Obstacle Courses

In a recent post of mine I was reporting on the decision of the "Union Internationale du Pentathlon Moderne" to replace the equestrian event by an obstacle race. And while I consider Modern Pentathlon a superannuated discipline that should have disappeared with the demise of de Coubertin, I was, in a sense, proud, having suggested that the best choice for a new even was an obstacle course. In my post I criticised strongly the fact that the obstacle course which is being proposed is a watered-down event with just 10 obstacles over 100 metres. 

My reference is always the CISM-military pentathlon obstacle event with a 500 m course comprising 20 obstacle. But as I started interesting myself in obstacle races I decided to dig deeper and report on my findings. A reason for this is also the fact that there is a certain excitement in the milieu of obstacle races, with people hoping that, once an obstacle race is in the olympic program, be it a kindergarten variety, the road will be open for more serious obstacle events. (I am convinced that they are deluding themselves, but that is neither here nor there). 

Obstacle courses became known to the public at large thanks to tv programs, the most famous of them being Wipeout that aired on ABC from 2008 to 2014. (It was rebooted in 2020 on TBS). It's essentially a game, where the obstacles are trying to trip the participant. However it requires real athletic qualities and a good coordination. By now there exist several wipeout-parks all over the world for people who would like to face the challenge without having to appear on tv. 

An obstacle from Wipeout

The Wikipedia gives a precise definition of what is an obstacle course

An obstacle course is a series of challenging physical obstacles an individual must navigate, usually while being timed. Obstacle courses can include running, climbing, jumping, crawling, swimming, and balancing elements with the aim of testing speed, endurance and agility. 

and the corresponding article provides a slew of links to tv shows, as well as competitive obstacle racing.

The World Obstacle federation (Fédération Internationale de Sports d'Obstacles) is the international body governing the obstacle course sport. It has been officially founded in 2018, although the first discussions towards the creation of an international body had taken place already in 2014. Once World Obstacle was created the content of the competitions was standardised. They comprise now three specialties: Ninja course, obstacle course and adventure course. 

A Ninja course

The Ninja course racing corresponds to short obstacle courses, in the spirit of Ninja Warrior. (The later is an emanation of the japanese tv show Sasuke, going back to 1997, that has been copied world-wide under the japan-evoking name). The competitions are held over 25 to 200 m with 4 or more obstacles. Contrary to Wipeout all errors are eliminatory and the attempt is timed. The first world championships of obstacle racing, held in 2022, comprised among others a 100 m sprint with 10 obstacles. It is clear that it's this event that inspired the UIPM and led to the new event in modern pentathlon. 

Obstacle course

The obstacle course proper is a longer race ranging from, the short track, 3 km (with 20 obstacles) to the standard, 12 km (with 40 obstacles) and all the way to the ultra over 50 km (with 60 obstacles).

Adventure course

Finally the adventure course is a race that covers from a few hours to many days expeditions. Natural terrain obstacles such as mountains, deserts, rivers and sea are common.

One cannot talk about obstacle races without mentioning the Spartan Race. It's an obstacle race but it belongs to a private entity. It was founded in 2007 and is supposedly a spin-off of the "Death Race" a 48-hour endurance event, albeit more manageable. Spartan races cover roughly the same distances as the Obstacle Course Races, from 5 km with 20 obstacles all the way up to the ultra, of 50 km. 

The one thing that I do not like about Spartan are their medals. I do not understand why at a certain point they decided to copy the names of military units from ancient Sparta and, totally lacking culture, produced inscriptions with grammatical errors.

The medal of this year's Spartan with ΜΟΡΑ ΤΩΝ ΠΥΛΟΥ

And the correct ΜΟΡΑ ΤΗΣ ΠΥΛΟΥ

Spartan races are really hard but crazy people do exist. So there are some who find even the Spartan Ultra too tame. So, the Spartan Death Race was introduced. It's, a 72 hours event with excruciatingly tough obstacles, many requiring teamwork. Just think about it for a moment: carry a 25 kg sandbag over the distance of a marathon, climb 10 km of rope in 7 hours, do 3000 burpees in 12 hours and that's just a small part of the torture. At times one wonders why people are ready to inflict upon themselves such punishments.

A follow-up on the "Allen incident"

Last month I published an article discussing the elimination of D. Allen for a false start which was a mere millisecond below the arbitrary (and unrealistic) threshold of 0.1 s fixed by World Athletics in 1989. As I explained there, this cut-off was based on studies performed in the 60s and was not revised despite more recent studies (sponsored by World Athletics!) which showed that auditory reactions can be faster than 100 ms and concluded that the cut-off time for false starts should be lowered to 80 or 85 ms.

P.J. Vazel, a french coach, the analyses of whose I appreciate a lot, published a list of the performances of the first 20 participants in the men's 100 m for the World Championships from 1995 to 2022. 

