Controversial scheme to axe old records

In May last year (2017), the European Athletics Council proposed a 'year zero' for world records, wiping out those set before 2005.

Svein Arne Hansen, the European Athletics president, explained that the cut-off date would help restore credibility to the sport as world records "are meaningless if people don't really believe them".

Personally, I am opposed to the proposal to rewrite the continent’s records (and, where appropriate, world records) by eliminating all performances made before 2005. European Athletics have clearly not considered the consequences of their proposal in disregarding records of the past and inventing new ones. There will be chaos, with confusion promoted between World, European and national records. We already have the ludicrous situation in New Zealand where, because of differences in the definition of age groups, the women’s National U20 Record for the Pole Vault is higher than the World U20 record for the same event! If the proposal goes ahead there will be National and perhaps Area Records that are better than the World Record for the same event!

Paula Radcliffe's 2003 record would fall foul of a 2005 cut-off designed to coincide with the introduction of storage of blood and urine samples for retrospective testing, as would Jonathan Edwards triple jump world record be wiped by a pre-2005 purge. Amongst others would be Mike Powell’s Long Jump, ’s 1500m and 1 mile, Kevin Youngs 400mh, Javier Sotomayor’s High Jump, Jan Zelezney’s Javelin Throw, and ’s High Jump.

Beyond individual injustices, there are other reasons to be cautious about the 'year zero' proposal. Not every seemingly indelible record has remained untouched in today's era of more stringent doping controls for instance. Most noticeably was 's Rio Olympic performance in when she shattered the 10,000m world record set by 's Wang Junxia in 1993 by a mammoth 14 seconds. Seismic step-changes in what is possible are some of the sport's most cherished moments. Usain Bolt’s 9.58 100m and 19.19 200m (both in 2009) as well as Bob Beamon's landmark long-jump leap of 8.90m at the 1968 Olympics, later replaced by Mike Powell’s 8.95m in Tokyo in 1991 were indeed seismic step- changes.

However, for athletics administrators the problem remains though that some world records seem so far out of reach for today's generation as to be all but irrelevant. Modern great Valerie Adams is almost two metres short of what Soviet shot-putter achieved in 1987. On the track, East German athlete 's 33-year-old 400m mark of 47.60 is streets ahead of the 49.26 s run by American Allyson Felix in winning her world title in 2013. However, to be fair to Marita Koch, her 400m performance was achieved in Canberra AUS in 1985. She bettered the previous world record of Jamila Kratochvilova by 0.39s (0.8%) set in Helsinki two years earlier. But how much of that improvement can be attributed to Canberra’s altitude (580m)? My own research for my PhD showed that at Canberra’s altitude an ~ 0.5% improvement in performance over the women’s 400m can be made. Thus, some or most of Koch’s improvement of the world record can be attributed to the altitude effect. Although Koch was an East German, there is no clear evidence that she was a drug user. There is therefore no legitimate course of action for removing hers and other’s world records.

The fear remains though that, short of a whitewash, athletics may never be rid of some marks that are more like suspicious stains on its history.

Also, why the year 2005? Why should recently caught drugs cheats like RUS (14:23.75 5000m in 2008), Elvan Abyelegesse TUR (29:56.34 10,000m in 2008), Gulnara Galkina RUS (8:58.81 3000mSC in 2008) and Elmira Alembekova RUS (1:24:47 20kW in 2015) presumably hold on to their records because they weren’t banned at the time they set those records while blameless athletes suffer?

Further, 41 world records or world best performances have been set by New Zealand athlete’s or teams – and now a group of Europeans are intent on stigmatising them along with those records that were set by “suspicious” athletes. Ironically, my very good friend Gavin Lovegrove was denied a World Junior Record in the Javelin in 1986, because drug testing was not available at the venue of his performance! How many athletes have gained world records and not been drug tested at the time of the performance?

Finally, I have personally witnessed 65 world records being broken between 1965 and 2008. (each one is meticulously documented!), and now a group of administrators is saying to me that I did not really witness what I saw! – by taking away some of those record breaking performances.

Although I support stringent criteria for records, the current proposal is clearly nonsensical. Many athletes continue to cheat. Athletics officials must continue to work against them and not work against those athletes who can genuinely claim to be a world record holder.

- Thanks to Athletics International for some of the data used and for initiating the discussion on this topic.