Please give 3 good reasons why runners about to be lapped in championship races should NOT be pulled off the track. Thanks

If that was put into place for last year's World Champs Womens 10000m

There would only be FOUR finishers out of the 30+ runners in the race lmao

One of them being an American record holder...

However, they SHOULD be aware and move on the outside lanes if they are going to get passed.

The PR spread of 2 people in a 3000m race should not be over a minute. If they arent going to have heats they should have had stricter cut offs. Why in the world was the girl from jordan in this race

ORDER / LANE BIB ATHLETE COUNTRY PB SB 2018

1 633 Geneviève LALONDE CAN CAN 8:49.78 8:49.78

2 696 Eilish MCCOLGAN GBR GBR 8:43.02 8:50.87

3 760 Tamara ARMOUSH JOR JOR 9:27.78 9:27.78

4 784 Sifan HASSAN NED NED 8:30.76

5 825 Dominique SCOTT RSA RSA 8:41.18 8:41.18

6 871 Shelby HOULIHAN USA USA 8:36.01 8:36.01

7 708 Konstanze KLOSTERHALFEN GER GER 8:36.01 8:36.01

8 674 Genzebe DIBABA ETH ETH 8:16.60 8:31.23

9 873 Katie MACKEY USA USA 8:43.15 8:43.15

10 677 Fantu WORKU ETH ETH 8:39.55 8:39.55

11 837 Meraf BAHTA SWE SWE 8:42.46 8:42.46

12 697 Laura MUIR GBR GBR 8:26.41 8:46.71

13 820 Claudia Mihaela BOBOCEA ROU ROU 8:51.58 8:53.97

14 767 Hellen OBIRI KEN KEN 8:29.41 8:38.81

ThinkAboutThat... wrote:

If that was put into place for last year's World Champs Womens 10000m

There would only be FOUR finishers out of the 30+ runners in the race lmao

One of them being an American record holder...

That would be an epic sight. Ayana cruising around the track solo while dozens of women get pulled off to the sidelines.

Excellent idea, if you get lapped you get DQ. We should have a event where they run until there is one man standing.

No special reason to pull them rather than letting them finish and get their time and place. If you've ever run a road race there's no way you can think a track race is really that crowded and it isn't very hard to run around them.

fartleks and bagels wrote:

Excellent idea, if you get lapped you get DQ. We should have a event where they run until there is one man standing.

Have you ever heard of the "Devil takes the hindmost" races from the 70's? Last place at the end of each lap must drop out. There were kicks on nearly every lap. Very unique and entertaining. The Sun Devil relays here in AZ used to run one.

1. come

2. back

3. kid

This would open the door to some hilarious team strategies. I'm picturing some team having their mid-pack 10,000m guy run balls out for the first 5K, lap a bunch of people, and then DNF after knocking a bunch of people from other teams out of the race.

like roller derby wrote:

This would open the door to some hilarious team strategies. I'm picturing some team having their mid-pack 10,000m guy run balls out for the first 5K, lap a bunch of people, and then DNF after knocking a bunch of people from other teams out of the race.

This pertains to indoor, not outdoor so much.

I can't think of 3 legitimate reasons, but as someone already pointed out, a pretty important one is the rare possibility of almost everyone getting lapped.

In most cases in championship races, the qualifications to run are enough to keep people from getting lapped except in races like the 10k or the 3k indoors in this case. I agree that there should be some more strict qualifications to run to make up for those cases of someone getting in from a non-competitive country that will almost guarantee lapping.

Another example is the 2017 D2 indoor national meet where Vincent Kiprop lapped everyone except for 3 others, and 3rd and 4th were getting pretty close to getting lapped too. If everyone runs their PR, then lapping wouldn't be much of an issue. However, in this case, Kiprop is in a different league than the rest of the field, so only a few guys even try to go with his hot pace. Everyone else is basically in their own tactical race, resulting in tons of lapping. In a championship scenario like this, pulling lapped runners off the track is no good.

So then some will say to only pull off the runners that don't have a chance to score anymore. It's just too difficult to draw that line objectively while being fair in all scenarios. What if we say you pull off anybody that gets lapped and is outside the top 12? Well it's possible that there could be a large pack from 8-15, so the 15th guy might have just as good of a chance at scoring as the guy in 8th.

Easy:

1. (Game theory, already given) It changes the strategy of a race in which an individual racer or team might try deliberately to almost-lap as many competitors as possible, so as to strategically disqualify others.

2. "About to be lapped" is undefined by you, which then turns a formerly objective event into a more subjective one. Disputes, instant replay, etc. would ensue and dilute an otherwise simpler sport.

3. "Pulling" a runner(s) about to be lapped would be quite dangerous, especially considering the runner about to be lapped has the leader(s) close behind. An official person or persons, or mechanical object/device, responsible for "pulling" the about-to-be-lapped runner(s) would present a clear safety hazard.

DEBUNKING a few things:

1) an average 10,000 runner is not gonna run a hard 5000 and lap the elite 10,000 runners! What are y'all smoking? If the elites go through in 13:45 then the average one has to get there in 12:40, and isn't the average one after all.

This is why outdoors would suck for an elimination race where the distance is undetermined and the runners just go until only one remains on the lead lap. It would take a lot longer than 10,000 meters. It might be ok indoors though.

2) you can "pull" a runner off the track once someone is within 10 meters of lapping them, by the judgment of a race official. They can hold up a red card telling them to step off. Nobody about to be lapped is generally capable of speeding up to hold off the faster runner for long, so there won't be any controversy over whether they're within 10 meters.

Olympic or World Championship track isn’t actually designed for optimized top-level competition. It’s amazing how many “track fans” like hardloper don’t get this. If the best competition were the goal, there wouldn't be any fussing about flags and anthems, and there would be a lot more Kenyans in the 10k. These events are meant to foster international camaraderie and such. Pulling the slow runners off the track is counterproductive to the goals of inclusion and representation. Duh.

Because with all of the doping ahead of you it pays to finish....

That's reason 1, 2, 3

Mr. Hardcanteloupe.

consider this wrote:

No special reason to pull them rather than letting them finish and get their time and place. If you've ever run a road race there's no way you can think a track race is really that crowded and it isn't very hard to run around them.

Tell that to Nikki Hamblin and Abby D'Agostino.

Not a championship race but I watched a large invitational 10K in which a friend was lapped once and almost a second time and qualified for NCAA in the process. His coach was pleading with officials not to pull him. Time qualifiers for future races is a good reason not to pull lapped runners from the track.

They could maybe pull those being lapped really early in the race.

At the 76 Olympics there was debate as to whether a guy from Haiti who ran around 40 minutes and held up the schedule by 15 minutes should have been pulled.

You never know, the lapped runner may have a REALLY good kick.