Overly-officious officials?

[roger/over]

I haven't watched much of the video coverage, but when I have, I've not been favorably impressed with the attitudes of the officials in interacting with the athletes.

A first example was the example of a U.S. sprinter who wanted to have his back foot spikes on the track and heel on the starting block. Apparently he was used to this starting position and hadn't encountered problems with it before. When the starting crew persisted, he asked for consultation with the referee. That discussion lasted about ten seconds, with the referee waving the athlete off and stalking away.

Another example was the officials insisting on running the semis of the women's 100m hurdles in a torrential downpour, despite the objections of the Olympic Champion and the defending World Champion.

A third example that I didn't see was in the men's vault qualifying. Here's the way Dave Hogarth (Canadian vaulter Jackie Honey's husband) describes the incident. Dave wrote that he would be interested to learn whether other viewers interpreted it differently--

In the men's vault qualification there was an incident which reminded me of some of the times which we would have pleading sessions with the officials to get something done which was felt to be best for the athletes rather than for the ease of the organization.

For those who care, here's a brief play by play:
- one pit at 5.60 other at 5.45
- Finnish guy with blue mohawk crashes hard on bar on 5.45 pit
- rather than bar coming off - the whole bar-holding mechanism comes off and crashes into the pit (they are the high tech raise and lower electronically types)
- whole situation is delayed
- top officials take to the field to figure out what to do they take a
considerable amount of time milling about.....
- Mr. Bubka (in a very nice sweater) joins the black suit from Asia, the
field referee, and tall guy in another nice sweater with a headset on. All
speak in English paraphrased as follows:

Mr. Asia: We have lost the electronic measure device. We will have to put
the jumpers into one group, bring the bar back down to 5.45 and continue
together.

Mr. Bubka: That is not good for the athletes, they lose their marks, they
will need to re-warm-up, "It will kill them". Just fix the upright.

Mr. Asia: It will take an hour to fix the electronic measuring. We cannot do
that.

Mr. Bubka: It's just freaking qualifying, the exact height doesn't matter,
screw a new holder on, measure the old fashion way, make automatic
qualifying 5.60 instead of the 5.70 like it is now because it is cold and
windy out here. Just get those guys jumping on that pit. (I may have
embellished the 5.70 to 5.60 bit but it did happen afterwards.)

All other suits and sweaters standing around: He's right , that sounds the
best, let's do that.

They let the 5 guys over 5.60 on the other pit leave, they fix the upright,
and complete the session with the delay but the relative best of a poor
situation for the athletes.

All officials shake hands, "No hard feelings" , "Just glad we got it going
again", "We still don't have the precious electronic measuring device" .....
"Shut the hell up".... (Sorry, that was me, got a little carried away.)

Lessons to learn: When we PV types help out our organizers at major meets: be prepared as much as possible to repair anything and everything, have spares of as much as possible, and try to have someone of the stature of Mr. Bubka or Mr. Dumas to carry the most weight in an argument for the athletes.

[LHSpolevault]

"All officials shake hands, "No hard feelings" , "Just glad we got it going
again", "We still don't have the precious electronic measuring device" .....
"Shut the heck up".... (Sorry, that was me, got a little carried away.)"

lol that made me a chuckle a bit.

[mowad1]

I saw the same thing though I only got to see Bubka's animated directions on the jumbotron. If it was not for him there would have probably been a greater mess.

[tdtb]

What they should have done was stopped both pits until pit B was fixed.

In the 1 hour and 10 minutes it took to fix, the winds kicked up even higher putting the pit B guys at a greater disadvantage than the A pit. Eventually they fixed it with 3 new screws. Gee that took an hour and 10 min????All the guys got cooled down and who knows where their heads where. We all know how much of a mental game this is too.