The rules are quite clear. Any change to the 0.10 reaction rule cannot happen at the competition. It would have looked very bad if Allen had been allowed to run after girls also were out for breaking.
Agree, you can't change the rules mid-comp, but when you have faulty equipment being used there needs to be a provision to still race under protest.
Can someone please tell me wtf they didn't let them run under protest? This is exactly why racing under protest must be allowed: equipment errors are a very real issue.
Really a disgrace that the officials insisted on not allowing any of these athletes to race under protest. Why are some athletes allowed to race under protest but not others?
The rules are quite clear. Any change to the 0.10 reaction rule cannot happen at the competition. It would have looked very bad if Allen had been allowed to run after girls also were out for breaking.
I just looked up the World Athletics technical rules and tbh it doesn’t seem super clear. To me, it sounds like the official has the final world, not the machine/sensors.
If I were an official and I saw Devon Allen react 0.002 seconds faster than he did in a semi a few hours earlier, I wouldn’t immediately think it’s a false start. Seems like the process is:
1 - gun goes off
2 - sound goes off in starter’s headphones telling starter there is a possible false start because of someone’s fast reaction time
3 - Starter reviews reaction times and “available information” which I’m assuming is the video
4 - Decision is made based on available info
sure, I’m totally biased but if I’m looking at the “available information”, I know that Devon seems to have a faster than average reaction time, everyone in the heat had oddly fast reaction times, and the video shows 0 indication of a false start. Critical thinking would lead me to decide it was fair, blindly following the reaction times output by a machine tells me it’s a false start.
Rule 16.6 When a World Athletics certified Start Information System is in use, the Starter and/or an assigned Recaller shall wear headphones in order to clearly hear the acoustic signal emitted when the System indicates a possible false start (i.e. when the reaction time is less than 0.100 second). As soon as the Starter and/or assigned Recaller hears the acoustic signal, and if the gun was fired, there shall be a recall and the Starter shall immediately examine the reaction times and other available information from the Start Information System in order to confirm which, if any, athlete(s) is/are responsible for the recall. Note: When a World Athletics certified Start Information System is in operation, the evidence of this equipment shall be used as a resource by the relevant officials to assist in making a correct decision.
tldr: rule seems like it gives power to official and Devon should’ve been allowed to run based on info available
It isn't a science rule so much as a statistics rule. What was the sample size to set this limit? That's the first problem. How was <.1 considered an outlier? Pretty sure it is not.
Completely reasonable to round up in this case. How many 9s do you need to see after the zero before you call it .1?
Rule 16.6 When a World Athletics certified Start Information System is in use, the Starter and/or an assigned Recaller shall wear headphones in order to clearly hear the acoustic signal emitted when the System indicates a possible false start (i.e. when the reaction time is less than 0.100 second). As soon as the Starter and/or assigned Recaller hears the acoustic signal, and if the gun was fired, there shall be a recall and the Starter shall immediately examine the reaction times and other available information from the Start Information System in order to confirm which, if any, athlete(s) is/are responsible for the recall. Note: When a World Athletics certified Start Information System is in operation, the evidence of this equipment shall be used as a resource by the relevant officials to assist in making a correct decision.
That is interesting, and does seem open to interpretation. Perhaps they felt obliged to do same for all three Dq.
The average reaction time from these Champs is lower than every other I've seen. I strongly believe he was robbed. He went 0.101 in the semi's and he's always had faster than everyone else reaations.
100% it's a timing mat issue. everybody is about .02 or so faster than normal.
total clown show.
imagine when they come out and admit there was a timing mat problem
this is going to turn into something bigger than it is right now, that's for sure
A thorough analysis has been done, and "randomcoach" and "hate arbitrary numbers" are both correct. The runners are NOT reacting to the gun faster than .10 seconds.
What's happening is that the starting blocks are registering the incorrect reaction times for EVERYONE in Eugene. Meaning that EVERYONE'S reaction time has been recorded as .02 seconds faster than they actually reacted.
