether you know it or not.

I think it's best for everyone to correct the error, especially if there's any merit to the competition.

Yup, that's the way it should be.

Cant believe how many people are saying that the result should be changed?

When the result is called thats it - only a disqualification should change it.

Imagine a baseball game, its tied in the last innings - guy gets struck out, after replay it is obvious that the last strike was a ball and the umpire made a clear mistake... the umpire cant deny he called it wrong... should they replay the game, start the game again from the wrong call?

All sports and competitions are judged by humans with a degree of human error. The result has to stand, or else the referee is completely undermined.

In baseball when the umpire says youre out youre out - thats the only rule that matters. In a car competition when they give you the trophy they give you the trophy.

---------- Post added at 02:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:48 PM ----------

I dont think there are many things real sports can take from WWF wrestling - but one of the truest quotes I ever read was from Bobby "The Brain" Heenan - something like "there's no exclamation mark in the record book"

The winner is the guy who's arm the ref lists when the final bell sounds... in this car comp - people can debate who should have won and could have won, only one guy was declared the winner on the day and thats all that matters.

If it was something like a math error I would definitely correct it. If it was something minor, where technically another contestant should have won but they were basically both equal I would let it be. I guess what I'm saying is it would depend on how big the error was and how much was at stake. The bigger the error or the higher the stakes I would correct it.

i remember how carl lewis said that accepting the gold after ben johnson tested positive to steroids was an empty loss.

i'd think that it was the same in this situation

^^ I don't think so. In my mind a competition is not won because a ref said so. Sportsmanship includes following a set of rules to complete a task. Steroids happens to not be sports worthy and so is human error.

I would change the score regardless of prize and award the right winner.

sorry i meant to expand on this. what i meant was accepting an award for winning after the event. its an empty loss. i wasnt talking about steroids.