False Start Rules Ain’t Nothin but Trouble
by Steve McGill

Seems every time they change the false start rule, they make it worse. Okay, so I’m making an intentionally overly-cynical assessment, but after watching the World Championships last month in Eugene, OR, it seems evident that another change in the rules needs to be considered. Arguments as to what would be the “best” solution vary, and none are free of creating possible new problems, but after several sprinters and hurdlers were disqualified for reacting thousandths of seconds too early, something needs to change. The most notable of these athletes was American 110m hurdler Devon Allen. The hometown hero, who was competing at the same venue where he had starred as a collegian, was disqualified from the 110 final after false-starting by .001. The quickest allowable reaction time was .1, and Allen’s reaction time registered as .999. 

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In Allen’s case, as in the case of the other athletes who suffered the same fate, the false start was imperceptible to the naked eye. And that’s a problem. If a false start is not perceptible to the naked eye, how can it legitimately be called a false start? How can the athlete receive the same sentence as someone who jumped well before the gun in a clear attempt to gain an unfair advantage? As Allen said himself, he didn’t try to anticipate the gun; he reacted to the gun. Track is a sport that is trying to increase its popularity (feels like that’s been the case since the dawn of time), and disqualifying popular athletes whom the audience came to see is not a good way to do that. Also, to the lay person who isn’t familiar with the reasons behind the evolution of false start rules, it just looks bizarre to kick an athlete out of a race for such a minor infraction. 

My brother Glen, whom I consider a lay person because he doesn’t really follow track except when the Olympics or World Championships are on TV, said to me in regards to Allen, “If the dude took off after the gun, then how is that a DQ?” That’s how most lay people look at it. And honestly, there is some relevance to his question. Even if an athlete does anticipate the gun, and does react, let’s say, .05 after the gun, he still took off after the gun. So, technically, it’s not a false start. Reacting with the gun or before the gun is a false start. Reacting after the gun, no matter how soon after, is not a false start. Back in the day they used to call it “catching a flyer,” which meant that the athlete did anticipate the gun and timed his take-off perfectly. 

More on that later. But first I want to discuss the harshness of the punishment. Again, to lay people, the idea of being disqualified is what makes no sense. In basketball, my brother argued, dudes can commit five fouls and one technical foul and still not be disqualified. Not until the sixth foul, or the second technical foul, will a player be thrown out of a game. Meanwhile in track, you can get thrown out for taking off a thousandth of a second too soon? And you took off after the gun? Who wants to watch that? Even as a diehard track fan, and as a self-proclaimed hurdle-holic, I was hugely deflated after Allen was DQ’ed. That, coupled with Hansle Parchment scratching due to an injury suffered during warmups, took almost all of the fun out of watching the 110’s. We’ll never know if either of them would’ve earned a medal position. We’ll never know if either of them would’ve challenged Grant Holloway for the gold. At least in the case of Parchment you can say, hey, it was an unfortunate situation. But in Allen’s case it feels like he was cheated out of an opportunity.

So the question becomes, is there a way to penalize athletes for false-starting without disqualifying them? I would say the answer is no, unfortunately, and that’s a big reason why track can’t be compared to a team sport like basketball. I was thinking maybe the athlete who false starts could be docked, say, a tenth of a second from his time. So, you false start, you’re docked a tenth of a second, you run the race, and your 13.03 is converted to a 13.13, and your place in the race will be changed accordingly. Somebody who ran 13.07 thereby finishes ahead of you because of the .1 penalty you received for your infraction. But the problem with going that route is the fact that if you ran 13.03, you ran 13.03, and the dude who ran 13.07 knows that you actually beat him. So, even if you don’t end up with the victory in the official results, you know you won the race, and so does the other dude. So, the heck with that. 

Getting back to my brother’s point about how it shouldn’t be called a false start as long as the athlete starts after the gun: while his point makes sense, ultimately it doesn’t. Anticipating the gun equals seeking to gain an unfair advantage, and that’s not something we want in the sport. If even one athlete is able to take off .001 after the gun one time and not get DQ’d for it, everybody is gonna start trying to anticipate the gun and it’ll just be a mess. 

I actually like having a set time in which an athlete is supposed to react to the gun. It takes away the guess work. As we saw, when Allen went to complain to the officials, they just showed him the electronic read-out and shrugged their shoulders. But I think it’s obvious now that .1 cannot remain the standard. Elite sprinters and hurdlers aren’t the same as high school kids. Elite athletes are working on their reaction time all the time. They train their bodies to react instantaneously to sound — any sound. I don’t know what testing was done to determine that .1 should be the quickest a human being can possibly react to the gun, but if the testing didn’t involve elite sprinters and hurdlers, then I don’t know how we can consider it to be a final word on the topic. And even if it did, more testing needs to be done, because none of the false starts that were called during the WC’s looked like false starts. 

So, my suggestion would be to move the allowable reaction time down to somewhere in the .90 range. That would still prevent athletes from anticipating the gun, and it would also make it so that the false starts are visible to the naked eye. As long as it doesn’t look like the athlete is trying to gain an unfair advantage, the false start rule lacks credibility. Meanwhile, I have no problem with the one-and-done rule, as it has eliminated the gamesmanship that used to go on, and it has helped to keep meets moving. 

Below is a video of Allen’s false start. Decide for yourself what you think.

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