Closing the books on the Berlin women’s 10,000m
The recent edition of the IAAF newsletter (N.B. that link is to a PDF file) included the following bald announcement under the heading “Women’s 10,000m Final – 15 August 2009 – 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics”, after the list of athletes sanctioned for doping offenses:
Nine runners starting in the outside stagger did not cover the entire race distance. Therefore, while their times and placings will remain the same they are not eligible for statistical purposes including Personal Bests or Season’s Bests:
…and then follows a list of the names.
As I wrote at the time, the IAAF had no good options here; the officials should have marked the lane in the first place, and failing that, should have called the race back immediately when the lane violation took place. But the statisticians will not tolerate inaction on this front, and this is a sort of signal from the statisticians that while there may have been no official notice taken at the time, they know when 10,000m have been run and when they haven’t.
The unfortunate part, in my opinion, is that this still creates the appearance that it’s the athletes who screwed up. And while they contributed (they could have remained in their stagger even without the markings), final responsibility still has to go to the officials.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:01 am
[...] shot and nominated Linet Masai. Masai’s 10,000m World Championship has been tainted by the bungled officiating at the start, but it was important just the same in breaking the near-total dominance the Ethiopian women have [...]