Anyone else annoyed at the Men Holding the Finish Banner at Chicago?

As a former Chicagoan (and I know from reading this very board that growing up in the far 'burbs entitles me to say that), I say to you: heh, heh! Well done.

I completely agree that the last thing you want is for a stationary target to suddenly move. My suggestion is that someone in authority instruct them (presumably politicos or sponsor VPs) to get out of the way early enough so that they can get out of the way and leave the path clear. Two guys neck-and-neck twenty (or whatever) yards out, just clear the finish area. Or have a banner wide enough to cover the whole finish line without some celebs holding it.

And how often do you have a sprint to the finish in a marathon like we did with the men's and women's race? Not often. By the time the winners make the last turn he's usually well enough in the lead so that when he crosses they get a pretty picture of the winner breaking the tape with the title sponsor's logo on it. That picture is going to be published everwhere and is worth bank for the sponsor. How many people outside of Chicago knew of Lasalle Bank before they took over sponsorship?

Alan

Tape holder (n.)Patronage job at every marathon - the Mayors horsefaced daughter or the sponsors goomah seem to get these positions.

JPGarland wrote:

I completely agree that the last thing you want is for a stationary target to suddenly move. My suggestion is that someone in authority instruct them (presumably politicos or sponsor VPs) to get out of the way early enough so that they can get out of the way and leave the path clear. Two guys neck-and-neck twenty (or whatever) yards out, just clear the finish area. Or have a banner wide enough to cover the whole finish line without some celebs holding it.

Do you realize you are contradicting yourself here?

You say you don't want them to move at the last second, and then you turn around and say they should move at the last second.

Twenty yards out likely means 3 seconds (feel free to do the math yourself). In that time you want "someone in authority" to realize that they are not aiming for the well visible finishing tape, but somewhere else; to tell the banner holders to move (making sure they tell them which direction to move so they don't step right in front of a finisher they could see coming from hundreds of yards away); for the banner holders to actually move out of the way.

Of course when the runners see the finish people starting to move around, there is a good chance they are going to start changing direction as well and you've now got two set so of people trying to second guess each other and your 3 second clock is about to expire!

Get a couple of friends and see just how practical such a scenario actually is, especially when it is an outcome rather unexpected.

Valid points all. As far as I could tell, in Chicago, the guys holding the banner didn't move and one runner headed straight for one of them. Should they have gotten out of the way?

If the answer is no, fine.

If the answer is yes, how do you get them to move? My arithmetic may be off, so make it forty or fifty yards. But if I'm on a track and yell "Track" I don't need to do it from fifty yards away if the person in lane 1 knows to get out of the way. I'm saying that the banner-holders are told "If X says 'Clear' you go here and you go there immediately." But do it from farther out.

But on reflection I think that a longer banner without holders would be preferable.

But what if the place they are told to go happens to be where the runner is heading? You are suggesting that they plan for two runners neck-and-neck, from 40 - 50 yards out, appearing to head to one of two sides of the finish banner. Which side, right or left?

You then assume that the runners will not make a slight direction change to aim for the banner itself and not the holders (something logical most people would do when faced with a stationary object, whether it be a banner holder or a hydro pole). If they do change course, you are only having your banner holders move back in their way. That would look pretty stupid.

You then have to plan to be able to tell your banner holders to move to the right or to the left (yelling 'clear' is only guaranteed to make them each go in opposite directions, one of them being in the runner's path).

When you yell 'track' to get someone to move, do they move to the left (off the track) or to the right (lane 2)? Are you expecting them to move left (so you aim to their right) or are you expecting them to move right (so you aim to their left)? What if there are two of you running together and the person moves out of your way but directly in the path of your training partner?

You can see them from a long way off and provided they don't do anything unexpected (like any lateral movement), you can plot a course around them. As soon as they start moving sideways, you've got an uncertainty and a 50% chance that they are going to move in the same direction as you are planning to go.

Valid possibility. I don't know the practicalities of making and holding a banner that is long enough to meet your specs while also being wide enough to properly display the necessary logos and not be strong enough to clothesline the winner instead of nicely break.

How about we stop ripping on the guys doing their jobs and standing with the banner? The womens race- they can only do so much to be where they should be, and you can't have a big banner or the guys will hit it. for the mens race- I thought it was pretty clear that Garrib was veering left and pushing Ivuti with him. You'd think if you're racing for the finish, you'd be aimed at the banner intentionally- not aiming at the guy holding it. you can see several times in the video, that garrib bumps Ivuti sideways- you can see him sorta bounce to his left.

what about last year when they just stood there like fat putz's watching the obviously injured athlete squirm on the ground. When the womens winner crossed- they hadnt even noticed! how about a retractable banner- and one young resonsible 'holder'?

Runningart2004 wrote:

That picture is going to be published everwhere and is worth bank for the sponsor. How many people outside of Chicago knew of Lasalle Bank before they took over sponsorship?

Alan

How many people outside of Chicago need to know about Lasalle Bank? It's like those Sonic commercials I like. I can't be a customer of a bank or a restaurant I don't have in my part of the country.

Boomer D Wizzer III wrote:

Tape holder (n.)Patronage job at every marathon - the Mayors horsefaced daughter or the sponsors goomah seem to get these positions.

mizuki noguchi held it at NYC in 2005. she's cute and of no relation to bloomberg.

