During the "Braveheart" style start at Nike Border Clash minutes ago, the girls race saw the Washington girls jump the gun and get 15-20 meters before the cannon fired and Oregon started. And they didn't call them back. A travesty. It was live on runnerspace.
Knight won with Neale 2nd, McPhee 3rd, Meyers 5th
Armstrong won the boys earlier, outkicking Yorks with Weitz 3rd. Gardner didn't run. Crazy domination by Washington in both races, but girls was f'ed up.
Nike?
Yawn
The cannon start is cool, but I've always wished they had a more precise means of overseeing things. That said, I couldn't see anything while watching the video that indicated a false start, let alone something as blatant as 15-20m. Washington's runners get out faster than Oregon's every year, and today looked no different.
Dan
dkap wrote:
The cannon start is cool, but I've always wished they had a more precise means of overseeing things. That said, I couldn't see anything while watching the video that indicated a false start, let alone something as blatant as 15-20m. Washington's runners get out faster than Oregon's every year, and today looked no different.
Dan
The girls start looked like a game of red-light-green-light.
I was standing in front of the Oregon girls' start line. The announcer said "there will be a two-command start - SET and followed by the CANNON.
What triggered the false start was that following SET, the drum corps started in and the girls started to run on the first drum beat. I would have jumped too since the drums sounded close enough to the sound they were waiting for. Many of the Oregon girls took a few steps but then scurried back to the line and waited for the cannon. While they waited they were watching the Washington girls charge halfway down the line or more.
Washington was going to win but Oregon started with a huge deficit this year. They just needed to have the drum corps wait until after the cannon started.
According to Neale, about half the WA girls took off while the other half stayed put (including her and Meyers). Sounds like Knight was one of the early starters, and Amy-Eloise had to work up through the pack to chase after her.
Quite the cluster-F
In other news, the boy's race was the closest 3-way XC finish I've seen in 40 years in the sport.
frijito wrote:
Nike?
Yawn
Obama. Figures.
That's pretty funny.
But it's not a travesty. That's going a bit far.
A travesty would be an actual cannon ball being shot and wiping out a group of girls that were running.
This is just an early start in a long race.
Good story on what happened:
That is pretty bad. Unfortunately for the Oregon girls, Borderclash is one of the hardest races out there to move up in.
I was there, and the Washington girls ended up at a disadvantage since the race didn't get called back.
The Washington girls still moved up quite easily and crushed Oregon.
stupid answer wrote:
I was there, and the Washington girls ended up at a disadvantage since the race didn't get called back.
The Washington girls still moved up quite easily and crushed Oregon.
I am confused. It was the Washington girls that false-started, so how were they at a disadvantage. Even the ones that started at the right time wouldn't be at a disadvantage to Oregon, since Oregon started at the correct time. The girls that had gone when the drums started and were turning to go back, were still well in front of the starting line when the cannon went off. So I don't see how Washington was at a disadvantage over Oregon, outside of the girls that didn't take off having to go around their teammates. Overall though, Washington had an advantage over Oregon from what I saw in the video and from what people have said.