Landover’s legacy: World and American records lost forever?
For whatever reason, the timing operation at Landover nationals last weekend was a botch. Posted results still haven’t been fixed. Athletes are in a fog about their marks. One is Earl Fee of  Ontario, Canada, among the greatest masters runners of our time (and author of the sensational book at left). He turned 80 the day he ran the 800 in Maryland. “There was no photo timing of my 800 age group 80-84, including the other competitors in my race,” Earl wrote me yesterday in reply to my query. “There was one hand-timer only. I was told my time was 2:50.0, which is 17 second below the old (world) record by Joe King. Joe finished second in 3:20, he says, in my race.” Earl says two USATF officials may be able to “salvage” his record. And he salutes folks who were “doing their best to help me.” But he says: “It seems the local Landover volunteers don’t have the experience to handle or organize a big meet like this without some problems.” Â
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Earl concluded: “I am at least pleased I broke the record as planned and hundreds of spectators know I broke it by a big margin. Next year I will be older but smarter so the time may be very near the same. In any case, I have 44 other world records. I went out way too fast by about 3 second in the first lap.”
What other potential records were lost at Landover?
Here’s what I’ve gleaned from public comments and private email:
- Athena Track Club’s W45 4×400 team of Jane Brooker, Maryline Roux, Joan Hunter and Charmaine Roberts ran 4:14, under the listed world record of 4:19.21 and an unratified 4:17 from last year.
- An M60 relay for 4×800 that included Frank Condon and Harry Nolan “crushed the relay record, but it won’t be ratified because the FAT crew couldn’t find the offical time,” according to one comment. The M50 4×800 was similar and they finally just gave out the medals with no times able to be found.”
- M45 Karl Smith might have broken his own 60-meter hurdle world record of 8.18, but is still listed as having taken fourth in 12.12 seconds.
- Several throwing records are also up in the air, I’m told.Â
A private explanation from a high USATF official in Landover included these revelations:
- The timing operation had one “very competent person, but he was not there on Saturday.”
- The other operators were “specialists” who may have worked a lot of meets, but only in specialized (one task) manner with someone else who took care of overall matters and extraordinary circumstances.Â
- The timing crew wrote one finish line picture on top of another in at least one case involving hurdles.
- There was no time to get results out as new races kept coming.
- They had hardware failures, leaving only one camera working at some times.Â
- They had failures of the wireless gun sensors, causing many false starts.Â
- In several cases, Hy-Tek operators were unable to get a heat to the timing people in time for the race so they had to run a “blank” race and then try to figure out who was in it and what lanes while still continuing to run other races.
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7 Responses
Excellent detail, Ken. The particulars you have outlined are extremely informative (I don’t know a thing about how FAT actually works). Now that I know that they sometimes had to run “blank” races, that there were hardware failures, that the timing crew wrote one picture over another in the hurdles, etc., etc., I am beginning to understand what went on. Clearly, there were massive problems.
And again I will say: Hats off to Craig Chasse, Jay Wind, Bob Weiner, John Haubert, and the other principals for putting on a great meet. It’s just a shame that one critical element (FAT) was very weak.
In many respects it was a “great meet” – ie the facility was very good (unless one is a sprinter and prefers a banked track), the officials worked very hard to run the meet professionally, the volunteers were terrific.
That being said – the fact that the FAT timing did not work properly, results were lost, and world records – and American records that apparently were set probably will not be ratified for lack of proper timing, finish line photos, etc, it was NOT a Great Meet. It was a mess.
Here we are several days post event having folks scrambling around trying to figure out who ran in what race and what lane. The guns did not function properly causing numerous false starts, etc. I am not aware of all the timing difficulities and they did not impact my races – lucky me! Competitors spend a lot of money to compete in these meets. Some are fortunate enough to be able to set a record. These do not grow on trees, they happen because of very hard training. They may not happen again – some times it is a once in a lifetime event.
Because of the lack of ability of the FAT timing crew – we have a mess. And- this was a “great meet” – I think not.
Should the Maryland folks bid for the indoor meet again – I think they need to do some hard thinking about the way in which this one fell apart. And as the Masters Track and Field Committee looks to find non-Boston venues for this meet – hopefully the lesson of Landover will have been learned. A great or even a good meet does not screw up the timing. There are no do-overs in track and field.
Mark Cleary of SoCal TC reports on Leland McPhie, one of his club members:
You know Leland might have been overlooked. He set world records in the shot and the high Jump — but there are no listed (M95) WRs for the long jump and triple jump, so I believe he set 4 world records in Landover.
Great news from the North:
Earl Fee will be going after two M80 world indoor records this Sunday at the Ontario Masters Indoor Championships in Toronto – in the 400m (1:15.58) at 11:30am and the 200m (31.86) at 2:30pm, reports Doug Smith.
Meet info:
http://www.ontariomasters.ca/pdf/Indoor%20Entry%20Form%202009.pdf
Doug also reports:
Marie-Louise Michelsohn will be going after her own WR of 5:52.1 in the 1500m (at the Toronto indoor meet this Sunday).
I ran in the USATF MidAtlantic Championships at the Landover facility in Feb ’08. There were numerous timing problems at that meet as well. I ran the 400 – just one heat of women (all age groups). We waited hours for results which never appeared. We were told then that there were “timing problems.” No explanation beyond that. That race appears nowhere in any results and I guess they just made believe it never happened. No explanation; no apology. I held my breath for Nationals hoping they had gotten their act together over the ensuing year – obviously they didn’t. Not even close.
Just looked once again at our results for M30, M35, and M40 hurdles and compared them with the all-time list for University of Virginia men indoors (I live in Virginia). Apparently, at Virginia you can be on each list only one time (i.e., if you have several great times you’ll be listed only once).
My conclusion: We’re still in trouble. Even 6 days after the 60 hurdles were completed I see we are showing times of 8.00 for Don Drummond and 8.01 for Gerima and 8.02 for Nasser. That puts all three hurdlers well ahead of a Mr. Hazard, who ranks fifth at Virginia all-time with 8.09, and miles ahead of the 10th hurdler at Virginia, a Mr. Punsalea at 8.55.
Even allowing for the slight difference in height (39 inches vs 42 inches), it appears that all 8 men who competed at Landover last Saturday in the hurdles would have ranked in the top 10 hurdlers all-time at Univ. of Virginia. Wow. Was there a tailwind in the building that nobody knew about? I must agree with my friend Coreen Steinbach (above); somehow we got a FAT crew for Landover that was not up to the standard we needed.
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