Official Devon Allen False Start / 2022 Worlds Reaction Time Discussion Thread

The problem with this is that it incentivizes guessing. If someone thinks they can't win (or medal, or advance) without an advantage, they will try to get a .000 reaction time, which would give them an advantage of ~.15 seconds. Setting it at .100 (or .120, or whatever the actual physical limit plus the machine's margin of error is) ensures people wait until the gun goes off, so that the only skill involved is running, and luck/risk-taking doesn't enter into the equation.

Just to continue the analytical part of this, I've compared the Eugene reaction times to a number of other major meets. See here. No change to the conclusions.

I see that a WA council member has asked for a review. I hope they ignore their 'study' of eight non-elite Finnish sprinters which recommended dropping the threshold to 0.085 seconds. The review needs to start with the question, Why were reaction times at Eugene far faster than at any other meet before or since?

Why not start with the question you recommend but also consider the non-elite Finnish sprinters study?

The Finnish study (here) and the other major study (Pain and Hibbs, here) reported reaction time tests from seven and nine non-elite athletes, finding that some of these could consistently react in significantly less than 0.100 seconds (e.g. 0.085 seconds)

Neither of the studies attempt to explain why these results are totally at odds with the 2000+ reaction times from elite athletes in real major athletics competitions.

The fastest average reaction time for any athlete across all events (excluding the 2022 WCs) is British sprinter Asha Philip, whose reaction times averaged 0.127 seconds. Here is her complete record in majors (not including relays):

0.136 2013 Round 1
0.138 2013 Round 2
0.133 2015 Round 1
0.125 2015 Round 2
0.120 2016 Round 1
0.124 2016 Round 2
0.114 2017 Round 1
0.116 2017 Round 2
0.145 2019 Round 1
0.110 2021 Round 1
0.134 2021 Round 2

I don't think Asha Philip ever false started at a major. Ben Johnson also averaged 0.127 seconds from the seven results I have, although most these are normally excluded through his disqualifications.

Anyway, this means that these two studies just happened across several non-elite athletes who all had much faster reaction times than the fastest reacting athlete who has ever competed at major championships. The authors do not discuss how they could have been so fortunate that these freak individuals just happened to turn up in their study. Its a really obvious question that is left unanswered.

The other, much more likely, explanation is that these studies were not replicating actual starting blocks and processes for major competitions, yet make recommendations for them.

Just to add info on Asha Philip's relays record, she ran the lead-off leg in the 4x100 relay at the Tokyo Olympics. Her reaction times in the heat and final were 0.132 and 0.121 seconds, the two fastest of the entire relays competition (100m relays for men, women or mixed).

At the 2019 World Championships, Philip's reaction times in the heats and final were 0.130 (the fastest) and 0.127 (easily the fastest).

At the 2017 World Championships, Philip's reaction times in the heats and final were 0.131 and 0.118, the fastest (men and women) and third fastest of the competition.

At the 2016 Olympics, Philip also recorded the fastest reaction time for the relays of 0.118 seconds.

These relay reaction times support the claim that Asha Philip is the fastest reactor to the starting gun in all history. Often her reaction times are way faster than anyone else in the race - she is a freak - and yet her fastest reaction time was 'only' 0.110 seconds and her average is around 0.125 seconds, well above the threshold of 0.100 seconds.

I guess all those British athletes in the 2007 Pain and Hibbs study who could consistently react faster than 0.100 seconds were by then too old to be in the British teams between 2016 and 2021.

Seriously though, it is staggering that the authors of these papers never addressed this blindingly obvious question - why do the unexceptional subjects of your studies seem to be reacting so much faster than anyone else in all of history?

Ok to sum everything up.. Looks like the reaction rule needs to be reduced to .0900 of a second. Pretty simple. Just a tad bit lower.

It's not as simple as that. There was something wrong with the system at Eugene and that needs to be sorted out. Arbitrarily lowering the allowed reaction time will just be papering over the cracks. I do not know exactly how the timing system works - I doubt anybody on these boards really knows how it works - but it is possible that the timing system was starting late by some 0.020 seconds. Hence everyone had a faster than normal reaction time. But if the timing system was starting late then everyone's race time was also short by 0.020 seconds.

Coleman, Bromell and Kerley all have identical 100m PBs - 9.76 secs. But Kerley's was achieved at Eugene at the WCs. Was it really 9.76 or was it closer to 9.78?

There are enough problems with performances being questioned due to super shoes and trampoline tracks, are we now going to add Eugene blocks to the list of asterisks that can be applied to a performance?

That's exactly not the conclusion. Putting Eugene aside, there is definitely no evidence that anyone can react even close to 0.100 seconds, which means that threshold is fine. The key question is why reaction times at Eugene were so much faster than any other meet.

I still say let them guess the gun and react after 0.00, so we don’t need any analysis.

Good points.

Have you considered that the elite athletes data may be affected by what the elite athletes are trying to do/trying not to do?

Elites in a race situation are trying to get the fastest possible start without false-starting. They are trying not to false start/they are not trying to false start.

In other words, they are not trying to get the fastest possible reaction time, while presumably the Finnish non-elites in the study were trying to get the fastest possible reaction time.

This is the first time I've seen this suggested. I guess the question here is if that is credibly possible - can an athlete actually target a reaction time just above 0.100 seconds? That is, the athlete could react faster if they wanted to but actually choose not to, but they still react really fast. I have never heard of athletes speak as if they are trying to do that or are able to do that. Remember, the majority of athletes react in around 0.150 seconds - they still have a decent buffer there to the threshold and if they could fine-tune their reaction time to the nearest 0.010 seconds (for example) then surely they would get closer to the threshold.

In addition, we can go back to the time when a false start was not an automatic disqualification, such that the athletes could try to react as fast as they could (or anticipate the gun) with no fear of being disqualified on the first try. Reaction times at the 1997 and 1999 World Championships were unsurprisingly a little faster than now - but only by around 0.005 seconds (a median of 0.140 compared to 0.145 now) - and there is no evidence that anyone could consistently react faster than 0.100 seconds. British hurdler Colin Jackson was the fastest, with an average reaction time in 'silent gun' major championships of around 0.120 seconds.

All that said, I can't actually conclusively prove that the athletes are not able to target a reaction time. I just don't see any evidence for it.

That's a very important issue that World Athletics hasn't addressed. We don't know if the .02 faster reaction times were only connected to the reaction time false start detection system. Or if the .02 reduction in reaction times was also connected to the finishing time clock. Because if that's the case, then everyone's times are .02 too fast, which matters a lot in the case of the world records and national records that were set in Eugene.

For example, is the new women's 100h world record really 12.12? Or did she actually only run 12.14?

Unfortunately, I think that World Athletics will continue to claim that the timing system worked correctly, because I don't think they have the guts to admit there was a screw up.