Among the masters reports given at the USATF annual meeting recently in Anaheim was one by outgoing active-athletes rep Mary Trotto. It’s an eye-opener. (See it here.) She compiled positive and negative feedback on the WMA world indoor meet in Budapest. The harshest criticism (by an unnamed athlete) dealt with heats in the wake of scratches. Apparently, the folks in charge did a poor job of reseeding fields — or didn’t even bother to. That’s unacceptable at a world championship. It may have been 10 months ago, but the failures deserve follow-up. What hiccups did you observe at worlds?

Here’s a section of Mary’s report:

2014 WMA- Indoor Championships-Budapest

COMMENTS FROM THE ATHLETES

Positive:

1. The organization of the venues. TIC [technical information center], awards, food court, venders, and internet access all on same floor and close to each other.

2. Scheduling of events, for the most part, gave little conflicts.

3. Officials were kind, helpful; and professional. They controlled the tempo of the meet. Officials were very helpful and tried to accommodate the needs of the athlete for warm-up. The safety judges were very good.

4. Presentation of Medals was excellent. When you walked by the awards area and you heard your countries anthem, you could quickly step in to see who was getting the award. The setup of the chairs in front of the award stand invited many to sit and watch the proceedings thus giving the athletes who received medals an audience to appreciate their achievements. Hopefully other championships will learn from this meet on how to set up an awards area.

Negative:

1. No signage outside to get to the throws.

2. No water on the track. Indoor arena causes much throat irritation. Even when one brings their own water to the track, they can run out. I was having trouble with coughing during triple jump but when I asked the medical staff for a cup of water, they said “NO WATER.”

3. Heats were not consolidated properly. For example on the first day of the meet I cancelled out of the hurdles, also another athlete also cancelled a few days before the hurdles. At that point, it should have rolled to final since now there were only 7 and the 7th person was not even at the games, there was no way for those who decided not to come to scratch the event. The athletes went to the call room to see if it had rolled to a final. They got a major run-around. One official said yes it would go to final.

Later that day close to the time of the preliminary round a new official told the ladies that they would run the heats. When they told the official that 2 athletes had cancelled days before at the TIC, he wanted to see the cancelled sheet, but the Tic had the cancelled sheet. It should have been posted as soon as the two
athletes scratched from the event that it had rolled to a final.

It seems that rather than the computer making heats better, it made things worse. For the relays, 2 of the W60 USA woman were injured. USA scratched the team by 11:30, for the relay to be run at 3PM.

This brought the number of W60 teams to 6. The two heats should have been consolidated so that the woman could have ALL run head to head. They did not consolidate the heats, and as it turned out, another W60 team also cancelled. With only 5 teams, the women should have run 1 race. But no, they still ran 2 heats of 3 and 2. The women were denied the chance to run head to head all W60 at one time. This is not right. The competition should be always for the athletes. The computer should make it possible to have the best competition not lock the competitors to inappropriate heats.

4. There was inconsistencies in the venues. For example, I did the Long Jump and the triple jump and the pole vault. In both the triple jump and the pole vault we had adequate warmup time, about 30 min at the jump site before the event started. For the long jump , we waited in the call room for 30 min. then went out and told that we had two practice jumps, no more. At the pentathlon shot put, we were told we had two throws for warm up, yet at the regular shot we were able to warm up many times prior to the start of the competition.

The triple jump only had odd takeoff boards: 3, 5, 7m even when the athletes asked for another board since the 3m was too close and the 5 borderline for some; it was not allowed. Yet the boards were only chalk drawn on the ground. Later when the eldest women jumped, they modified the board to 2.5m. For an athlete who jumps 5m the 3m board caused them to shorten their hop in order to take off for the jump before the end of the runway. Yet, if they took off from the 5m board and had a bad start, they could land on the lip and easily injure themselves. The athlete’s choice was to be
safe and shorten the jump to accommodate.