Rocky mountain’s top 2 runners DQ’d at districts for holding hands across the finish line

There was no assistance and no interference. Few runners know anything about this. All they see is coverage of runners finishing races like this in xc so that teammates aren't competing against each other in low priority events. Don't DQ athletes who have worked so hard for so many years on an infraction like this. Judgment always needs to be at work. Just tell them never do it again.

Have you ever been an official? Definitely not. You don't get to pick and choose the rules you want to enforce, especially in tournament.

These are two of the best distance runners the state has produced. While in theory you shouldn’t play favorites, less rigid thinking is needed here when we are talking about a district meet foul that didn’t have any really world negative impact on competition or on anyone whatsoever.

Not the way it works. If other coaches complain that I didn't enforce a rule, I'm at fault. You don't like the rule, change the rule. But don't blame officials doing what they are told to do. And when I was an official, we had training classes and we were specifically told to enforce all rules, no exceptions. Don't blame the person doing their job. Responses like yours, however, are not surprising.

Like hell you don’t. If you DQ’d these runners you are a sad excuse of an official.

DQs like this have happened at all levels...oh well.

usatoday.com

Winning triathletes disqualified for holding hands to cross finish line

@usatoday

British triathletes Jessica Learmonth and Georgia Taylor-Brown were disqualified for holding hands as they crossed the finish line together.

Link:www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics...

Only happens in sports full of pearl clutchers with loud mouth virtue signalers who take 8 hours to finish a marathon and never even seen a finish line with other people still there. Look at pro road cycling where team mates holding hands and crossing the together happens fairly frequently and the judges just award then 1st and 2nd, like with Van Aert and Laporte at Gent-Wevelgem this year:

Why? If two athletes want to tie and the handholding does not impede a runner behind them, there is no competitive issue.

There are many iconic ties in distance running such as Shorter/Rodgers and Beardsley/Simonsen.

It's a fair DQ

In all other sports, the athletes know all the rules and if they don't, their coaches do. This was a district meet, so the result should be important to the athletes. If the result is so important, don't do things that could possibly jeopardize the outcome. It shouldn't take much mental iq to think that celebrating with a teammate before the finish would be considered a rule violation. These guys have been racing for a while and have won many of them. Act like you've been there before.

It's good to see somebody gets it. The only thing I would add to your post is making it a criminal offense. Jail time if necessary. There is no room for this chicanery.

Is what holding hands across the finish line of a race is. Ban them both for a year on top of the DQ.

What's the spirit of the rule? What's the reasoning behind it? Those are the questions that should be asked and if they didn't violate that then they should be allowed to continue to compete since this ends their season.

It doesn’t end their season. They qualified in the 4x800 and both have the 1600 and 800 today.

It’s pretty black and white. They grabbed hands in the field of competition. That’s a no-no. All of this whining isn’t going to make them be reinstated.

The Boise State coach’s kid asking to be reinstated after repeated line violations is rich, too. Don’t step over the line if you want to be included in the results.

if you can't use your brain to choose not to enforce a dumb rule.....why have brain in the first place?

Apparently they are back into the state meet. The NFHS rule book has clear rules on how all of this gets handled but the district caved to people writing in. Idaho defers to the NFHS rule book. Interesting that it gets overturned.

Purposely attempting to tie is not in the spirit of competition. Should be disallowed by rule to keep this nonsense in check. You are agreeing to fix the results during the competition.

What if the next Super Bowl the two teams decided to just hold hands instead of playing over time? Maybe a basketball player purposely misses a buzzer beater so the teams can tie. Why not shave off some points to cover the spread while you are at it.

This is so STUPID. I saw it on facebook and told our homeapge to hype the shit out of it.

If you are an official, why in God's name would you enforce this rule? It's a stupid rule. The rule should be "you can't give assistance to your teammate." Here they are slowing down. It's hindering them.

WHAT A JOKE. I hope the petitions is successful.

The competition portion is next week at the state meet. Guaranteed neither of them will be holding hands across the line then. This was just qualification round ala prelims, so you cannot really say this was not "in the spirit of competition"