A coach who is in Louisville. wrote:
The decision was made on Wednesday before the teams or coaches even arrived in Louisville and they had nothing to do with it. It came down from the NCAA and the parks people who maintain the course. It is now 5780m for women and 9560m for men.
It has rained non-stop this week.
I have seen, coached and competed on plenty of "muddy" courses, but as was pointed out this decision had to do with the integrity of the meet. The area that was cut off was a small loop about 600m into the race. You can imagine there would be serious issues at that stage running through a 200+ meter flood.
And just an FYI, DI did the same thing last year or the year before because of rain in Terre Haute and moved the start up past the area in question.
This is spot on - the NCAA DII Committee made the decision after seeing how much that short loop was holding water that early in the week - with a few more days of rain plus teams practicing on the course still yet to come. It wasn't worth including in part because it is so early in the race.
The NCAA rulebook allows for courses to be shorter than the standard distances so no adjustments were made to the rest of the course.
The LOC has workers doing everything they can to make the turns and hillier areas as safe as possible, but there is more rain coming through tonight...no matter how much they do the course is going to be really sloppy tomorrow.