The final three rigmarole is over

I have already commented on the unfair, counterproductive and plain stupid rule of final 3 that was introduced in the Diamond League competitions two years ago, supposedly in order to make the competitions more exciting.

The final 3 rule meant that after five rounds only the leading three horizontal jumpers or throwers would get a sixth attempt, with the athlete who was best in that final round being proclaimed the winner, even if his performance did not exceed ones set earlier in the competition. 

One cannot think of anything stupider than this, short of deciding the winner by drawing lots. Quite expectedly the vast majority of athletes was against that rule. Still World Athletics persisted and applied this crazy rule to all the 2020 and 2021 Diamond League meetings. Fortunately they refrained from pushing for this rule to apply to the Olympics. As for the World Championships, luckily they were postponed, due to the epidemic.

The official justification was that it would make the events more attractive. Poppycock!

After the outcry (both from athletes and the public) World Athletics decided to review the situation. Here are the official rules for the new format.

Rounds 1-3

Each competition with a ‘final 3’ element is seeded ahead of the event commencing. The best throwers/jumpers are seeded to perform at the start of each round.

After round 3

The order of the eight remaining athletes is re-drawn with the best performing athletes throwing/jumping at the start of the next two rounds (rounds 4 and 5).

After round 5

The top three athletes get one additional attempt each. The order of the three remaining athletes is redrawn so that the best-placed athlete after round five goes first in the ‘final 3’, the second-placed athlete after round five goes second, and the third-placed athlete after round five goes third.

It is estimated that there will be a two-minute break from the end of round five to the start of the final 3.

Any ‘live’ field and track events will be stopped for the duration of a ‘final 3’ competition. 

To put it in a nutshell, only the first three will be allowed a 6th attempt and the best athlete will go first instead of last, which was the standard practice till now. And in the end the winner will be the one with the best performance during the whole event.  

Which means, more or less, that we are back to what was the standard before, with a few token changes for the World Athletics hierarchy not to lose face. 

Still, sports historians, perusing old results, will have trouble (unless they know precisely what was happening) to understand how an athlete with 8.09 m was first and one with 8.13 m was second.

Good riddance modern pentathlon

Perhaps I am celebrating too early. The final decision will not be taken before next year, and we have seen pentathlon evading eviction already in 2013, so... But I cannot refrain from rejoicing reading the news that modern pentathlon is among the three sports which are about to lose a spot in the 2028 Olympics.

But let us start at the beginning. The term modern in the pentathlon is a pure marketing term, invented by none other than our beloved baron, in order to promulgate a 19th century (and perhaps earlier) discipline and make it part of the 20th (and, alas, also 21st) century Olympics. I wrote about this quite some time ago and I made clear that the modern pentathlon is a sport that does not have its place in the olympic program. 

Perhaps as a tribute to de Coubertin they could add tricycle riding to the modern pentathlon

In 2013 the IOC was looking for ways to reduce the program of the Olympics and everybody was convinced that the discipline to bear the consequences would be the modern pentathlon. (The days when Brundage proposed to remove the women's discipline as a way to slim down the program are fortunately long past). But people who were predicting the demise of the modern pentathlon were not counting with the presence of Juan Antonio Samaranch junior (the son of the late marqués). Samaranch is the vice-president of the "Union Internationale du Pentathlon Moderne" (UIPM) and a member of the IOC since 2001. So in February 2013 it was decided that wrestling was the discipline to be removed, despite the fact that it is one of the disciplines present in the olympic program since the ancient times. Fortunately for wrestling, the decision was reversed in September of the same year but the modern pentathlon was scot-free. 

A few weeks ago the IOC decided that they would be removing boxing, weightlifting and modern pentathlon from the 2028 program, in order to make way for skateboarding, surfing, and sports climbing. (I will not discuss here the IOC tendency to choose disciplines that appeal to younger audiences to the point of making breakdancing an olympic discipline. I find that, were this to continue, the Olympic Games will lose the last strands of credibility they possess). Concerning boxing and weightlifting, the IOC decision has to do with well-known issues of corruption and doping, leadership matters aggravating the situation.

The horse punching moment

Modern pentathlon is a totally different story. As I pointed out above it is represented in the IOC by the heir of an IOC president. So the discipline would have been well protected had it not been for the incident in Tokyo during the equestrian event. In this event, the athletes have just 20 minutes to familiarise themselves with a horse they have never ridden. The german athlete was assigned a really difficult horse. It cleared just four fences before crashing into the fifth and then repeatedly refused to jump and, in fact, it had done the same earlier with another competitor. Her coach shouted at her to "really hit" the horse and she punched it herself. The coach was expelled from the Olympics and the UIPM decided to remove the equestrian event from the pentathlon program. 

