Was Kilty penalized for superior reflexes?

It's still applying different standards to different athletes. If you have a 100m race and 2 athletes both record reaction times of 0.999, you're going to (possibly) DQ one and not the other?

Flo'da boy wrote:

Wtfunny wrote:

Isn't this a bit like suggesting if an athlete sets a new PB by a margin greater than X, s/he is DQ'ed?

What's the outlier cutoff? You're still setting some arbitrary number as a cutoff.

I think drop it to 0.00, and be done with it. If the athlete anticipates the gun correctly, good luck to her/him.

When was the .100 rule instituted? It was well before the current false start (one and done) rules which might be enough to discourage anticipating the gun

2003, I believe, and the one and done was put in place in 2008. At the time, the quickest starter was Jon Drummond, who was measured at just over 0.100 (something like 0.105 once). So they set the standard at 0.100.

There HAVE been quicker reaction times. Armin Hary was measured at 0.050 in 1960.

In the last World Indoors, Kilty had a reaction time of 0.120, which suggests to me that London was a legitimate DQ FS.

Just put them in a starting gate like horses. Then if they jump the gun they might crack their head on the gate. That'll discourage them.

sc42 wrote:

Fitting a distribution to the data for an individual's starting times and then disallowing reactions faster than 1.96 SE faster than that.... Sounds logical, but would not work. With only a few dozen points for a given individual, can't distinguish among distributions with confidence. Moreover, anyone could just false start 10 times and then it would be allowed for them.

Agreed that the lack of data point (maybe 5 a year max) would be a significant issue. Obviously nobody would false start 10 times in an attempt to trick the system, nor would the system be constructed in a way in which this would work.

from .1 to .12 or .13, we're talking about 2 to 3 one-hundredths of a second! Ridiculous to make a distinction that small here. What physical calculation has demonstrated that as an absolute limit? Make it something clearly beyond the range and you won't penalize superior reaction times.

coach d wrote:

When was the .100 rule instituted? It was well before the current false start (one and done) rules which might be enough to discourage anticipating the gun

2003, I believe, and the one and done was put in place in 2008. At the time, the quickest starter was Jon Drummond, who was measured at just over 0.100 (something like 0.105 once). So they set the standard at 0.100....

Nope.

jjjjjjj wrote:

from .1 to .12 or .13, we're talking about 2 to 3 one-hundredths of a second! Ridiculous to make a distinction that small here. What physical calculation has demonstrated that as an absolute limit? Make it something clearly beyond the range and you won't penalize superior reaction times.

Yeah, it's totally arbitrary, so 0.099 should not have been a DQ today without further information.

The difficulty comes in creating a better standard.

We can't just make something "clearly beyond the range" like 0.08 because then people might actually start relying on anticipation like the ancient days.

Then again, 0.08 doesn't give much leeway for those guessers - they'd probably be screwed anyway. Any 0.08 is low enough that it'd have to be a freak reaction performance, terribly low odds of occurring even in world-class sprinters.

Maybe just put it at 0.085 and leave it at that. An extra 0.015 seconds shouldn't incentivize anyone to start anticipating anyway, not any decent let alone world class sprinters at least.

I agree with the above. I feel that the one and done rule combined with electronic sensors in the blocks nullifies the need for a reaction time standard. When Armin Hary was competing, he would anticipate the gun because the risk to reward ratio was favorable: they would just call them back and run it again if he false started. But under the current system it's not worth the risk and if someone leaves the blocks before the gun is fired we have electronic proof

You're correct. The .1 is basically random, no true research at all was used to arrive at the decision to make it the standard. Cue people presenting fake research used to implement .1.

The .1 cutoff does help the sprinters who are a bit dull perhaps, as it has been proven that people who are a slow mentally have slower reaction time. They can have fast reflexes etc., but their actual reaction time is generally slower than folks who are normal or above average in cognitive ability.

Is there a connection between a startle reflex reaction and a task responsive reaction?

I'm startled thus I move but I can not convert that reaction to a useful motion. I recoil from my hand accidently hitting a hot stove but that superfast reaction might not let me control the direction of movement of the pot of boiling water in that hand.

. . .react with a forward step. . .

coach d wrote:

Flo'da boy wrote:

When was the .100 rule instituted? It was well before the current false start (one and done) rules which might be enough to discourage anticipating the gun

2003, I believe, and the one and done was put in place in 2008. At the time, the quickest starter was Jon Drummond, who was measured at just over 0.100 (something like 0.105 once). So they set the standard at 0.100.

There HAVE been quicker reaction times. Armin Hary was measured at 0.050 in 1960.

In the last World Indoors, Kilty had a reaction time of 0.120, which suggests to me that London was a legitimate DQ FS.

