WMA 2010 Indoor Championships – Did they Play by the Rules?

Disclaimer: I am not in Kamloops, so I am only going on the official results.

A quick look at the results and message boards from the WMA 2010 Indoor Championships in Kamloops showed some potential mistakes from the LOC.

But did they?

Let’s take an example.

W45 200 Meter Dash Prelims: 18 athletes declare, with 3 heats of 6 athletes.  Some say they should advance to the Finals.  Maybe the officials made a mistake and told them otherwise.  But a close look at the IAAF Rules (#214 to be exact) showed the officials were correct in the advancement procedures.

Here are the results of the W45 200 Meter Dash Semis and W45 200 Meter Dash Finals.

Yes, it means running a heat just to eliminate 6 runners.  This trims the field down to 12 for a 2 heat semi-final.  If 13 showed up, you would run the quarter-finals just to eliminate 1 runner!

Note the unusual “3 heat semi-finals” when you have 31-48 runners!  I thought “semi” means 2?

Another strange occurrence happened in the M50 200 Meter Dash Prelims (26 declared athletes using 5 heats, which is correct).  The M50 200 Meter Dash Semis showed 3 heats instead of 2, giving 18 runners a chance to run instead of 12.  Here is the final result: M50 200 Meter Dash Finals.

So this is one case where the rules were slightly bent.

Exception to the Rule?

This is where some exceptions could occur.  The rulebook also states:

In indoor competitions, the following tables shall, in the absence of extraordinary circumstances, be used to determine the number of rounds and the number of heats in each round to be held and the qualification procedure for each round of track events:

So, what would SpeedEndurance do?

The biggest complaint at any unbanked indoor track is the tight curves in Lane 1, no doubt.

I suggest never use Lane 1 on an indoor sprint oval event until you have one qualifying round preceding it.  Since you advance on Place, and draw lanes based on Time, the slowest runner will draw lane 1.  The order of preference for lane draws would be 6-5-4-3-2-1.  Or 5-6-4-3-2-1 (who likes to run scared?).  Or draw random sticks for 5/6, 3/4, and 1/2, just like outdoor track (3-4-5-6 and 1-2-7-8)

This way, nobody will run their first race in Lane 1, especially on an unbanked 200m oval!  This way, you go hard or go home!

But the LOC at Kamloops used all 6 lanes in the heats.  By the book.

If you have the time to spare on the schedule, then you could vacate both lanes 1 and 2 and only use 4 lanes (until the next round).  This would be an ideal situation and we’ve seen this at elite meets.

And you wonder why the IAAF indoor World Champs don’t contest the 200m indoors anymore?  Because the real race was the semi finals where they fought for lane draws.

And please, no more 2 section 400 meter finals!  The runner crossing the line first is declared the winner!  (** cough cough Allyson Felix 400m USATF Nationals cough cough **)