I could not resist the temptation, after having written about millisecond stupidity, to write an article on a, roughly, analogous situation for field events.
But let us start at the beginning. I was following the long jump women's world championships final and noticed that there were 9 athletes participating in the last three jumps. The person who was commenting on the championships did not give any explanation, and in any case, the presentation was at best fragmentary, focusing on the attempts of the best athletes. When the results were published on the World Athletics site there was no mention of the 9th jumper and if you try today to find any trace of this you will find none.
I was intrigued and tried to understand what had happened. Fortunately, the livestream of that particular event existed and the video had all the details. So here is the story.
Ackelia Smith is a jamaican long and triple jumper with personal bests of 7.08 m and 14.54 m respectively. She won the NCAA indoors this year with 6.88 m. She qualified for the long jump final with 6.78 m (but could not qualify for the triple jump where she managed only 13.95 m). In the long jump final she started with a foul and a 6.49 m jump and then she had a third attempt at around 6.85 m. That would have given her access to the final three jumps and even made her a candidate for a medal.
But her jump was declared a foul. My worst fears, which I voiced in my article aptly entitled "Are they trying to kill the horizontal jumps? (I think so)", were coming true. Smith's jump was declared a foul for 1 mm! Look for yourself at the photo below and try to find the culprit millimetre.
This is the problem with World Athletics: they introduce a rule which looks good on paper and have blind faith in technology, deluding themselves as to the precision that can be offered by the instruments of measure. I can see the picture: the representatives of the company offering the measuring apparatus, all of them vendors with scant technical knowledge, brainwash the WA hierarchy insisting on the fantastic precision of their apparatus. And from there onwards it's the athletes who suffer the consequences.
Back to A. Smith. She protested when her jump was declared a foul but during the time it took her to protest the trace was erased in the pit. So the judges could only allow her to pursue the competition "under protest" and she took three more jumps. Unfortunately for her, all of them were in the 6.50 m region. Thus she was classified at the 11th place and that was that.
It is practically impossible to find anything about what I explained above. The World Athletics site does not contain any detail on Smith's attempts under protest. The same is true about the Wikipedia page, which is usually more detailed than the official WA one.
That was an unfortunate incident which shows that the WA decision to do away with the plasticine was a downright stupid one. Trusting measurements down to one-millimetre precision is absurd. But things are even worse. When a jump is declared a foul the pit assistants erase the trace in the sand preparing the pit for the next athlete. So, unless the athlete reacts with lightning speed, once the trace is erased it is too late for protests. In an old post of mine, I told the story of how King Carl was robbed of a 9+ m world record. The case of A. Smith shows that something is rotten in the WA decision to remove the plasticine. Previously, when there was a foul, the athlete had the time to see the trace on the plasticine board and during that time the pit assistants were waiting before erasing the trace in the sand. (This is not what happened in the case of King Carl: I tell the detailed story in my article). Now there is practically no possibility of protest. We are trusting millimetres and disasters are lurking.
What can be done? The most sensible thing to do (we are talking here about major competitions) is, whenever an automatic detection of fouls is used, instead of just flashing a red colour, to provide also a photo of the foul step on a screen next to the pit. In this way all persons involved (athlete, judges, pit assistants) can have a clear view of the situation and, if the latter is not clear, the assistants must wait before erasing the athlete's trace in the sand until the responsible judge gives them the authorisation. So, the athlete has the time to protest and also obtain a measurement of his performance, under protest. Declaring a foul, and then allowing the athlete to take one extra attempt, or as in the case of A. Smith joining the 8 finalists, is like putting a poultice on a wooden leg.
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