The IAAF finalists and some thoughts

The IAAF has published their list of finalists for title of World Athlete of the year 2018. Since I had published my own selection even before the initial, long, list of IAAF it make sense to make some comparisons. 

Let's start with the ladies list. The five finalists are

Dina Asher-Smith, Beatrice Chepkoech, Caterine Ibarguen, Shaunae Miller-Uibo and Nafissatou Thiam. For comparison my top-three list was Miller-Uibo, Chepkoech and Lasitskene. I find it somewhat bizarre that the latter did not make it to the finalists list but the IAAF choice of the top-five is quite reasonable. 

Given this short list, who has the greatest chance for the athlete of the year title.  Asher-Smith was nominated european athlete of the year, so, to my eyes, this diminishes her chances. Thiam is last year's winner and given the competition, I do not see her winning the title. This leaves us with Chepkoech, Ibarguen and Miller-Uibo. Much as I would have liked to see Ibargüen crowned, I do not see how she can compete against the other two. So it will be a race between Chepkoech and MIller-Uibo (and if you are following my blog you'll remember that my choice was Miller).

The men's list of finalists comprises

Christian Coleman, Armand Duplantis, Eliud Kipchoge, Kevin Mayer and Abderrahman Samba. I will not comment on Coleman (I am still not convinced of his value). A. Duplantis is a great talent and was crowned (together with J. Ingebrigtsen) European Rising Star and he may get the world rising star title as well. So this leaves us with Kipchoge, Mayer and Samba. Well, this is precisely my top own three. Mayer has already obtained the european athlete of the year title, so, most probably he will not be the winner of the world title. This leaves us with Kipchoge and Samba. Had Samba beaten the world record on 400 m hurdles he would have been the great favourite, but as the things stand I do not see how Kipchoge will miss the title. Well, we'll have to wait a little bit more (till December 4th) and we'll have the answer.

And since I am writing about the year's best athletes I must point out a great omission in my young talents list. Somehow the cuban triple jumper Jordan Diaz slipped out of my mind. With 17.41 m he established a U18 world record improving upon his 17.30 m from last year, obtained when he was just 16 years old. (Last year's record corresponded to a 2 m progression in a single year. Simply amazing). Diaz will probably obtain the rising star title and I felt that I had to make amends for my ommission.

On the illusory men-women parity in athletics

The recent European Championships in Athletics were considered as a milestone on the road to a parity between men and women in athletics. For the first time in history the program comprised a 50 km race walk for women. So, on the surface the programs for men and women are identical. Well, not quite, and what is worse, I am afraid that we'll never reach real parity.

I. Enriques winning the European title over 50 km

The first event where a manifest disparity exists is the 100 m hurdles. And I am not talking here about the fact that the distance is shorter. This had to be done in order to accommodate the fact that women have statistically a shorter stride length compared to that of men. No, I am talking about the hurdle height. I wrote about this in a blog post on imperial vs. metric units. The 100 m hurdles height was fixed  after the Mexico, 1968, Olympics at 0.84 m. Previously the women were running a 80 m with hurdles of 0.76 m. Unfortunately this standardisation going back to 1926 corresponded to a period when women were considered frail and weak and thus they had to have a special treatment. So, when the time came for a change, in 1968, going from 0.76 m to 0.84 m was considered an important leap in difficulty. As a result women can race the 100 m without the perfect technique which is vital for the elite men hurdlers. What would be the appropriate height for women's hurdles. The specialists agree on a 0.91 m height. Will, this ever happen? I don't think so. But if it did I would be the first to applaud such a decision. 

N. Visser (left with M. Jeanneke on the right)  as a hurdler

But where the disparity becomes really embarrassing is in combined events. The women's heptathlon cannot in any way be compared to men's decathlon. The latter asks for a real specialisation while it is not rare for women to move form heptathlon to some other event (and vice versa). T. Hellebaut won the olympic high jump competition and the indoor pentathlon in the same year (2008). Of course pentathlon is even easier than heptathlon (remember the curious story of Eva Wilms?). But it is not rare for a heptathlete to abandon combined event and shine in an individual one. Two out of the four dutch "wundermädchen" (I know, this is german, but I like this word) D. Schippers and N. Visser left heptathlon the first becoming world champion over 200 m while the second obtained a bronze medal in the 60 m hurdles of this year's World Indoors. N. Thiam could at any moment abandon heptathlon (but this would be not a very clever move, since she is the world's best for the last few years) and become a high jumper. The examples of men decathletes who became specialists of some other event are few and far between. We all remember of course the fabulous off-year of A. Eaton (2014) where he left the decathlon for the 400 m hurdles where he excelled to the point of winning a Golden League event with an enviable 48.69 s. Closer to us we have K. Warholm who went from combined events as a junior to a hurdler becoming world champion of the low hurdles while still being on the U23 category. But these are the exceptions. The decathlon is a different event from the heptathlon and no real parity between men and women will be reached as long as the latter insist on competing on this amputated combined event. Will we one day see women's decathlon competitions? This is not impossible given that the event exists officially and that a world record is homologated  What is needed is for the IAAF to show some firm hand and introduce the event first organising some special competition and then promoting it to a championships event.