In the graphic below I am showing his results for the 1st, 10th and 20th competitor. The overall behaviour is the same, roughly independent of the position of the runner. In the 90s the starts were faster because the new rules with the 0.1 s cut-off had just started to be applied and the athletes were still taking risks. Vazel himself is pointing out that in 1995 there were three below-0.1s starts that were not recalled. The athletes became more cautious as the application of the 0.1 s rule became stricter but gradually the started improving their reaction time and we are now closing in the fateful 100 ms threshold.

So, are we in for a slew of Allen-style disqualifications? I am afraid that that's were we are heading now. And so, one can ask what is WA doing. Well, in November 2022 the WA Council approved an amendment to the Start Procedure guidelines. The idea is that the referee can now allow the athlete to run under protest. Here is the exact text (SIS stands for "Start Information System")

First, let me point out that the starting guidelines on the WA site have not been amended so as to include the decision of the Council. But what is even worse, there is no way one can find the Manuals&Guidelines page starting form the WA home page. The only way to reach that page is to ask Google, which provides this link. I find this preposterous. Is it so difficult for WA to have a well structured site that one can navigate without getting lost? (And, of course, do not count on the search function of the site: I have never managed to find anything using it).

So, let us forget the WA site problems and try to parse the amendment. The only thing that it says is that the athlete is not disqualified right away but may be allowed to run, provided the reaction time is close to the allowed limit. The key word here is "close". This is, unfortunately, a highly subjective notion. What is "close" for one starter will not be close enough for some other. And then there is the question of the "further study of the technological evidence". What does that mean? Will the athlete be disqualified (after his race) if it is found that the SIS is functioning properly? As usual, WA does not dare take the bull by the horns and we are stuck with half measures. To my eyes there is only one solution. Lower the cut-off time to a point where a false start will become indisputable. But one can only dream.

Photo-finish, again

Those who follow my blog know that I am regularly criticising the use of photo-finish in order to decide on the arrival order down to millisecond precision. Now, don't get me wrong. It's not the photo-finish itself that I am criticising. It's the way it is used. In my article on photo-finish-obsolescence I was writing that "the analysis of photo-finish, since it is based on human judgement is error-prone and can lead to unfair decisions". 

In fact I had already written about this problem in my post on the absurdity of milliseconds:

The rules stipulate that “the athletes shall be placed in the order in which any part of their bodies (i.e. torso, as distinguished from the head, neck, arms, legs, hands or feet) reaches the vertical plane of the nearer edge of the finish line”. The difficulty lies in defining in a precise way and on a deformed photo what is precisely a “torso”. For an athlete dipping for the finish shoulders should definitely count but sometimes the judges cannot distinguish them from a part of the neck. For an athlete running at 10 m/s a millisecond corresponds to just 1 cm. Can we be sure of such a precision when a human eye is called upon to disentangle a difficult situation? My answer is a resounding “no”.

So, as far as milliseconds are used in order to break a tie I am 100 % against this (unless some other, totally automatised method, without human intervention is used. But more on this at the end of the article).

Here I am going to show something that on the surface looks like weakening my case against   photo-finish. But as I pointed out from the outset I am not against photo-finish. What I criticise is the decisions based on human appraisal of the photo pretending to be precise down to a mere centimetre. But before proceeding further I will let you watch a few times the video from the Zürich Diamond League final of men's 200 m. 

When I watched the final I was convinced that Ogando had beaten Brown for the second place. And I was surprised when the results came out and, based on the photo-finish, gave the second place to Brown for a mere millisecond. Here is the photo-finish.

I could not believe this result and I watched, again and again, the video ending up by making a screenshot of the two athletes crossing the finish line.

Again, Ogando looks as if he were crossing the line ahead of Brown. But then I noticed that the finish line was a tad skewed on the photo. Oh, not by much. It took just a 3 degree counter-clockwise rotation on order to make it vertical.

Well, I don't know about you, but to me things look as if Ogando were still finishing ahead of Brown. So it was time for a more precise measurement. and this is what I did in the next figure.

I used a screen ruler and now I could really appraise the difference between the two athletes. And now Brown looks (very, very) slightly ahead of Ogando. Is there a centimetre of difference there? Frankly, I cannot tell. Given the uncertainties in all the manipulations I think that the situation is clearly undecidable. For me once human judgement enters into the equation the error margin must be of the order of several centimetres and the millisecond precision is just illusory.

So, what is the takeout of all this analysis? First, the impression one has on who does win just by watching the video can be wrong. This is all the more true when an athlete finishes fast catching up with the one who is ahead of him and surpasses him clearly once the finish line crossed. Second, a millisecond precision is illusory and it would have much better if World Athletics accepted not to break a tie of two athletes who have the same time with a precision of a hundredth of a second. 

And since you may wonder whether there is a better solution, well, I have already proposed one in an article of mine in the "Imperative Changes" series: use a chip affixed to the sternum of the athlete, one which can trigger the timing mechanism when the athlete crosses the finish line. With present day's technology this is something that can be done very easily and inexpensively. Unfortunately there is no indication that World Athletics is exploring such a possibility.