COOL GRAPH - Eugene's WC Reaction Times - ALL SCREWED UP !!!

Guys this is getting out of hand. This is you showing up to your ex girlfriends house with a power point on how she was wrong to break up with you. I understand you are dissapointed but this tantrum has to stop. Time to go from denial to acceptance. The meet is long over.

Really?

The Letsrun braintrust is moving on from Badwater to focus on this, I love it.

Here's the methodology:

1. add

2. divide

3. chart

Who are the math geniuses who can't figure this out?

I just went back to the 2019 World Champs men's 100m.

Reaction times were far slower. In the four preliminary heats to qualify for regular heats, just one reaction under 0.120 (0.111). In the regular heats, just one under 0.120. In the final, two barely under 0.120. And in the semis, there was just one under .120 (Zharnel Hughes at .113; he also dipped under in the finals).

.140-.160 was a much more common range and numerous were slower than that.

Doha men's 100m alone suggests very much that the timing mats were flawed in Oregon.

POSBIBATHLETECOUNTRYMARKReaction Time1
1876
Christian COLEMAN
USA
9.76 WL
0.128
2
1887
Justin GATLIN
USA
9.89
0.148
3
400
Andre DE GRASSE
CAN
9.90 PB
0.140
4
1639
Akani SIMBINE
RSA
9.93 SB
0.117
5
1153
Yohan BLAKE
JAM
9.97
0.142
6
841
Zharnel HUGHES
GBR
10.03
0.119
7
1106
Filippo TORTU
ITA
10.07 SB
0.158
8
397
Aaron BROWN
CAN
10.08
0.155

Doha 110mH had one DQ before the gun (-.20) but just one other sub .120, Devon Allen at .119. Allen had the third best reaction time in another heat in .125, and the second best reaction time was another athlete in .123. So, he had two of the three best reaction times, but none was better than .119. More evidence the timing mats in Oregon are off by at least .02 seconds. Maybe they are more sensitive than ever and catch tiny movements. Most people's reaction times are off by more than .02.

At Doha in the women's 100m, only Schippers in the semifinal and Smith in the final got under .120, and just barely, while the average was no better than .140 in most races, maybe .16 or slower (there were some .200+).

In London in 2017, in the men's 100m, there was one man in the preliminary heats under 0.120, an athlete at .105. No one else was close to .12 and many were well over .160. In the heats, the same athlete, Mario Burke from Barbados, was the one of two not dq'd but under .120 at .114, along with Kim of Korea at .107. The two athletes dq'd reacted 1) before the gun (-.05) or well before the possible reaction (+.05). Only Kim from Korea (.115) reacted under .120 in the semis. In the finals, Coleman was fastest at .124 and the average looks like at least .160. In the other rounds, there may have been even higher averages.

London 2017 110mH had one sub .12 in the semis and one in the finals. That's it.

So, from London 2017, Doha 2019, and Oregon 2022, it's ludicrously clear that Oregon is an outlier, way, way below the reaction times for any other World Championship.

Out of 279 starts of 100M/110M race (including the Heptathlon), I counted only 13 under .110 (including the 3 DQs) or about 4.6% of starts. I counted 37 between .119 and .110 or around 13% of starts.

Allen (.099) and the other DQs (.096, .095) seem to be significant outliers. DQs were 1% of starts - 3 out of 279 starts under .100. Is that an unexpected amount in a track meet of this size? Doesn't seem like it.

I didn't see any .085 - the lowest I saw was .095 (DQ). There were not "numerous" times close to .100 - there were 3 DQs (under .100), two .101s, three .104s and five between .105 and .109. So very few starts under .110 (13 total), and 3 were DQed. Anything under .110 seems pretty rare and under .100 seems incredibly rare.

The meet isn't over, and they'll probably be using the same tech on events in the coming days so it's important that they are working properly and not systemically understating reaction times

13 athletes under .110 in Eugene vs 0 in Doha for 100/110H. It looks similar when you start adding in more championships, clearly Eugene is the outlier.

I'm not doubting your data as it seems clear that something is seriously off when in super slo-mo you can't see even a hint at who is false starting. However, isn't it statistics 101 to have your vertical axis start at zero so as not to exaggerate the difference between data points on the horizontal axis? I mean, yes, there's still a clear difference, but it's about a third to a quarter as dramatic as the charts suggest.

Not necessarily. There are occasions in which it's appropriate to use a scale that doesn't start at 0, and I think this is arguably one of them.

An amateur analysis will do no one any good.

1) Average differences don’t have statistical significance by themselves unless you state a confidence metric, otherwise it could be just chance. Is there a 40% probability that any event’s average could be 0.02s below the overall average? If so, that means nothing.

2) Note which events if used the older literal gunshot signal as opposed to a speaker per block electronically transmitting the start signal. If none, that would be useful to know.

3) Check for increasing trends if any over say 5-year periods to see if athlete response times have been improving over years just like other performance metrics.

4) List links to data sources and describe exactly what is being plotted so anyone can independently verify your analysis. All I see is some bars at the Imgur link from which even your stated 0.02 average difference is float from obvious.

This is becoming interresting, and it hints at SOMETHING wrong, probably badly wrong, but let's not forget that in T&A there's also a human factor on the other side of the starting gun, one that can hold the runners in the blocks up to ten seconds before pulling the trigger, i.e the starter.

So before y'all waste your money on a lawyer you'll need at least one more sabermetric (is there an equvivalent word for T&A?) and that is how long, down to at least a hundred of a second, the starter held the runners in their blocks between "On your marks", "Get Ready" and BANG.

So times on average .02 - .03 faster.

said for many years if deliberately calibrate

Blocks and photo finish in such way ,

then easily take time down by .05 in sprints

without anybody questioning it.

but always far to high conspiracy for most

Jeez!

Nothing gets you Americans more fired up than when something negatively affects one of your own.

Is there such a thing as Nationalistic Narcissism?

It's almost as if rules, fairness and morality don't exist unless they affect an American.

Even if the RT's are a legit anomaly, that alone doesn't mean a problem with the equipment. Some other possibilities, in no particular order of likelihood:

) the starter's timing is somehow predictable and some athletes are wise to it

) placement of the start sound. Speed of sound ~300m/s so every 10m distance from the sprinter's ears = .03s

) everyone really excited to be in the first WC in Eugene the world capital of track and field! So they react quicker than usual

) they're on some sort of new stimulant that speeds the reaction up

Laugh or get mad at that last one, but it could happen

So for the mens 100m final the 4 Americans all have significantly better (dodgy) reaction times, all others seem normal. For the hurdles 2/3 dodgy times are Americans. So 6/7 fast reactions are only Americans. Yeah ok…

Seems like the athletes and starter need to be investigated, not the equipment.

That discards potentially useful information.

Let's see the distribution for the RT's at each OG and WC for the past 20 years. Do the curves look the same, or are the numbers for this year off because of a few low outliers?

The sounder is right behind the athlete, so there's no 10m gap reduction. 1m closer to the athlete would be less than 10% of the suggested improvement between Doha and Eugene.

The starter being consistent is possibly an issue. Difficult to prove though as timing the precise gap between their words and the gun isn't recorded anywhere (that I know of). If it were a bleep system rather than verbally delivered there'd be some chance of measuring it.

I wonder if the blocks construction and track construction come into play at all? The blocks require 25kg of force to be applied before they trigger movement (I think). So if the blocks were more rigidly in place (longer spikes, better grip to the surface) then any flex in the blocks might be reduced and the whole of the 25kg force applied to their surface might be recorded slightly earlier than if the blocks had some flex in them? Maybe?

This is just more powerpointslides for your GF to see.