The difference between event A and event B is 21 thousandths of a second. And that is evidence that Kilty should be DQ? Every DL race is a flock of black swans, and some black swans will even be more anomalous than the rest of the flock. At this point statistical models mean squat.

An ear is only one of our senses. Why must that specific sense be used to start a race. It's a race of the legs afterall.

If someone can routinely anticipate the gun and shoe a reaction time consistently under .10, well then I'd say it's fair game; they can simply sense the start before the others. That's an advantage, and so is Usain Bolt's body versus mine, but he doesn't get disqualified for that.

With the penalty already set extremely high, due to a DQ after one false start, I hardly see why it's a problem to allow anything at .00 or above as legal.

In what other profession is using a sixth sense outlawed?

Quick Draw wrote:

You're correct. The .1 is basically random, no true research at all was used to arrive at the decision to make it the standard. Cue people presenting fake research used to implement .1...

LOL .. you didn't read the link I posted above, did you? The .1 i not basically random.

That said, I tend to go with what the person said above, about just let it be 0.0 and see how it goes. Its kinda like the long jump .. how close can someone step without stepping over the mark? If the nail it and go right to the edge, we don't review their last 10 jumps and see if that's an outlier and then DQ them. It's part of the game, imo.

Ok, I went to gather some data thanks to this website :

http://www.thepowerof10.info/

I was able to gather his RT for some races (60m 100m all in 2015):

100m

Sainsbury's Birmingham Grand Prix DL

0.125 (Final)

0.152 (heat)

OSTRAVA Golden spikes

0.135

6th European Athletics Team Championships

0.130

60m

33rd European Athletics Indoor Championships

0.138 (f)

0.126 (s)

0.125 (h)

Pedro's cup

0.128 (f)

0.126 (h)

I managed to get a sample of 9 races in 2015, and it clearly shows that a .99 Rt is clearly out of range.

He's very fast out of the block but obviously not fast enough to have such an RT naturally.

It looks like he is regular in the [0.125-0.130] range though.

What malmo and Flo'da Boy, the 6th sense dude, and the starting gate dude said.

We are interested in these folks precisely because their muscles and nervous systems etc. are exceptional.

Here is an abstract that suggests it is possible to react faster than .100:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17127583

If Armin Hary's .050 was legit and he were competing today, he could either false start out of every race or submit to testing in order to get the rule changed or somehow dial back his reaction time to fit the current .100 rule.

malmo wrote:

The difference between event A and event B is 21 thousandths of a second. And that is evidence that Kilty should be DQ? Every DL race is a flock of black swans, and some black swans will even be more anomalous than the rest of the flock. At this point statistical models mean squat.

Right, that's why it'd be nice if we could get stats for the individual athlete historically. Looks like a poster above managed to find some, and it looks like Kilty's sub-0.1 was anomolous without applying any maths to it. That being said, maybe he simply had a breakthrough reaction yesterday.

SlowFatMaster wrote:

What malmo and Flo'da Boy, the 6th sense dude, and the starting gate dude said.

We are interested in these folks precisely because their muscles and nervous systems etc. are exceptional.

Here is an abstract that suggests it is possible to react faster than .100:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17127583

If Armin Hary's .050 was legit and he were competing today, he could either false start out of every race or submit to testing in order to get the rule changed or somehow dial back his reaction time to fit the current .100 rule.

Didn't read the whole paper yet but took this from the abstract:

"Five of the athletes had mean reaction times of less than 100 ms in at least one condition and 20% of all starts in the first two conditions had a reaction time of less than 100 ms. The results demonstrate that the neuromuscular-physiological component of simple auditory reaction times can be under 85 ms and that EMG latencies can be under 60 ms."

ear vs. sixth sense wrote:

An ear is only one of our senses. Why must that specific sense be used to start a race. It's a race of the legs afterall.

If someone can routinely anticipate the gun and shoe a reaction time consistently under .10, well then I'd say it's fair game; they can simply sense the start before the others. That's an advantage, and so is Usain Bolt's body versus mine, but he doesn't get disqualified for that.

With the penalty already set extremely high, due to a DQ after one false start, I hardly see why it's a problem to allow anything at .00 or above as legal.

In what other profession is using a sixth sense outlawed?

I agree with this.

Now that one false start and you're out is pretty much universal, I don't see a problem with allowing people to try to anticipate the gun.

That's the only reason why the 0.100 rule is there, and if someone wants to take this risk to win, I say go for it.

if someone decides to take a chance and scores a RT of 0.101 does that negate the fact he purposely tried to guess the start? No it just means he nailed it. If he had measured 0.80 would you lobby for shortening the standard because someone decided to try and beat the gun and recorded a time under the standard, or recorded a 0,010 or 0.068 or 0.043...0.99

Is 0.100 set far enough ahead of the ability of 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of these black swans of the reaction time world? Hey is once in a vigintillion tries a legit guy gets tossed too much to deal with?