NAIA 5K Indoor Championship Lap Controversy

the racers are ultimately responsible for knowing what lap they are on. Sometimes the race goes to the smartest rather than the fastest. In this case, that would have been the original fourth place guy.

Taking the order of finishers one lap early would be a grave injustice to the sport of running.

well looking at results it looks like in fact they have made this a 4700m race. what a joke, this is the kind of stuff you see in junior high.

Utah returns football to one yard line, drops it a bit early...given 6 points anyways

Lolo jones trips over hurdle...given gold anyways

Mookie Wilson barely fouls off strike three...the Red Sox win anyways

LIFE LESSON: nothing bad or unfortunate should ever actually happen. Let's eliminate the ending to old yeller while we are at it.

Really? Are you serious? This isn't a 4700m race, it's 5000m... Yes, it's unfortunate they all kicked a lap early, but it is what it is, that 4th place guy just got ripped off!

How did the lap error unfold. Were the laps off for most of the race? Did the bell ring one the wrong lap, was the bell ringing as they were (incorrectly) finishing. If the officials were hosing this up, then yeah, give the kids their spots. If the kids hosed up the laps all on their own, then the 4th place guy should be moved up.

This is 100% false. The racers are instructed to follow the directions of officials at all times. This includes the lap counter. Pick up a rule book before spouting off this nonsense. As much as I hate 4700 meter races, the finish line is where the officials say it is. The proper thing to do is take the results at 4700 meters. The next proper thing to do is fire the lap counter and whoever hired the lap counter and permanent relieve them of all credentials they have in the sport.

mylo gilmore wrote:

the racers are ultimately responsible for knowing what lap they are on. Sometimes the race goes to the smartest rather than the fastest. In this case, that would have been the original fourth place guy.

Taking the order of finishers one lap early would be a grave injustice to the sport of running.

They had lap counter right with like 3 or 4 laps to go and then the head umpire of the meet came and instructed them to change the lap counter. So they changed it to the incorrect lap. You also has the announcer announcing the wrong laps also. Also they rang the bell and the lap said 1 left. Then the officials were on the track instructing all runners that they had finished and even touching the athletes. Out of 14 athletes only 1 kept running. The okc guys in second and third never ran the extra lap and really only about 4 athletes out of 14 went to run the correct distance

ya i checked the results today and said wtf. there was no way. i came here hoping to find an answer. gotchya

I was at finish line wrote:

They had lap counter right with like 3 or 4 laps to go and then the head umpire of the meet came and instructed them to change the lap counter. So they changed it to the incorrect lap. You also has the announcer announcing the wrong laps also. Also they rang the bell and the lap said 1 left. Then the officials were on the track instructing all runners that they had finished and even touching the athletes. Out of 14 athletes only 1 kept running. The okc guys in second and third never ran the extra lap and really only about 4 athletes out of 14 went to run the correct distance

If this is true it makes sense to make it a 4700m race because from the sounds of it the entire field was kicking down on the "last lap" so maybe the only guy who was saving something for a final kick was the 4th place guy and maybe he wasn't in contention anyway?

Either that or rerun the entire race. But don't have results with only 4 finishers in it.

But man, sounds like the officials really dropped the ball on this.

On another note, shouldn't a national championships indoor meet be on a 200m track?

Correct. These results are a joke.

The NAIA has become something of a joke.

NCAA has done the same thing a couple times. Although saying NCAA (or USATF having barriers at the wrong height) have become somewhat of a joke would probably be accurate as well except for the fact that both have pretty much always been that way, so "have become" would be inaccurate.

Yes, they decided to ignore this little mishap in the officially published recap:

http://www.naia.org/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=27900&ATCLID=209933445

But in the results you can see that they were officially 4700m:

http://timerhub.com/getHytResults.php?page=lightningtiming.com/results/20150305/150305F010.htm

When I was warming up for the prelim men's 3k, the announcer was not even paying attention. They had 900m to go and the announcer said "Coming into their final 2 laps..." Then the next lap he realized how big of an idiot he was and said "600m to go now..."

This kind of stuff happened very frequently... Even last year when in a different race the announcer got my name wrong. "Halfway through the race it's Matthew Clowes, followed by (soandso) and (completely incorrect name). Come to find out, who he announced me to be wasn't even in that race.

Such a joke.

AND thats why FLO-TRACK went to JUCO instead!!!

At least it wasn't a marathon on the track

Same thing happened at The Big 10 indoors in the early 80's at IU. I was one of several timers. Same type of occurrence; 3-4 guys started their kick a lap too soon and crossed the finish line and collapsed; the other runners realized the mistake and kept going; what really sticks in my mind was team mates of the runners who stopped too soon were literally lifting them and "throwing" back into the race. [quote]IWUTF2015 wrote:

In a very interesting 5,000, a lead pack of three runners separated from the chase pack with probably 2,000 meters to go. As they approached (what they thought was) the final lap, 2 of the 3 in the lead pack took off and began the sprint for home. After crossing the finish line, the leader stopped and began to celebrate. He failed to realize that he had run 300m short (which he could've realized by his artificially fast time--13:37). The top three runners stopped while the guy who crossed 4th, Neno Bellinotti, continued to run. After much confusion, all the athletes who had stopped ran an extra lap although by that time they were well behind Neno and the new order of finishers was very different.

It seems it was the lap counter's fault, however it was a very odd, and slightly funny, turn of events. Last I heard they are taking the order of finishers as they crossed the line 1 lap early. That's probably the most fair decision, although many guys in the chase pack hadn't started their kicks that early.

mylo gilmore wrote:

the racers are ultimately responsible for knowing what lap they are on. Sometimes the race goes to the smartest rather than the fastest. In this case, that would have been the original fourth place guy.

Taking the order of finishers one lap early would be a grave injustice to the sport of running.

Agreed.

Yes he is correct. I was the head timer and my guy on the finish line was instructed by the running referee that he was wrong and had too many laps left. The lap counter had the order for each lap listed on his finish sheet. Rumor has it that someone told the ref that his kids splits were to slow and that the lap timer missed a lap. It was totally an officials error and not the lap counter. The games committee decided to make it a 4700m. What else were they going to do? Rerun the race? Since it was an error on the official, I believe the correct decision was made. The order of finish would not have change much and make any huge adjustments in the scoring.