Men's Shot Put Competition at Doha World Athletics Championships
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Men’s Shot Put Competition at Doha World Athletics Championships I reproduce below an article I read in Athletics International #34, published by Peter Matthews and Mel Watman. “We knew that the World men’s shot-put result was close, but Shaun Pickering writes that the official marks from the EDM system showed that just 4mm separated the top three: Kovacs 22.911, Walsh 22.908 and Crouser 22.907! Shawn says “When you consider that the EDM relies upon a stake being placed vertically in the ground at the rearmost mark in the ground, by a guy running in from the side of the sector, you can see that we may have an issue here with $60,000 at stake for the winner! Also, it means that Tom Walsh was only 2mm from gold, rather than bronze, because it would have been given as 22.91, and then he would have won by virtue of his 5th round 22.56, which was reinstated on appeal, as they gave him a foul on that throw for leaving the circle too quickly!”.” My comment and observation: Tom Walsh was understandably “interested” to receive this information, and asked if anything could be done to address the matter. However, the competition was conducted under the IAAF Rules in place at the time. The Rule (Rule 180.22) states that: “Except for the High Jump and Pole Vault, the second-best performance of the athletes having the same best performance shall determine whether there has been a tie…’ The measurements were officially recorded as: Kovacs 22.91m, Walsh 22.90m, and Crouser 22.90m (all measurements in mm are rounded down to the nearest cm). Hence Walsh and Crouser were tied with their best throw and it was Crouser’s 2nd best throw of 22.71m that was better than Walsh’s second-best throw of 22.56m that resolved the tie in favour of Crouser. What is fascinating though is that in track events, ties (to the nearest 1/100th second) are resolved by looking at the time to the 1/1000th second. For example, in Semi-final 3 of the Men’s 100m, both Filippo Tortu (ITA) and Tyqendo Tracey (JAM) ran 10.11 seconds. Tortu’s time was actually 10.101, whilst Tracey’s time was 10.102. As a result of resolving this “tie”, Tortu made the Final of the event as a “fastest loser”, whilst Tracey did not make the Final! Had this been the Rule in the field events (shot put), and in resolving the tie, then Walsh would have been 2nd and at least US$10,000 richer by prize money alone! Maybe it is time for the IAAF to look at digitising the sector, so that accurate measurement of the distance of the throw are able to be made. Further, by moving to this method, it will eliminate the “human error” factor (as described above) of having to place a stick exactly perpendicular at exactly the rearmost mark in the ground where the shot landed. .