Curiously the UIPM announced that the obvious choice for the 5th discipline, cycling, was ruled out. Well, if they asked my opinion I would say that the best choice is an obstacle course, but that would necessitate quite some original thinking on behalf of the UIPM mandarins. But then, if they wished to have a really modern pentathlon, they would have to replace fencing as well. Perhaps cycling, obstacle course, swimming, target shooting, and cross-country-running (the last two combined in a biathlon-like event) would redeem the modern pentathlon to me.

So will the modern pentathlon disappear from the Olympics (whereupon it will become marginalised and soon extinct)? Let us not rejoice too fast. The final decision will not be taken before the 2023 IOC annual meeting. And even then an unfavourable decision can be overturned later. J.A. Samaranch will look after this. For the time being, let us cross our fingers and hope that this deCoubertenian relic is soon tossed onto the garbage heap of history.

The WA athlete of the year etc. awards

World Athletics announced their 2020 awards and as is becoming customary by now I missed the women winner. Over the last five years (since I am publishing my year's best list) only once have I correctly predicted the female winner. Well, at least I am doing a good job predicting the male one.

So this year's ceremony crowned E. Thompson-Herah and K. Warholm. I had bet 60 to 40 in favour of S. McLaughlin versus Thompson but the World Athletics panel decided otherwise. Mind you, Thompson is an excellent choice: she was the only one who could have beaten McLaughlin but still I am favouring the latter. K. Warholm was my choice, with only R. Crouser being able to challenge him. Both dominated their discipline and broke a work record but I guess Warholm's is more impressive, dipping under the 46 s barrier, while Crouser's record above 23.37 m was, well, incremental.

There was no doubt whatsoever concerning the rising stars. Athing Mu

and Erriyon Knighton

were indisputably above the competition.

There was also no doubt as to who would win the photograph of the year award. You can see the winning photo of Ryan Pierse in a previous post of mine.

What I did particularly like was the Inspiration Award shared by the two high jump winners M. Barshim and G. Tamberi.

Their decision to share the gold medal was a unique act of respect, friendship and sportsmanship. I had a special mention of them in my year's best list and I am particularly happy that World Athletics decided to reward them. 

Women's athletics after WWII (part 6 of "the long and arduous road of women to the Olympics")

The first post-war European athletics championships took place in Norway in 1946. For the first time the women's competition was held alongside the men's one. The programme was the same as that of 1938 (100 m, 200 m, 80 m H, 4x100 m, HJ, SP, DT, JT) with the longest race being the 200 m. 

This eight-event programme was also adopted for the 1948, 1952 and 1956 Olympics. In the 1950 Europeans a pentathlon (SP, HJ, 200 m, 80 m H, LJ) was added to the program. It had to wait till 1964 before making its olympic debut.

The fateful 800 m was introduced into the Europeans of 1954 and, after some further waiting, joined the Olympics in 1960. In some mysterious way the 400 m was still absent from the championships program: it made its european debut in 1958 and its olympic one only in 1964.

I have trouble understanding why Brundage

 did not like female throwers

Under the presidency of Brundage the evolution of women's events in the athletic olympic programme stagnated despite the enthusiasm for long distance running. I remember wondering about the absence of kenyan or ethiopian middle and long distance runners but, what could they do, given that the longest olympic distance was a mere 800 m.  Finally the 1500 m entered the olympic programme in 1972, along with the 100 m hurdles (which replaced the 80 m) and the 4x400 m relay. They were part of the european Championships since 1969. 

I have already written about the absurdity of the 100 m hurdles. Although women now had to run over 10 hurdles, the height of the latter was fixed with preconceived ideas about a feminine inadequacy. The hurdle height of 84 cm, instead of 91 cm that would have been logical, is again a decision based on the idea that women are "weak". And another proof of this state of mind among the people who were (are?) deciding (mainly men) is the inclusion of the 3000 m (instead of a 5000 m) in the programme of the Europeans, in 1971, and in that of the Olympics, in 1984. This is all the more absurd since the women's Marathon entered the olympic programme the very same year. And since we are talking about absurd decisions I should mention the most absurd of all, the heptathlon, introduced in 1982 in the Europeans and in 1984 in the Olympics (but I have written time and again on this matter). In 1984 made also its appearance in the olympic programme the 400 m hurdles, an event run in the Europeans since 1978. 

