The hits just keep on coming: Lyon dysfunction noted by many
Rob Jerome’s photo of Pengxue Su of China, at 85 the oldest decathlete in Lyon.
Here’s what Brian Pilcher posted:
World masters in Lyon is a little bit of a joke. Today in the 5k, there were 3 heats, the C heat at 11:20, B heat at 12:20 and the A heat at 12:50. While they never said who was in which, having one of the fastest times, I knew I was in the A heat. I showed up not too early since it was hot around 11;30. Lo and behold they decided to run the fast heat first and about 4 of the fastest runners missed the race. Then after much debate they allowed us to run in the slow heat, which was now at 12:50. It didn’t really matter for me as my hammy blew anyway, but it just is totally bush league.
Here’s a comment from Dr. Allan Tissenbaum:
The weather is brutal, 100f, there is almost no shade at the track, no water available except to purchase, great indoor track next door unavailable to use, so warm up confined to a 40 yard turf field that everyone has to use. The website is just brutal as has been stated elsewhere, so overall I would not give this facility and its organization a very high grade, I think we should be able to expect a warm up are that will let one do some strides, I know this sounds like whining but it is the reality.
And Tom Hartshorne, who helps put on the great indoor masters miles at Cornell, commented:
Rob Jerome nailed it about the music blaring a lot of the time even with athletes competing at Balmont, main stadium, and today at smaller Stade Laurent Gerin. At Gerin they were playing grating techno crap that I wouldn’t subject my dog to much less older athletes. . . At least those of us who can still hear. I thought of putting cotton in my ears.
I did not hear a lot of English on PA at Gerin for 800’s. there was quite a bit of misinformation – when we arrived we were told by many athletes that all the heats had been advanced by half hour according to post at main stadium. This fortunately, turned out not to be true. The lady heading up the call room for a while told me that my heat and heat after me had already raced on the track. Turns out again fortuitously, this was not true at all. Very few of the assistants and officials speak English. And when I try my best at French, actually my first language along with English as my parents married in Switzerland, I would get three different answers from three different officials.
My take? With 8,000 athletes, worlds may have reached its breaking point. Not enough qualified officials. Resources limited by strapped civic budgets.
Like the Olympic Games, hosting WMA outdoor worlds may have become a money pit.
I don’t want qualifying standards to winnow fields, however. But I’d like delegates at the General Assembly to ask harder questions about transit between venues and whether they have enough volunteers and officials, who need to be up to snuff.
Meanwhile, Anselm LeBourne is reprising his 2009 Lahti athletes meeting. Anselm posted on Facebook:
Hi folks. It’s Anselm and I am trying to set up an USA athletes meeting so we can have a discussion about some of the ideas we can put on the table to improve Masters track and field in the USA. Which date is good for us to meet and where? Thanks.
Good for Anselm. Let’s talk about how to make our sport, and world meets, better.
15 Responses
Am I right in remembering that Lyon switched their main stadium after they won the bid? The bus ride to Balmont from the nearest metro is usually overcrowded which can be specially bad in this heat. Having said that the lack of warm up area may be a blessing. It’s so hot that anyone attempting a full warm up might adversely affect their performance. (GB athlete with season’s best in m50 100m heats yesterday)
Just like you are expecting more from officials and them being more qualified, I want more from athletes and would support qualification standards to make the meet more competitive and streamlined. And if not qualification standards, then regional competitions to select the teams.
I have found the Lyon meet to be excellent. The weather is hot but it is summer. The warm up area is small but for most quite adequate. The officials are good and well organised and there is quite sufficient English.
The announcing is good at the main track, the results appear instantly with all places noted.
Despite some early temporary computer flaws which is apparent early on at most world titles the results come up ok.
There is virtually no wind.
For me this meet is as good as any world title I have been to over a 28 year period. +/-
I am not going to join the complaining, because nothing in life is perfect. Budapest was not perfect and lord knows it was hot in Sacramento. But I found ways to deal with the problems and ended up having a great time.
The city is beautiful and the food is excellent. Everyone has been gracious so far. You can complain about the darkness or light a candle.
It’s the petty little things that irritate at Lyon. The Call Room wall has a carefully worked out schedule for when athletes need to report, heat by heat. However, the Call Room people claim never to have been told about it, and call all the athletes in an age group in one hit, whether there are three heats or 14!
Call Room officials want to insist athletes put spikes on in the Call Room, even though there is a 50 yard concrete path from there to the track. Athletes refused and asked through official channels for a mat to be provided on this path. This has been formally refused.
