The rule says the rider must get to each control before the closing time written in the brevet card. That includes the finish control. A velo speciale could have crossed the PBP finish line a couple of hours after their 90 hours were up and still have been ahead of their brevet card's Rambouillet closing time, which was based on the very last 90hr group's finish time. Is that clear enough?
That's not what they did though. According to the data, basically everyone who arrived within 80/84/90 hours of their start time was homologated, and anyone who arrived later was (edit:) NOT homologated. Lateness at intermediate controls was completely ignored.
Essentially the numbers in this year's brevet cards were nonsense that had no bearing on anything.
Yes, the rule was meaningless this year and accordingly wasn't enforced. That rule was generally complied with and enforced in historical PBPs and, if the brevet cards were correctly printed, could justifiably have been enforced this year.
Completely ignored isn't quite correct. Some riders arriving quite late at intermediate controls this year did have difficulty getting their brevet cards stamped. Surely you've also read some of those accounts.
Did you miss the bit where I said
"OK, let's do the pedantic thing and go by the letter of the rule."
in reply to Wycombewheeler's
"The rules stated dong be after the closing time at printed on brevet card, so talk of being stopped for being outtsidevtfe time for your group is needless. As if someone on a control desk is going to do the mental maths and retain your card when they just want yo check everyone through as quickly as possible."
My statement that you've quoted showed the logical conclusion of following that rule with the times actually printed on the brevet cards this year. Riders in early groups would have had more time to complete PBP than those in later groups. Obviously that rule could not have been followed this year, for reasons of unfairness.
By the way, there were PBPers homologated with more than 90 hour finishes in 1991 (181), 1999 (104) and 2003 (26). I don't have the justifications for all of them. In PBP99, an unexpected roadworks diversion meant an extra two hours were allowed, which accounts for quite a few folk.