Where Your Dreams Become Reality
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Where Your Dreams Become Reality |
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IAAF Ratifies Gebrselassie's World Running Records, ARRS Does Not By David Monti (c) 2006 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved July 11, 2006 The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the world governing body for track and field and road running, announced today that they had ratified three road running world records by two athletes. Haile Gebrselassie was credited with the new world records for both 20 km and the half-marathon, both set in a special race held in conjunction with the P.F. Chang's Rock 'n' Roll Arizona Marathon & Half-Marathon on Sunday, January 15, in Phoenix, Ariz. In a separate half-marathon race with only six competitors, Gebrselassie passed through the 20 km mark in 55:48 before crossing the finish line in 58:55. The IAAF ratified both marks as world records, surpassing Paul Tergat's 20 km en route time of 56:18 set at the Stramilano Half-Marathon in 1998, and Samuel Wanjiru's half-marathon time of 59:16 set in Rotterdam last September. Gebrselassie ran on a point-to-point course which met the IAAF's stardard for a maximun separation of 50% of the race distance between the start and finish lines, as long as the courses do not lose more than 20m of elevation for the 20-K and 21.1m for the half-marathon. The Arizona courses met those standards. The independent Association of Road Running Statisticians does not recognize en route times for world records and will continue to recognize the 57:19 run by Kenyan Evans Cheruiyot at the Paris Int'l 20-K in 2005 as the world record for that distance. ARRS recognizes Gebrselassie's half-marathon performance as a world "best" because that organization employs a more stringent 30% start/finish separation rule to guard against the possible aid of a following wind. ARRS will continue to recognize Paul Kosgei's 59:07 set in Berlin in April, 2006 as the world record, which surpassed Wanjiru's mark from Rotterdam last September. The other road running record the IAAF ratified was Kayoko Fukushi's 46:55 15 km en route time set at the 2006 Maragume Half-Marathon in Japan on February 5. In Fukushi's debut at the half-marathon distance, her 15 km split time surpassed the previous IAAF and ARRS-recognized world record of 46:57 set by Elana Meyer of South Africa in Cape Town in 1991. ARRS will continue to recognize Meyer's time as the world record because Fukushi's time was set en route to a longer distance. NOTE: Race Results Weekly supports the practice of recognizing en route times for world records, as long as all competitors are informed that timing equipment is in place, the en route distance has been properly measured, there is less than one meter per kilometer of race distance in elevation loss for the en route mark, and that the start/finish separation is to the en route mark is 50% or less. RRW regards marks made with less than a 30% separation as superior to those made with a 50% separation; solid research exists to support the previously used 30% separation rule
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