New start rule: Gay unhappy

[Dazed]

@Youngy

In my opinion Tyson Gay has the wrong attitude on this. As one of the fastest men in the world, particularly off the mark, surely he’s had occasion to be annoyed by ‘inferior’ athletes wanting to sneak an advantage by going for the ‘fly’ start.

I have never quite understood why one person was allowed a break, but the next person couldn’t. Either you allow everyone at least one break (as in the old days) or you remove the break altogether.

I hate breaking and think it’s a blight on the sport. I have thrown an athlete’s blocks away after getting pissed off at training because someone hasn’t had the discipline or concentration to wait for the gun.

The only time I ever broke in a race was in Scotland in 1986 in a Highland Games event at a low key meet at Ceres, after the starter had told me a gag and I was still thinking about it as I was getting into the set position. I was pretty annoyed that I’d stuffed up and cost myself a chance to advance to a semi final. I never broke in 12 years of running in Australia. In pro-running if one breaks, you receive a 1 metre penalty and after working my backside off to find a metre at training I sure as hell wasn’t going to give it away by doing something stupid like breaking.

The new rule is long overdue, athletes need to discipline themselves not to transgress.

There are already measures in place to prevent inferior athletes from “trying to get a flyer”. With the new rule and the .1s reaction rule the IAAF are penalizing the faster starters - of course bolt with his 9.7x with a .22 reaction time is not going to be concerened. I have said it else where that I think it should be one of these rules or the other; to have both is unnecessary.

Hey I’ve always been curious about the false start rule in pros. If you get moved back a metre but make the next round, which mark do you run off in subsequent races?