The future of Athletics ‽

Last week I got a mail from World Athletics with the conceited title "Help shape the future of Athletics".

It was announcing a competition that was going to take place on September 1st in Fribourg where some innovations were going to be tested. In the mail three of those innovations were announced, concerning the long jump, pole vault and the new event of mile steeplechase. 

I followed the Fribourg, Track Lab, competition and the video transmission was a pure disaster. There were no real time results, the camera spent more time filming the spectators than the athletes. The whole thing was looking amateur to the point one may start formulating conspiracy theories, about WA trying to nip any possible innovation in the bud. 

But let us look more closely at the "innovations". It started with the women's 100 m hurdles where it was announced that there would be no reaction time constraint, meaning that somebody can start earlier than 100 ms after the signal. This is utterly ridiculous. The athletes have been conditioned for years to time their reaction so as to have it conform with the rules. It is not in one competition that they will become super-fast starters. If WA wished really to innovate they would decide here and now that the reaction-time threshold is lowered to, say, 70 ms (which appears indeed to be below a possible human reaction time) and be done with it. Abolishing the rule for just one competition is just smoke and mirrors.

But to tell the truth when I saw the track with the hurdles in position I had (for about a second) the hope that they would be trying something really innovating, namely introducing high hurdles for women, hurdles of 91 cm that would change completely the profile of the event. This is one more event where men-women parity is absent (but somehow nobody worries about this and WA prefers to let sleeping dogs lie).

The second "innovation" was to measure the highest point over the bar reached in pole vault.  (I am not going to talk about the decision to pitch elite women against young male athletes with personal bests of around 4.50 m. Given the format of the competition that was the only  possible solution). Anyhow, that was pure circus. The vaulters tried to jump in an unnatural style in order to reach the maximum height. The result was ugly, technically useless and, given the amateur video coverage, totally uninteresting.

The only thing one could really call an innovation was the long jump. I have dealt in great detail in my article "Imperative changes: horizontal jumps" with the necessity to measure the real length of the jump. The take-off board I was recommending there is one of 60-80 cm. (The one used for the visually impaired in the Paralympics has a length of 1 m). In Fribourg the take-off area measured 40 cm, but I can understand that the organisers were not going to install anything special: they used what was already in place which has typically an overall length of 40 cm. Unfortunately the event was botched by the total absence of coverage. The videographer spent all the time into showing us the run-up of the athletes and the high-fives they were exchanging with the children bordering the jump area. Not once did they show what would have been interesting, namely the real length of the jump compared to one measured from the take-off line as per the existing rules. And I am not even sure whether the judges were able to measure jumps where the take-off took place before the 40 cm take-off area. I remember a competition held almost 10 years ago in Sweden were there has been a similar experiment and were the results were mentioning both jump lengths. 

Unconstrained take-off is something that should have been introduced in the horizontal jumps as soon as the technology had made that possible (although the chalk-covered take-off board of the Paralympics is a perfect low-tech solution). Unfortunately I am afraid that since there will be a few negative opinions about this (there always are, some people are allergic to change) WA will shelve this project.

Should I talk about the supposed "innovation" concerning the javelin throw? It consisted in measuring a throw only if it was better than the (best of the) previous ones. Just imagine implementing this in a real competition. How can the judge tell if a throw that is close to the previous mark is better unless it is measured. And having registered only one result it is impossible to break any ties. So, let us forget about this. 

The mile steeplechase was the only interesting, real innovation of the Track Lab meeting. In an article of mine, a follow-up on metric vs. imperial I was suggesting to expand the steeple races to 2000 and 5000 m. The 2000 m is a race that is occasionally run but there has never been a talk about longer steeple races. Anyhow, the steeple mile is not bad, although anything that is imperial is raising my hackles.

Some time ago World Athletics published an article on sport and event innovation. They were talking (among others) about sport development testing which is underway. There list included 

New events such as a mixed 4x100m relay and a steeplechase mile 

A take-off zone for horizontal jumps

Improved efficiency of measurements

Reviewing the weights of women’s shot put and javelin

I have written already about a possible 4x100 m mixed relay. And I definitely would like to see this most challenging event in a real competition. 

I do not understand what the efficiency of measurements is about (unless this is a question about time measurements, in which case I refer you to my article on automatic timing).

But the most intriguing entry is the last one concerning the weights of women's implements for the shot put and the javelin. I don't know what they really mean by this. In one of my very first articles I had discussed the question of implements of different weights. Had the mass of the women's shot put been exactly half of that of men we could have hoped for almost 1 m gain in the throw length. While this is not enough to bring the men/women records to parity it is a move in the right direction. The question of javelin on the other hand is totally hopeless. There is simply no way to bring the women's record close to the men's one, unless we go back to the old generation glider javelins and diminish the weight to around 400 gr (assuming one can throw a 400 gr javelin with the same efficiency as a 600 gr one). I guess that we'll have to wait and see what WA have really in mind. 

But having seen the Fribourg Track Lab meeting I seriously doubt the commitment of World Athletics to innovation.