Lap counting disaster in Linz: A medalist’s report
From Idaho to Hawaii to Austria, lap-counting has become the Achilles’ heel of masters track. On a sweltering day at last summer’s Hawaii masters nationals, the men’s 10K runners and women’s 5K racers were afflicted and aggrieved. At the just-completed WMA world indoor meet, older women were the victims. But they are not silent. W70 Amerian Mary Harada testified to the snafus in a comment post here, but it’s worth its own blog entry. So lissen up, all organizing committees.
Mary writes:
I am a few days late commenting about the 3k follies in Linz. It was the same old same old, try out the system on the old ladies — who cares if we screw up. So they did screw up. They shoved 19 of us onto the track ages 65 and up.
This is a guarantee of a mess, four lap counters, no introductions, no lap count sheets with times, no hip numbers, and the age group number so small as to need a magnifying glass to read them. They lined us up 3 deep — no effort made to split the field and have half start further up the track.
Off we went, and sure as the sun rises, the mess began with the younger faster 65-year-olds lapping the older runners. When I had 2 laps to go an official held up one finger indicating 1 lap, I held up 2 fingers indicating 2 laps. The U.S. team managers are shouting at me from the stands that I have 2 laps to go. They can count, the lap counters cannot.
Meanwhile the first-place 70-year-old runner lapped the rest of us, and she was stopped one lap shy. Her husband called to her to run another one and she was back on the track like a jack rabbit. she ran another lap.
Mary Ansley, the British runner in second in W70 was stopped one lap shy. Her husband told her to run another one, she attempted to do so but was pulled off the track before crossing the finish line.
Meanwhile I am running around and finishing third.
The initial results showed the British lady in first, the German lady in second, a Canadian lady in third, and I am in fourth. The U.S. files an appeal complete with my splits showing that I ran 15 laps. Upon review of the finish line tapes, I can be seen holding up 2 fingers indicating that the lap counter is wrong. The Canadian runner is disqualified for failing to run 15 laps, the British runner is still in first, the German in second, I am now in third.
The Germans file an appeal, I speak with them and the appeals person, the German woman is given gold, the British woman gets silver, I get bronze.
This is not yet over as the offical results still show the British woman in first and that she set a world record!
I have sent an email to Sandy Pashkin recounting this sorry state of affairs and saying that no matter how nice the British woman may be, she did not set a world record unless world records for the 3k indoors is given for running 14 laps. The world record probably belongs to the German runner. Meanwhile, I look like a silly slug for finishing a minute and 1/2 behind the first two runners. Well folks, I ran 15 laps, their times are for 14 laps.
Did the officials learn from this? No — they made the same mistakes in the older women’s 3k race walk.
This same sorry mess happened in Boise last year with wrong lap counting, the clock malfunctioning, no splits being given after the clock was stopped for the first runner — age 40 when there were runners from age 40 to over 80 on the ttrack. And the race director’s attitude basically was — who cares?
Me again:
Well, a lot of people care. And we’re not going to stand for it.
If organizers can’t get their act together, they need to be blacklisted. Yes, no more meets for venues that can’t count straight. In a world championships, especially, these shenanigans are complete unacceptable. And officials need to be accountable.
Anyone else have a lap-counting horror story to share?
3 Responses
I could add many more stories about sorry lap counting including the outdoor meet in Decatur and so on – it seems to be chronic in the longer races with mixed age groups for both runners and walkers.
It can be done correctly. I do not worry about lap counting at the National Masters Indoor Meets in Boston. It is done correctly, so obviously there is no great mystery to it. However meet directors have to understand that when there are mixed age groups that lap counting is HARD. There will be competitors who are lapped. I learned years ago to take charge myself and keep track as much as I can and to enlist the aid of others. In the World meets the US team managers have been great about keeping splits for those of us running more than one lap in the meets!
In national meets there is no such help and frankly I am sick and tired of meet directors who claim that they know how to do it because they put on college meets.
I am sure that race walkers have as many horror stories as do 3k, 5k, and 10k track racers.
Mary Harada is right on the money. In certain meets (Honolulu 2005 and Decatur 2004, to name two), the counting of laps in certain races was an absolute disgrace. There are only 2 solutions, both of which are easy:
(1) Stop, and I do mean stop, this absurd practice of putting huge numbers of competitors in a single section. I don’t know where this began, but it must stop. It is revealed to be even more ridiculous when after the final section there is a long period of downtime.
(2) Have every lap counter use a sheet in which the runners’ names are on the left and boxes for laps to go are spread across. Have the lap counter enter the elapsed time for each runner at the end of every lap. This quickly reveals the pace and can be used to check later.
Assign lap counters indoors no more than 4 competitors. Outside, if the lap counters are accomplished they can take up to 8 (I’ve taken up to 11 or so, but I have had a lot of practice). Ideally, the lap counter will personally meet and greet each competitor, but this is not necessary.
This nonsense of miscounting laps must stop; it simply must. It is an abomination, a pox on the masters program. It must stop, Ken. Imagine telling a shotputter that she had put the shot 11.11 meters (just over 36′ 5″) when she had really put it 14.14 meters (well over 46 feet). Or telling Bill Collins, our star of stars, that he had just run the 100 with a slight tailwind in 17.65 seconds.
By the way, Boston is fantastic on counting laps; it is other venues that make huge errors, and I do mean huge.
Wouldn’t it be great if someone could come out with a use of something like the Champion Chip for lap counting? Do not use it to replace the actual timing of the event, just tie it into a PC readout that displays the number of laps completed for each runner by name and bib number. Then it is an easy job to ID a runner and signal the crrect number of laps remaining. Then there is no ay that a runner can run 14 rather than 15 laps in a 3K.
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