JC100 wrote:
I am JC100, who did the charts on the T&FN forum, in this thread.
I have been continuing to update the data a few hours after the events happen.
A post here compares the RTs across the major championships, and includes the RTs from the Prefontaine Classic in 2021 and 2022, held in Eugene, which are also in line with previous major championships, with the 2022 WC the big outlier.
If the starter at the Pre Classic was also an American style 'fast starter', then the argument around the speed of the gun after 'set' loses its force. I don't think the 'fast gun' argument is particularly strong anyway, but in order for it to work, the starter at the 2021 and 2022 Pre needs to have been a European style slow starter and at the 2022 WC a much faster starter.
While this is obviously possible, we are getting into unlikely territory now, with a much stronger probability that the equipment is calibrated differently. For example, a reaction which in all other meets would have been recorded as a 0.113 is here being recorded as a 0.099. That is, something is different in the way all of the electronic signals from the gun and the pressure plates are being synchronized together.
An open question is if this change is deliberate (perhaps in the aim to increase the chance of a world record) or if it is a mistake. I am inclined to the latter, because deliberate fiddling is such a ridiculous idea. But the evidence seems strong that this is some kind of calibration issue.
Looking at the WA statement on the blocks, they seem to be making the astounding admission that the calibration of the blocks is NOT checked again after they have made the trip to Eugene from having gone through 'rigorous testing' in Germany. If so, this is really amateurish.
Having had a week to recover from Worlds, over the weekend, I did so me more research into the reaction times. The whole idea that somehow the sprinters were reacting quicker to an 'American' starter seems like a bogus idea to begin with (Devon told his agent Paul Doyle the starter had a thick accent and the same starter wasn't used for all sprint events in Eugene yet all sprint events showed faster times), but nonetheless I wanted to rule it out.
So what I did was compare the reaction times of the 21 US sprinters at Worlds to their reaction times at USAs. Guess what? All 21 of them reacted faster at Worlds than USAs, with 16 of the 21 reacting faster than 0.15 at Worleds whereas ony 1 did that at USAs. Lastly, the slowest reaction time in the World final was equal to the fastest reaction time at USAs.A
Moving forward, I'd like to make this the Official Devon Allen False Start / Worlds Reaction Time Discussion Thread. There were so many threads on the topic at Worlds, it's best to have one single thread so we know what to focus on.
The other threads are still up but have been closed to new posts. I thought about merging them all into 1 thread here but think it's best to start anew.
Is there any other comparisons people would like to see be done? What could possibly explain the quicker reaction times at 2022 Worlds than mis-calibration?