The case of the 3000 m is special since it is the only distance where a change in the Olympics, where it was replaced by the 5000 m, occurred before (1996) that in the Europeans (1998). But, to be fair, the change had already been introduced in the World Championships already in 1995. 

Before talking about the World Championships and their role in liberating athletics form the olympic tyranny it is important to mention the other changes taking place in the IOC. In 1979, the right of women to participate in sport was formally included in the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. And in 1981, almost a century after its creation, the IOC co-opted two women as members. One of them, Ms. F. Isava-Fonseca, went on to be elected, in 1990, on the IOC executive board. In 1995 the IOC established a Women and Sport Working Group the  task of which was to advise the Executive Board on matters of gender equality. Then in 1996 the Olympic Charter was amended to include, for the first time in history, an explicit reference the IOC’s role in advancing women in sport. The first World Conference on Women and Sport, organised by the IOC, took place the same year. And in 1997 A. DeFrantz, ex-olympic rower, became the first woman IOC Vice-President. In 2000 during the second IOC World Conference on women in sport the following resolution was adopted: “The Olympic Movement must reserve at least 20 per cent of decision-making positions for women within their structures by the end of 2005". And as of 2019 33 % IOC members are women. Moreover four women (circa 27 %) are members of the IOC Executive Board.

And just in case you are wondering about the participation of women in the Olympics here are two interesting graphics. The number of women events is growing and will reach a parity with that of men in the Paris, 2024, Olympics.

The same will, hopefully be true for the number of participants. Still, given the graphic below, I have some trouble believing that a 1500 people gap will be closed in just two Olympiads. Well, time will tell. 

In 1983, thanks to the chutzpah (yiddish for "audacity") of the IAAF president P. Nebiolo the world of athletics obtained its independence form the IOC. (The story of the election of P. Nebiolo at the presidency of the IAAF is a lesson in manipulation, but this is not the proper time to go about it). During his presidency, Nebiolo was accused of various things but I believe that his contribution to athletics, through the introduction of the World Championships, overshadows everything. 

The programme of the first World Championships included an, as complete as possible, women's program: 100 m, 200 m, 400 m, 800 m, 1500 m, 3000 m (replaced by 5000 m from 1995),  marathon, 100 m H, 400 m H, 4x100 m, 4x400 m, long jump, high jump, shot put, discus throw, javelin throw and heptathlon. The 10000 m joined the programme of the Europeans in 1986, the World's in 1987 and the Olympics in 1988. (A 10 km race-walk was also introduced but, as you know, I do not care about race-walking events). Then it was the turn of triple jump (1993 in WC, 1994 in EC and 1996 in OG). The women's programme inched further towards parity with the men's one with the addition of pole vault and hammer throw  (1998 EC, 1999 WC and 2000 OG). (Around the same time the 10 km race-walk event became a 20 km one). Finally in 2005 the 3000 m steeple appeared in the women's programme of the World Championships, one year later in that of the Europeans, entering the Olympics in 2008. 

There was something missing all along: the 50 km race-walk (well, I didn't miss it). In 2017 World Athletics added the event to the championships followed by European Athletics in 2018. Fortunately the bid of WA to add the event to the Tokyo Olympics was rejected. This is the one event where I wouldn't lift a finger in support of its inclusion in the official programme. And, in fact, there a serious discussion about curtailing the race-walk olympic programme, men's and women's alike. 

At this point it is interesting to point out a particularity of the 2016 Europeans. Since the competition was held in the same year as the Olympics it was decided that the race-walk events would be dropped from the programme (both for men and women) and that a half- marathon would be held in lieu of the full distance. The formula seems to be the one adopted for the olympic years but, unfortunately, the 2020 championships were cancelled due to the epidemic. 

With this article I complete the cycle of "the road of women to the Olympics". It has been a long road and anything but an easy one. Women faced the unfair attitude of the men in power and had to fight for decades in order to get recognition. But, at long last, thanks to the changes in the 80s and the 90s, women are now where they should have been all along. The persons who tried to stifle their movement will figure in my next post: the Gallery of Shame. (And after that there will be two more "bonus tracks" to the series. Stay connected).

And a final word, by way of envoi. There is one remaining danger for women athletics and sports in general: gender issues. If we open the door to transgender men (and persons with Differences in Sexual Development) and allow them to compete with women in the name of some hypothetical equalitarianism by referring to misinterpreted human rights, whatever women have built with their efforts and sacrifices over a century will just go up in smoke.