On the track, athletes for the 100m were escorted 300m round the track to the start. Most (understandably in 100F temperatures) wanted to carry a water bottle. That was refused too – on the grounds that tiny cups of water were availavle near the start.
I could go on, but this is beginning to feel like the athletes needs are merely incidental to the running of the meet.
I have been fortunate to be “old” and have my long events early in the day. Heat was not a problem for the 8k xc and the cement like trail was due to the exteme heat and lack of rain. Water was available once each lap and the various team managers insisted that they have water at the finish. I was 4th in my age group and felt fortunate not to be last considering my lack of training.
Again this morning the older women ran at 8:30 am before the heat set in. There was a water table and a misting thing , but the air is so dry I am convinced the water dried up before it got on me! My good fortune that 3 of the 6 in my age group did not show up so I got the bronze. The track facility was quite good and the photographers were there.
I should also,say,the photographers were at the xc , usually the official photographers cannot be bothered to come out to film it but these did and I have a coupe of nice shots of myself shuffling around the course and staggering across the finish line.
It takes time to get to the various venues but they are all quite nice and public transportation here is wonderful compared with what many of put up with in the states.
From a friend in Lyon:
The big beautiful Balmont main stadium is being used for ONE thing today…the 100 meter semis and finals. NOT A SINGLE FIELD EVENT.
As a result, many of our top multi-eventers chose to forego the 100 because they had field events elsewhere.
The number of stadia and their spread-out locations are definitely impacting the ability of multi-event athletes to compete in all the events in which they would like to compete.
Nobody wants to run for 15 seconds in a semi at Balmont and then spend more than an hour on public transportation to get to a field event at another stadium and then spend another hour on public transportation to get back to Balmont for the final.
I have no idea why they thought they needed 4 stadia. This is a track meet, not the World Masters Games with 28 different sports.
With all of the complaining that seems to go on at every meet lately, it is good to see Anselm LeBourne trying to do something positive. Hopefully those that are unhappy will be willing to get involved and help to make things better.
Others seemed to know this beforehand but I was unaware that it is common for some hotels in France pto not have air conditioning. I did not see this in my Expedia package. Air conditioning is a requirement in August. The hotel that I am staying in has no air conditioning and in order to get towels I must wash them myself for 6 euros, there is a 2 euro a day fee for a fan and course no Internet , unless you go to the front desk area, I won’t call it a lobby. There is no person at the front desk outside of 2 pm sometimes 3pm to 7:30 pm, unfortunate for the elderly couple that arrived at 9:30 last night and had no access to a room. We spent several hours trying to contact someone to help them. My advice, always read the fine print, if there is any on any accomodations you may have in this region.
I haven’t started competition yet but I will approach this with caution , under the circumstances.
I’m a blogger… and I’d like to write something about these Worlds in my web-site. But… after 3-days-3 we don’t know nothing about the final results of decathlon&eptathlon!
How is it possible?
The rest of results are showed absolutely in a random way, in a unique file divided by the stadium in which the results are obtained.
The software version, the Hy-TEk’s Meet Manager, it seems not adequate for a Worlds: no interactivity, no logicity, no order… to me, it seems an epic fail. We are in 2015, not in 1985.
People we are in France. The official language is French. You all had a year to pick up some af least sime handy words and fraces.
Stan M55, 800m from the Netherlands
To answer Allan T. This was pretty much what I experienced in Sacramento. A brutally hot day in an all concrete stadium, our event scheduled for, I think, 11.30 delayed until 2.00pm. No shade, abysmal junk food. I think having athletes over 65, as we were at the time, doing endurance events in 100 degree heat is asking for trouble. Thankfully, our road events were early morning and slightly milder days.
Hello, I was”nt there but it looks like the heat was a big factor! Common sense would had the Hests earlier before it got to toasty!!
Meanwhile up on top a neighboring hill to the main stadium it is delightfully cool in the crypt of the Basilica if Notre Dame Fourviere. The main level under the nave is almost as cool and has much more dynamic stained glass and wall and floor mosaics to admire. It has some of the best mosaic designs I have seen in Europe rivaling Ravenna north of Rimini, Italy. Very clever design allows the sunlight coming down from higher stained glass panels to light wall mosaics with angels, and the retinue if biblical figures high lighted with use if highly reflective gold and silver background tiles. The individual mosaics, often no bigger than one inch square all hand cast, baked and hand set into the mortar of the wall. . . Amazing!
The Basilica is easily reached by funiculaire (think cable car) accessible from the Vieux Lyon D Metro stop.
I had a terrific time even though my running was sub par. I wonder why the distance events weren’t scheduled in the evening under the lights? This would have allowed all other events to be run in the early morning.
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