Much was said about Gatlin's 9.80 in a -0.5m/s wind.
However, what does that mean? The winds in Beijing are swirling. One minute you get a positive wind reading and the next, you get a negative one.
So here are my questions:
First question: When do they start and end the wind reading? Does it start at the gun and end when the first finisher ends? The last finisher? Some other random interval? (Ok, you'll tell me that for the women 100m world record, you just never start the wind reading, but...)
Second question: what does a +1.2m/s wind mean. Is that the strongest wind reading during the sampling period? The average wind reading? Something else? What about -1.2m/s? Is that the strongest negative wind?
If the wind goes from -0.3 m/s to +0.2m/a during the sampling period, what will the final wind reading show?
There has been a lot of discussion about wind adjusted times? But what does that figure really mean? It is very unlikely that the wind was a constant -0.5 m/s during the entire race.
Unless the wind reading is an average wind, wind adjusted times are BS at best.