POSTED: August 30th 2011
NewsUpdate
NEIL WILSON: The IAAF should follow NCAA on false starts - again!
THE NEIL WILSON COLUMN / An exclusive, authoritative series from Sports Features Communications
LONDON: Faster than Usain Bolt’s reaction to the gun at the IAAF world championships in Daegu was the knee-jerking of commentators around the world.
Apparently, the world was deprived of a thrill, so the rules on false starts should be changed.
Not that there was any call for it when Olympic 400 metres champion Christine Ohuruogu false started and was disqualified. Or when world indoor champion Dwain Chambers did the same in the 100 metres semi-final. It was Bolt everybody wanted to see and the world threw its rattles out of the pram when it was deprived.
Would they have done so had the name on the positive drug sample three weeks earlier not been Steve Mullings but Usain Bolt? No, they would have condemned him.
Where is the difference? Rules are rules, whichever part of the rule-book they come from. Mullings broke one, Bolt another, and both received the punishment they deserved because they knew full well in advance what it would be.
The zero-tolerance rule is an excellent rule, and the IAAF council when it meets on Sunday should not be rushed into changing it by jerking knees.
American sprinters are well accustomed to a zero policy because the NCAA was years ahead of the IAAF in its introduction. So was swimming, and where was the international outcry when that sport’s Boltesque figure of Ian Thorpe was DQ’d in the Australian Olympic trials of 2004?
Those watching events in Daegu, the spectators and viewers, may have been deprived of a vicarious thrill but the athletes enjoyed a level playing field. Not one rule for them and another for a sporting diva.
Chambers did not jump the gun. He stayed in his blocks, reacted well outside the allowable time of 0.10sec but was disqualified for twitching, an action discovered because, for an instant, he was not putting a minimum of 25kg of pressure on the starting plate.
He was far less culpable than Bolt but he had no complaints. “Rules are rules,” said a man who knows more than most about the consequences of breaking them.
Bolt’s play acting before starts for the last four years has been admired by those who see sport only as spectacle. Brings attention to athletics, they say. In reality, it is disrespectful and distracting to rivals and this time he paid the price for his lack of focus and concentration.
If the IAAF council think anything needs to be changed on Sunday may I suggest that once again they follow the example of the NCAA. They have just voted into creation a “no recall” policy for false starts.
The race goes ahead and the disqualification is done later. Same as with doping. That way the crowd and viewers get their thrill and the athletes their even playing field.
NEIL WILSON reported his first Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. He has since covered another nine summer and nine winter Olympics for various newspapers, including The Independent and the Daily Mail with whom he has worked for the last 19 years as Athletics and Olympic correspondent. He was Britain's Sports Journalist of the Year in 1984 and is the author of seven books.
Keywords · IAAF · Neil Wilson · Usain Bolt · NCAA
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