I'm assuming that you find what happened "acceptable," to use your word. I tried to come up with a coherent suggestion about how to avoid it in the future.

Rather than going point by point, I'll simply note that when I yell "Track" I expect the person to get out of Lane 1. I expect that banner holders will know -- because they are told by the RD -- where to go and who takes the banner with her well before the runners get to the finish line.

I was a head ropeman in the NYC Marathon so I know that it's really not that hard to clear the finish line for people paying attention.

JPGarland wrote:

Rather than going point by point, I'll simply note that when I yell "Track" I expect the person to get out of Lane 1. I expect that banner holders will know -- because they are told by the RD -- where to go and who takes the banner with her well before the runners get to the finish line.

But how do you expect the person to get out of Lane 1? They don't see you coming and suddenly hear someone yelling at them. Do they move left or right? What if you have a training partner or two with you hanging off your shoulder?

Do your banner holders always go the same direction, regardless of how the runners are approaching the finish? Wouldn't there be a 50% chance that one of them is being told to go in a direction that will place him in front of the oncoming runners?

At what point does your magical person X make the decision that the approaching runners are not going to logically aim for the banner, but rather veer towards one of the people holding it? It doesn't take much to slightly alter your course even 20 or 30 yards from the finish. Easily enough to hit the line a yard or so to the left or right (and thereby miss the stationary holder but run into the moving one).

It sounds like you'll have the banner holders clear the finish line when the runners are 40 - 50 yards away and heading towards the banner itself. That sure would look funny!

First, do you find what happened at the finish "acceptable."

Second, as I said, I don't care whether she goes right or left as long as she gets out of lane 1. I said that this depends on the person walking in lane 1 to know to get out of the way; hence the importance of preparing the banner holder. I did not say I was running with someone else; if I had, I might have used a different hypothetical. I also don't wait until the last moment to shout "track"; I give myself enough time to use an alternative route and I don't shout "track" if I think it's going to result in people running all over the place and blocking my way. You may have your own way of dealing with people in lane 1 (although I will ask them to move before I start running if I can), but that's what I do.

Keeping the instructions simple, one goes to one spot, the other to another, and those spots are not on the finish line but behind it.

"Magical person X" is simply someone with authority, perhaps the RD herself, who recognizes that there could be a jam at the finish line and exercises that authority to clear everyone out. See my prior comment.

My point is not how it looks but how it affects the finish.

Again, my actual experience tells me that it should not be that hard. But, again, that all turns on whether the events on Sunday were acceptable, and I'm just trying to make a coherent suggestion.

Now I realize that they'd never stop using the finish line banner completely because of the sponsorship money, but does anyone else here think that it's just a silly-ass idea to begin with? It might have made sense when we didn't have all the timing technology and photo finish stuff that we have today, but we don't even need the tape for a 60 meter race today. Even if we did need it for the purpose of determining a winner, the hand held banner wouldn't be valid as there is no gaurentee of accuracy. The only thought in my head when I watch those guys scrambling around to get the banner in possition is that it's humerous to watch such effort go into something so completely unecessary. Again, I realize the sponsorship issue, though I can say that even after watching the video a few times I couldn't tell you what was on the banner (I assume the name of the primary sponsor, but I'm really no more likely to become a customer of theirs as a result of seeing the banner).

JPGarland wrote:

First, do you find what happened at the finish "acceptable."

Not really. It looked as if Gharib was running Ivuti off course. The only thing is here the course was defined by a human who theoretically could have moved. If Gharib was running Ivuti into one of the railings down the side or into the supporting pillar of the finish structure, is it not essentially the same thing? Would you be expecting a team of workers to be ready to move the railings or the finish scaffolding in case Magical Person X tells them two with 40 yards left in the race?

Everything else is really stretching your argument.

So it's not acceptable to you. Do you have a coherent suggestion as to how to avoid it in the future?

And I'm at a loss to understand your final statement.

I watched that reply quite a few times including the slow motion. My two cents:

The tape holder on the center lane was no help whatsover. But the guy on their left actually did a good job. He did everything he could to minimize his impact on the race outcome. He didnt have much choice, moving too much or dropping the tape would have created a worse problem. Instead he extends his arms and inchses backwards just enough and in the final strides where Invuti just comes around Gharibs elbow he is able to stand stationary.

Gharib clearly uses the human obstacle to his advantage. I dont fault the tape holder that was entagled in the game, he's just there doing his job. If it wasnt a person holding a tape but rather a fixed object like a barrier, maybe the focus would be more on Gharib's tactics.

I'm not really decided if anything unsportmanslike happened. Position, box-outs and elbows are commonplace and accepted tactics in the 1500. We just dont see that often after running 42k. Taking a look at the slow mo a couple times, Gharib is just of the center yellow lane stip with about 10 yards to go but has moved almost completly to left side by the time they hit the tape. His left arm, elbow and hand swinging as far left as possible and are pratically horizontal. He's doing everything he can to make Invuti go wide to avoid getting an elbow to kidney. Right at the tape, the final arm swing would be considered a push if Invuti didnt go as wide as he did.

Take into account that all that transpires in a matter of a seconds at the end of a unbeleivably gruelling day. In the end it was two great runners giving it everything they had. As witnessed that day in both the men's and women's races even after two plus hours of racing, a split second reaction or inaction can cost you, or deliver, greatness.