I wrote about the 400 meter fiasco from my eye witness account at the 2010 Rome Golden Gala.
This is unacceptable at any level and the race should be re-run. Athletes who were unaffected should be able to keep their performance (time wise) for ranking purposes only.
In all fairness for the sake of the new Diamond League scoring, the race results and placing should be nullified.
The European circuit is a Brotherhood. Your entry and lane preference are dependent on prior performances. And Rome is a super fast track to set a season best or personal record.
As a result, HSI’s David Neville who DNF’ed immediately filed a protest as stated in his press release:
“I was running well and felt great so of course I’m disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to finish the race. I don’t think anything like this has ever happened before. I’m just worried that people who didn’t see the race and only look at the DNF result will think I ran poorly, which is not the case. I hope this result will not effect [sic] my being invited to compete in other meets.”
A full write-up can be found on Robert Weldon’s Let’srun.com.
Here is the video from YouTube.
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