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MUNICH. The 110-meter hurdles final at the World Championships in Oregon will be suspended immediately after the starting shot. To the disappointment of the home crowd, the starting judge rejects the American, who was among the early favorites Devon Allen’s.
Allen’s reaction time is reported as 99 milliseconds, or 0.099 seconds. According to the rule used in athletics, an athlete is disqualified if his reaction time is less than 100 milliseconds, because it is considered a stolen start. Adding to the confusion is the fact that it is not possible to detect Allen’s deception based on the video, but he leaves on the same front as the others.
However, the sensors on the starting racks indicate that Allen has, according to the rules, produced the starting amount of force on them one millisecond too early.
Allen is ushered aside. The audience shows their approval.
The public is not alone in its opinion. According to experts, Allen was not guilty of fraud, but fell victim to an old rule. But let’s get back to that later and first look at the phenomenon that sparked the discussion at the World Championships in Oregon.
An unprecedented average in reaction times
When it comes to timekeeping in athletics, the Japanese company Seiko and the Swiss company Omega are the two biggest players in the field. Seiko is one of the main sponsors of the International Association of Athletics Federations, whose account includes the World Championships. Omega, on the other hand, is responsible for the Olympics and the Diamond League.
In the sprints of value competitions and the Diamond League, the runners react to the sender’s shot with an average of about 0.150 seconds, or 150 milliseconds. For example Usain Bolt competed in three Olympic and five World Cup finals in his career at 100 meters, where the average reaction times of the finalists was 0.153 seconds. Bolt cheated just once in his career, at the World Championships final in Daegu in 2011, but every time he finished he was in the medals, even though his reactions averaged 0.162 seconds.
In the current season’s Diamond League competitions, the average for both men and women in the 100-meter hurdles and hurdles is 0.150 seconds. Against this background, those who follow sprinting were amazed when the reaction times of the runners at the World Championships in Oregon were completely different.
The men’s 100 ran a total of seven heats and three semifinals on the way to the final. In these events, the average reaction time of the runners was 0.132 seconds. In the final it was 0.130 seconds. In the men’s high-speed hurdles, the trend was the same: on the way to the final, the average reaction time was 0.135 and in the final as much as 0.125 seconds. In women’s speed fences, the finalists reacted to the bang with an average of 0.129 seconds and the smooth in 0.136 seconds.
– While normally there are 3-4 reactions of less than 115 milliseconds in the entire Games, there were 25 of them in Oregon. Something strange happened there, IAAF judge Pasi Oksanen says.
Oksanen was not on duty in Oregon, but only at the beginning of August at the Junior World Championships in Cali, Colombia.
– I don’t know what kind of recoil there was from Oregon, but in Cal we were at the other extreme. The average of the 130 reactions was suddenly 170, even though it was the same company and the same tricks. That 130 is the lowest average reading I’ve seen in any competition, says Oksanen and says that the International Association of Athletics Federations has started an investigation into exceptional reaction times.
WA Board Member Antti Pihlakoski confirms it has asked the union’s competition committee to investigate the cause of Oregon’s exceptional reaction times.
– I have requested a related explanation and a change to the reaction time rule. The matter is first prepared in the competition department and then in the competition committee. When the presentation is ready, the board decides on the matter. At the earliest at the end of November, Pihlakoski says.
Urheilu forwarded an interview request to Seiko through the International Athletics Federation, but the federation stated that the Japanese company does not usually give interviews.
The age-old rule
The 0.1-second cheat rule is based on the old concept that a person cannot react to the starting gun faster without committing a false start. However, the difference to today is that at that time the sender fired the starting shot with a powder gun next to the track, about 10–15 meters from the first track, which is why it took longer for the sound to reach the ears of the runners competing on the indoor and outdoor track.
In the 21st century, an electric gun is used, from which the sound is directed to buckets that are evenly placed for the runners. The range of sound is therefore completely different from the time when the 0.1 second fraud limit started. Reaction times have been measured since the 1980s.
There are two determining factors at the start of a sprint. The individual factor is how quickly the athlete can start moving when he hears the bang.
Another variable in the equation is when the athlete hears the bang, i.e. how long does the sound take to reach the athlete. In an ideal world, the distance between the speakers would of course be constant, but this is not the case in reality.
– The location of the sound source is not defined in international regulations at all. There shouldn’t be such muttering, but the rules should determine how the speaker distance is taken into account in the broadcast equipment settings, if it varies between races, Esa Mikkonen says.
