Chaos / Disaster at DIII Nats - Officials miscount # of laps in 5k (again) and there are two different winners!!

Mike Phelps wrote:

This type of thing doesn't happen in swimming.

That's because a pool is straight.

Absolutely ridiculous. I yelled at the officials 2 laps in and was told that my athlete would be disqualified if I argued with them.

So I continued to grabbed splits absolutely fuming. Completely arrogant officials

adsfdsfddd wrote:

If a record had been set in that race, you can bet your butt USATF would invalidate it.

That seems to be pretty far off the point. The Division 3 meet record wasn't given for this race, though the initial time would have been a record. The Division 3 national title was awarded. In the USATF meet the national title was awarded to the person who won the race. The national title wasn't invalidated because the race wasn't by-the-book.

Classic officiating wrote:

Absolutely ridiculous. I yelled at the officials 2 laps in and was told that my athlete would be disqualified if I argued with them.

So I continued to grabbed splits absolutely fuming. Completely arrogant officials

Is that true? WHO are these people? This is why officials for distance races should be distance runners.

elmore345 wrote:

Chaos & Disaster? Ebola/Terrorism sufferers might disagree with your use of words here.

Not a relevant comparison you massive f'tard. Many things can be chaotic of a disaster and be non horrible things. Go away and never show yourself on letsrun again.

nocurves wrote:

Mike Phelps wrote:

This type of thing doesn't happen in swimming.

That's because a pool is straight.

It does happen in swimming. In the very long distances swimmers are shown plates to inform them how many laps they have to complete.

Not Mike Phelps wrote:

nocurves wrote:

That's because a pool is straight.

It does happen in swimming. In the very long distances swimmers are shown plates to inform them how many laps they have to complete.

Lap counters are used, but they are typically held by peers, not officials and are, thus, unofficial. Bell lap (sometimes gun) signifies official last lap.

Anyone remember the Thread Dlll doesn't count :-)

this is a decent recap of the chicanery. http://www.ustfccca.org/2015/03/featured/diii-day-one-recap-distance

Reminds me of A-10's many years ago at URI. The counter was wrong from the first lapped runner and you could see it coming if you were checking your clock splits vs laps. When he rang the bell the clock for read 13:48 and we were never on 14:30 5k pace the entire race. Went from 6th to 2nd because everyone kicked at the bell and stopped except for the first guy and myself and most behind. We just kicked one more time hard. It was such a mess of people colliding and yelling. They ended up scoring the 5k places and not the 4800. There was a lot of anger and it was understandable. Looking back now it makes me smile but it was a huge deal at the meet.

At the 2004 Canada West Championships, either the officials or the runners messed up the lap count and the second leg runners only ran 3 laps instead of 4. The winning time would have been a Canadian record. Obviously it wasn't ratified.

Well that is supreme incompetence. It does look like my alma mater Johns Hopkins won the team title handily, if there is such a thing.

it tis an idiot paradigm.

well, IF the officials for a university function can't see immediately that 24 * 200 = 4800m? that's reason enough to axe people.

if you are a total moron, you can punch it in the calculator and get it right. but only a smart moron knows he's a moron.

the runners and coaches most probably had no idea the count was set at 24, there had to be someone that can "do the math".

as for having the result stand or not stand? who knows

but don't ask the officials - what is the intelligent thing to do? - THAT IS FOR SURE

but at the end of the day, in the idiot paradigm, the guys that can't count and multiply or check their work, will the ones to decide !! as per usual in the idiot paradigm.

I agree with the recap article on USTFCCCA, Regan knew her pace and laps and had more energy to go than Cheadle. These athletes should have known their time/paces, as well as their coaches watching. No excuse for ending at the 4800 M mark, NCAA is an embarassment.

An Observer wrote:

Isn't that how they usually start the lap counter for races that start and end at the finish line? As long as you don't decrease it to 23 before they come around after one lap, that should be fine (and if you did do it then, it should be pretty easy to notice after one lap that they didn't run 400 meters in 36 seconds or whatever, and you have plenty of time to correct it).

No, the race starts with the number of laps to be run (in this case 25).

It should be decremented by 1 every time the leader comes into the home straight.

If you start at 24, then it would be lowered to 23 when the leader comes around just before 200m into the race.

Was this one of the lap counters that the operator could lower without necessarily having a clear view of what is actually displayed? (It's easy to just reach up and pull down the next tab on the assumption the original number was correct.)

This ^.

The official lap counter did not set the count, and she couldn't see the numbers, so when they came around after 1 lap, she just switched it to 23.

This is utterly embarrassing and utterly avoidable.

Most track officials are arrogant, self-righteous people who seem to get some kind of gratification from screaming at 19 year olds. And to boot, most of them know absolutely f*ck all about anything having to do with distance running.

Officials for distance races should be distance runners. At least they can count to 25.

It's ridiculous that Regan is getting penalized for counting her laps correctly. How are we supposed to get other people to take our sport seriously when stuff like this is the NORM?? We don't even take our OWN sport seriously. it's a joke. not a very funny one though.

not a registered username wrote:

It's ridiculous that Regan is getting penalized for counting her laps correctly. How are we supposed to get other people to take our sport seriously when stuff like this is the NORM?? We don't even take our OWN sport seriously. it's a joke. not a very funny one though.

Poor assumption. If she knew where she was in the race she can't assume that Cheadle doesn't. Cheadle walked away from her, Regan offered zero response. Rules are clearly in Cheadle's favor, and I doubt the race would have had a different result at 25 laps of proper officiating.