I'm with you guys. I think that is wrong to DQ someone who takes off after the gun has fired, but I think that blocks can be part of the problem. The blocks detect force, not movement. AJ appeared to rock in the blocks before he moved. I wonder if that contributed to the DQ.
I remember a blatant miscarriage of justice at the USATF Nationals in Indianapolis (97?) when the wrong guy was DQ'd. It was obvious to everyone that it was the guy in the adjacent lane that jumped - Larry Wade, I think . I remember that Curtis Frye was sitting next to us and he was yelling at the officials along with everyone else who was paying attention. The officials obviously got the wrong message from the instrumentation in the blocks. Ed Prytherch ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Kaplan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <t-and-f@darkwing.uoregon.edu> Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2005 8:31 PM Subject: Re: t-and-f: reaction times (was: Prefontaine) > Seems like that would have the potential to work, although I'm always > hesitant to add that much complexity. Think Sydney starting blocks... > > Such a system would obviously only be able to be used in the big > international meets, since no one else would have the technology > available. That's no different than pressure sensing blocks, except that > the means of starting is the same now for big or small meets. Going to a > computer count down would change the athlete-starter relationship enough > that things would seemingly be pretty different with and without the > computerized system. I'm not sure that's a terribly good thing. >