Mikkonen is the CEO of Finnish Lynx, which has been responsible for the timing of Finnish athletics competitions for almost 20 years. According to Mikkonen, in competitions organized in Finland, speakers are mainly placed in front of the runners, not behind the athletes.
– We have defined the distance to 13 meters, but I think ten meters is the minimum with the current 0.1 second fraud rule, Mikkonen says and puts the reaction times of the World Cup competitions in Oregon specifically on the placement of the speakers.
– There is no certain information, but my educated guess is that for some reason the speakers have been closer than in previous competitions made by Seiko. In indoor competitions, it has sometimes been seen that the loudspeakers have been 2–3 meters away, like in Belgrade a few years ago, Mikkonen recalls.
Mikkonen refers to the 2017 EC Indoor Games, where, for example, the second heat of the women’s 60-meter hurdles only got underway on the fifth attempt – when four of the seven athletes had been disqualified due to a false start.
Head of Statistics Workshop, responsible for the statistics service of the European Athletics Federation for twenty years Mirko Jalava remembers the competition Mikkonen mentioned.
– I watched the games from the sofa at home and after a couple of starts I contacted them to move the speakers the hell away. Fortunately, this was done after the first round, but many had time to suffer for nothing, Jalava recounts the situation in Belgrade at the Olympic Stadium in Munich.
Is there a delay installed in the devices?
In contrast to the World Cup or Olympic Games, the French company Atos, which is responsible for timekeeping at the European Championships in Munich, is not a sponsor of the federation and is therefore not visible in the stadium. In the official result strips, Atos is announced as the responsible party, but according to Jalava, the timing has been sold to the French subcontractor Matchsport. The reaction times it measures are within normal averages, i.e. around 150 milliseconds.
However, Jalava estimates that the examination of the technology related to sending sprints will not stand the light of day. Translucent lighting is unlikely, however, because Seiko and Omega have been very quiet about their technology throughout the era of the electric gun.
According to Jalava, who has been collecting international statistics for more than 20 years, it is not possible that the reaction speed of a top class rider would vary significantly. American Christian Coleman is known for its cannon shots, the average of which has been 130 milliseconds in recent years.
Although Coleman is practically always the first to leave the racks, he still does not take stolen starts. However, in the 100-meter final of the World Championships in Oregon, the cheating was close: the equipment gave Coleman a reaction time of 0.104 seconds. In previous heats, his reactions had been 0.118 and 0.122 seconds, which were also better than any previous quotations in Coleman’s history.
– What no one dares to say out loud is that the output devices have a delay. This has been done in order to avoid unnecessary stolen starts, because the 0.1 second stolen start rule is so stupid. Now, however, there was no information about the delay.
According to Mikkonen, there is no delay installed in Finnish Lynx’s devices. Over the years, many top starters in Finland have achieved reaction times approaching 0.1 seconds, but reactions have often slowed down when going abroad.
– I have no information about other devices, but this is only speculation. Thinking with common sense, a delay seems like the only option, because you can’t fool physics, says Mikkonen.
Limit to 85 milliseconds?
Let’s go back to the starting position and Devon Allen, who was kicked out of the World Cup final after reacting to the bang in 0.099 seconds according to the broadcasting equipment – that is, one millisecond too early. If the distance of the sound source could be standardized, what would remain would be the individual ability to react to the sender’s shot.
Already in the light of the research carried out in the past twenty years, it has been clear that a sprinter can react to the start permission faster than in 0.1 seconds with current systems. There is a general consensus in power that the fraud limit should be lowered to 85 milliseconds
Oksanen, Mikkonen and Jalava also flag in favor of that reading, but remind us that the discussion about a person’s ability to react to fraud will not disappear with the lowering of the limit. Individual differences in reaction ability will be a part of elite athletics in the future as well.
The trio also calls for transparency from the international athletics decision-makers regarding the operating logic of the broadcasting equipment. In Munich, attention was attracted by the reigning European champion in the decathlon Arthur Abele rejection in the 110m hurdles, although Abele clearly does not come off the racks first. However, according to the starting equipment, the force produced by the German on the rack indicated a stolen start.
A tearful Abele was removed from the lineup, but the German team management did not give up. In the end, due to protest, Abele was allowed to run the hurdles again alone after the discus throw.
Although Abele received a standing ovation from the crowd at the Olympic Stadium in Munich, the mess was yet another chapter in the broadcast scandals of the prestigious games.
– The times at the finish line are measured with an accuracy of thousandths, even more precisely if necessary, and the same applies to the start. Then why do we put down such mumbling when sending? The change has been talked about for twenty years now, but at least nothing has happened yet, says Mikkonen.