Which means that all the runners who were DQ'd for a .09x reaction time actually had a .11x reaction time. Which means that none of them, included Devon Allen, false started, and none of them should have been DQ'd.
The officials in Eugene who are in charge of the starting blocks are probably pooping their pants right now.
Is the reaction timing system fixable in time for Monday's races? Or will they have to postpone the sprints until it's fixed? Or will they not fix anything and consider any reaction time between .080 - .099 to be OK?
This reminds me of the Sydney McLaughlin 400h race from 2 months ago with the misplaced hurdles. Hearing that the hurdles were in the wrong place seemed too crazy to be true at first, but eventually everyone realized that the officials had in fact screwed up.
Well, the officials screwed up again, this time with the Eugene starting blocks. Having incorrect reaction times for everyone seemed too crazy to be true at first, but guess what folks, it turned out to be true. The sh!t is going to hit the fan when everyone finds out that several athletes, including Devon Allen, were incorrectly DQ'd.
A thorough analysis has been done, and "randomcoach" and "hate arbitrary numbers" are both correct. The runners are NOT reacting to the gun faster than .10 seconds.
What's happening is that the starting blocks are registering the incorrect reaction times for EVERYONE in Eugene. Meaning that EVERYONE'S reaction time has been recorded as .02 seconds faster than they actually reacted.
Which means that all the runners who were DQ'd for a .09x reaction time actually had a .11x reaction time. Which means that none of them, included Devon Allen, false started, and none of them should have been DQ'd.
The officials in Eugene who are in charge of the starting blocks are probably pooping their pants right now.
Is the reaction timing system fixable in time for Monday's races? Or will they have to postpone the sprints until it's fixed? Or will they not fix anything and consider any reaction time between .080 - .099 to be OK?
This reminds me of the Sydney McLaughlin 400h race from 2 months ago with the misplaced hurdles. Hearing that the hurdles were in the wrong place seemed too crazy to be true at first, but eventually everyone realized that the officials had in fact screwed up.
Well, the officials screwed up again, this time with the Eugene starting blocks. Having incorrect reaction times for everyone seemed too crazy to be true at first, but guess what folks, it turned out to be true. The sh!t is going to hit the fan when everyone finds out that several athletes, including Devon Allen, were incorrectly DQ'd.
This is believable because people sometimes screw things up (timers, timing company, people setting up the timing equipment...), but show us the analysis. Where are you getting this from? They might need to re-run a bunch of races.
Rules are rules. When there are this kind of cutoff times, obviously someone is destined to be disappointed someday. I would have loved to see Devon Allen in the finals, But you can’t make an exception for him. If you give him a pass by saying it’s close enough , someone will be DQ’d someday, b/c of the same margin of error
In most schools, in order to get a letter grade A, you have to score above 90. What if you got 89.9 is that an A. If you say, it’s close enough it should be an A. What about 89.8, …… Someone one won’t get an A b/c of 0.1 score.
Rules are rules. When there are this kind of cutoff times, obviously someone is destined to be disappointed someday. I would have loved to see Devon Allen in the finals, But you can’t make an exception for him. If you give him a pass by saying it’s close enough , someone will be DQ’d someday, b/c of the same margin of error
In most schools, in order to get a letter grade A, you have to score above 90. What if you got 89.9 is that an A. If you say, it’s close enough it should be an A. What about 89.8, …… Someone one won’t get an A b/c of 0.1 score.
Except this sounds like the equivalent of the 89.8 being calculated wrong by 0.2. The statisticians seem to have identified a systemic error of 0.02 seconds in all the reaction times at this meet compared to other events.
Rules are rules. When there are this kind of cutoff times, obviously someone is destined to be disappointed someday. I would have loved to see Devon Allen in the finals, But you can’t make an exception for him.
Except in this case it turns out it's not about the rules. It's about a timing system that was set up incorrectly.
If you can’t visually see the false start then it shouldn’t be a false start.
