thinking about the 4 jumps/throws vs 3 & 3.
After more than 3 weeks of no rain, the skies finallylet loose here Monday,
and since then CT has resembled Seattle in terms of weather, forcing 2
postponements of local HS track championships, finally painting organizers
into a corner where the boys & girls meet had to be combined on Thursday.
One of the ideas considered to speed the meet up was to reduce the
jumps/throws to 4 instead of 3 & 3. It was ultimately rejected since there
wasn't any significant time savings:
Here's the math;
18 competitors
@4=72 attempts
@3=54 + 7 finalists@3 more = 21 Grand total 75 Net savings: 3 attempts
24 competitors
@4=96 attempts
@3=72 + 7 finalists@3 more = 21 Grand total 93 Net savings: 3 attempts
the only potential time saver is that you wouldn't have to determine the 7
finalists and then get them to come back for their last 3 attempts, plus
warmups, but w/ good officials that should take 15 minutes max.
Basically, you are depriving the best athletes of 2 extra attempts in order
to give everyone else one extra - not a great trade off, IMO.
The 2 miss PV/HJ seems even worse.
But I AM totally in favor of the NFS rule for sprints.
Jim Gerweck
Running Times
