The Idiocy of "One and Done"

Unless you're an athlete or a coach, you probably don't know much if anything of the technical rules of track and field. Someone, often in a funny red outfit, fires a gun and the athletes run their respective distance until the finish line. Most people understand that much. That limited knowledge, however, changed on August 28, 2011 with the World Championships in athletics. That was when anyone who paid any kind of attention to sports found out about the ridiculous false start rule the International Association of Athletics Federations has placed on the sport of track. Usain Bolt, the fastest man in history, was at the starting line and ready to defend his World Championships title in the 100 meters when he jumped out of the starting blocks a fraction of a second before the gun went off. The IAAF's false start rule, which went into affect January 2010, disqualifies an athlete for just one false start. One tiny incorrect reaction in the starting blocks was enough to throw the world record holder over 100m and 200m out of the World Championships where athletics fans around the world were eagerly anticipating an epic sprinting performance. Personally, I wasn't expecting Bolt to run a WR that day, but seeing him DQ'd at the finals of the World Championships was almost unbelievable. No epic, historical moment for the world's biggest athletics stage.

After watching Bolt leave the blue track of Daegu Stadium, I imagined that this huge disappointment would be enough to convince the IAAF to take a second look at their rule. After nearly three months, though, I've seen no progress (changing something as simple as a false start rule shouldn't take a long time, even for a slow international body like the IAAF). After a week or two, people stopped speculating on the future of the Association's zero-tolerance stance. If there was one thing that could change that rule it would have been Bolt's World Championship 100m result. It appears, though, that those governing professional international athletics are complacent with throwing out big athletes in big races for one mistake.

In my opinion, the current false start rule seems almost spiteful. Athletes, whether in a small, unimportant meet or the Olympic Games, just have to react before 0.1 seconds following the gun to be completely DQ'd from their event. Yes, sprinters want to get out of the blocks as quickly as possible, but fast enough to be considered a false start is going to be by accident. Although the fastest people on the planet are incredibly impressive and serve as role models, they're still human and are prone to make such minute mistakes when they're in the high-pressure situation of starting a race. All the effort an athlete puts into training and preparing for the race and all the anticipation fans around the world have is thrown down the drain without any second thoughts when this rule is applied.

Unfortunately, it's not just professional track that this rule applies to. Both college and high school have a zero-tolerance false start policy. If you're in your final race in high school and you false start, you're done. If you make it to the NCAA championships and you false start, you're done. For some reason track and field governing bodies through every level seem to think it's fine to implement such a rule. My only guess as to why it's used is to prevent the start of a race from taking too long when starters and officials have to restart after one or more false starts. Whatever the reason is, it does way more harm than good.

If you ask me, it would be best for the IAAF to go back to its old rule: one person may false start, a warning is given to the field, and anyone who subsequently false starts is DQ'd. It should be applied to not only professional track but college and high school track as well. Hell, I'd even be fine with granting every runner in the field one permissible false start. A good race featuring everyone who qualified for it should be more important than enforcing nearly superhuman reactions.

Hopefully in the future track governing bodies over every level begin to think reasonably about the sport they're in charge of and implement a more sensible policy regarding false starts, one that will not result in epic disappointments and unfair DQs based on natural human fallibility.