And, repeating myself, race walk should not exist as a competitive discipline (or, if it did, only for ultra-marathon like events of 100s of kilometres, like the famous Paris-Kolmar). The reason for this is that race walkers  are cheating: they are running. Look at the photo below, taken at the 2005 World Championships and used to illustrate the Wikipedia article one race walk. 

Look carefully: two guys are running

Two of the walkers (the spaniard in front and one of russians) do not have any contact with the ground. They do it because the rules sanction only what the human eye can see. But we know, since time immemorial, that the hand is faster than the eye (that's how con artists have been making a living). Unfortunately, for the probity of athletics, the foot is also faster than the eye. 

PS. I had finished writing this article but hadn't posted it yet when the european athlete of the year awards were announced. And quite deservedly K. Mayer won the men's title. The interesting thing was that at the award ceremony he expressed the wish for the women's heptathlon to be replaced by a decathlon, ensuring thus a real parity between the two sexes. I was really impressed for the clairvoyance of K. Mayer and came to appreciate him even more. I am also convinced that there can be no comparison between the heptathlon and the decathlon and only when the latter will replace the former in the ladies competitions we will be able to talk seriously about combined events for women.

There is no end to the Semenya scandal

In July I wrote a post on Semenya and how her presence was making women competitions unfair for the non-hyperandrogenic females. I did not hesitate to pronounce the word "scandal" because this is precisely how I feel about the situation. I was writing there that a honest attitude of Semenya would have been to announce her retirement of competition in October before the date of enforcement of the new regulations. But this is not what Semenya had decided. In fact she had already filed an appeal to the Court of Arbitration on Sport concerning the IAAF regulation on "differences in sexual development". 

 Find the intruder

And a few days ago arrived the news that the IAAF had to delay the implementation of its Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification from November to March. The official justification of this was that

A contested application to stay the implementation of the DSD Regulations would have caused additional delay and created new uncertainty for athletes seeking to compete in the women’s category.

Sir Sebastian chimed in saying that,

“We have reached a compromise with the claimants.  We have agreed not to enforce the regulations against any athlete until the contested regulations are upheld.  In exchange, they have agreed not to prolong the process".

The IAAF Health & Science Department Director, Dr. Stéphane Bermon, pointed out the major drawback of this decision saying:

"This five-month shift in the timetable from a November to a late March start date could result in affected athletes having to sit out the bulk of the outdoor season leading up to the IAAF World Championships...  The original November 1 start date was designed specifically to avoid this".

It is now expected that the hearing at the CAS will take place in February with a decision at the end of March.

So, what will happen at the CAS? Nobody knows. The Court had already, in 2015, invalidated a previous IAAF regulation concerning hyperandrogenic women. When the current rules made their appearance, Ross Tucker (a sports physiologist for whom I have real respect) voiced his pessimism concerning the new rules, since the research they were based upon was not showing that a men-level testosterone concentration in women was anywhere near to bridging the gap of the 10 % difference in performance between man and women. And this 10 % difference was pivotal in the 2015 CAS ruling. 

In a recent article Tucker and collaborators have also challenged the methodology of the article by Bermon and Garnier, concluding that one cannot do "the right thing" in the wrong way. Their argument is based on their analysis of the data of Bermon and Garnier, an analysis which identified several errors in the original paper. In fact upon elimination of all problematic data points "the change in aggregate times when using corrected data is of a similar magnitude to that of the testosterone effects that the authors seek to identify". I suggest that you visit the Sports Scientists site and read the article of Tucker. And if you are not science-oriented just read his conclusions where he explains in a very clear way the ins and outs of the situation.

The Semenya saga continues and the situation is far from pleasant. If the CAS invalidates the IAAF regulations once more you can expect to see more and more fake women in athletics, a situation even worse than that of the era of rampant doping.

PS And despite all this Semenya has made the top-ten list of candidates for the title of athlete of the year. Frankly, what are the people at IAAF thinking?