This is the way the race walking rule is written. You can at nearly any point see both feet off the ground at the same time when you freeze a video of the race walkers, yet they can be kicked out only if the judges see both feet off the ground at the same time. But I favor using the .08 rule, since the IAAF's own study showed auditory reactions as fast as that. The fact that his previous reaction was nearly identical--but legal--shows that this was garbage.
Richard Kilty has talked about this a lot over the years. He says he can react faster than the cut-off and tbh the stats actually support this. If the study this figure was taken from - even though it's rounded down - was not using international level athletes then it will not be accurate enough (when we are talking about tiny fractions of a second) and isn't transferrable from the level of athletes they studied to the athletes competing at the very highest level. Everything about these athletes is better. Their top end speed is better, their acceleration is better so why wouldn't their reaction time be better?
I feel so sorry for him. I don't think he jumped the gun - I think he reacted to the gun. It is just too close. I'd love to see what the next decimal place was, because that 9 at the end is rounded.
The rules are quite clear. Any change to the 0.10 reaction rule cannot happen at the competition. It would have looked very bad if Allen had been allowed to run after girls also were out for breaking.
This is true. Sha Carri’s weed suspension wasn’t BS. The rule was. If you have an issue with the rule, change the rule. But if the rule is in place, you’ve got to stick with it. The official was correct in saying there’s nothing he could do. He’s not an interpreter of the rules.
One of my coaching mentors told me to never create a rule that you’re unwilling to enforce on your best kid on the worst day. I think this is a perfect example of that. Sooner or later, somebody was gonna hit 0.099. Nightmare scenario for WA that it was Allen in the Worlds final. But that’s what it would take to get this BS rule changed. It sucks for Allen that they couldn’t see this inevitable scenario coming and get out ahead of it.
The rules are quite clear. Any change to the 0.10 reaction rule cannot happen at the competition. It would have looked very bad if Allen had been allowed to run after girls also were out for breaking.
This is true. Sha Carri’s weed suspension wasn’t BS. The rule was. If you have an issue with the rule, change the rule. But if the rule is in place, you’ve got to stick with it. The official was correct in saying there’s nothing he could do. He’s not an interpreter of the rules.
One of my coaching mentors told me to never create a rule that you’re unwilling to enforce on your best kid on the worst day. I think this is a perfect example of that. Sooner or later, somebody was gonna hit 0.099. Nightmare scenario for WA that it was Allen in the Worlds final. But that’s what it would take to get this BS rule changed. It sucks for Allen that they couldn’t see this inevitable scenario coming and get out ahead of it.
Usain Bolt false started in the 100 in a world championship 10 years ago, and they still haven't changed the "one false start and you're out" rule, so I don't expect them to change the ".010 reaction time" rule any time soon either.
In any case, it wasn't a false start. It turns out that it was faulty equipment that recorded the incorrect reaction time. This story is just warming up, and the 4 runners that were DQ'd may not even know about it yet, but they will soon and then things are going to get real interesting.
Reacting in less than .1 means you guessed correctly as opposed to reacting, at least that is the basis for the rule. I think something that close should be a warning since the machine's margin of error is likely not that high of a resolution but if that is the rule you can't change it at the event. It would have had to be proposed and changed in advance.
Reacting in less than .1 means you guessed correctly as opposed to reacting, at least that is the basis for the rule. I think something that close should be a warning since the machine's margin of error is likely not that high of a resolution but if that is the rule you can't change it at the event. It would have had to be proposed and changed in advance.
That's true that you can't change a rule at an event, but in this case it wasn't a false start. It turns out that it was faulty equipment that recorded the incorrect reaction time.
what's the margin of error on these sensors, anyway? Probably more than 1/1000 of a second.
Machines have 0 margin of error. That is why we trust and love the science bro.
Uh, no. Ever put a dollar bill in a change machine and the machine rejects the bill? Then put the same bill in the same machine 5 seconds later and 4 quarters come out. Did the Pope suddenly bless your dollar bill and make it legit?