Usain Bolt and the Worst Rule in Sports

I'm not someone who spends hours watching sports. But I do like to catch weekly English Premier League highlights, an occasional NBA game (when the owners and players aren’t playing greedy vs greedier and scuppering the upcoming season, of course) and the sprint events at the Olympics and World Championships. Indeed, my father used to take me to the British Olympic and World Championship trials when I was a lad, creating indelible memories of my athletic heroes defying the British summertime rain in their pursuit of speed. So I’m hopping mad today.

Why? Because the worst rule in sports has:

a)        harmed the legacy of the world’s greatest sprinter, Usain Bolt

b)      further deflated the sport’s flagging global popularity

c)    ruined the spectacle of the blue ribbon event, the 100 meters

I took great pleasure in showing my two sons Bolt’s exploits in the heats and semi-final – namely, leaving the rest of the field so far behind in the first half of each race that he casually jogged to the finish line and still won. Since the Olympics of ancient Greece, humans have been fascinated by sheer speed, and my two- and four-year-old boys are no different – Bolt’s performances prompted them to race round and round the main floor of our house, bumping into each other, me and whatever furniture rudely obstructed their giddy, joyous laps of the living and dining rooms.

So I was relishing the chance to share with them the experience of Bolt laying waste to the under-matched field in the final. But no, the IAAF had to go and ruin my day. IAAF stands for International Amateur Athletics Federation, but in my mind, it now means Inane Assault Against Fun. Or something of that nature. Whatever I want to call them, their silly rulebook stated that Bolt jumped the gun, and was thus DQ'd.

Here’s the skinny: Last year the IAAF introduced a new rule, and one that it had been trying to push through for a long time: if an athlete commits a single false start, they’re disqualified.

Now, for as long as I can remember, the rule had been two false starts and you’re out. But for some reason best known to themselves, the IAAF bureaucrats, most of whom probably couldn’t run from their couch to their refrigerator, changed it. The thinking was that crowds don’t have the patience for multiple athletes to try to jump the starter’s gun. So first they issued an edict stating that the field was allowed one false start, and whoever committed the next was done for the day.

And then, when athletes protested that this new rule was silly, the IAAF committed its crime by altering their Should Just Left it Alone Rule: anyone who false starts is out. What they didn’t consider is the human fallibility of those athletes, whose finishing places are (especially in the 100 meters) separated by hundredths of a second. Their body and brain will of course try to go on the “B of the bang,” as my childhood idol (in a non-idolatrous way) and former Olympic champ Linford Christie used to say, to gain that crucial advantage.

The old standard is superior. It’s much better to give a runner a slap on the wrist for one false start, and then ask him to kindly leave the premises if he repeats his error. If I’m at a stadium, have paid hundreds of dollars to watch the most popular event at a track meet and have been looking forward to seeing the best athletes compete for title of World’s Fastest Man (or Woman, depending on your event of choice), I’m going to be pretty ticked if it can’t happen because the field is robbed of its brightest star. Heck, it’s bad enough from an armchair!

And so it was with Bolt yesterday. The laws of physics make it highly unlikely that the 6-foot-5-inch world record holder can get out of the blocks first. So he got a little over-anxious and took off too early. BIG DEAL. It was in the eyes of the IAAF law, and he lost the chance to defend his 100m title just like that. I almost copied Bolt’s reaction of ripping of his shirt in disgust!

What would’ve happened under the old system is that he’d have chilled out, stayed on the starting line a moment longer, and likely won his second consecutive world championships by a country mile. His legacy is enhanced, his sponsorship deals grow, and, more importantly, the profile of the sport is increased. Track and field has slumped in popularity in the past 20 years, and with the London Olympics coming up next summer, it needed a shot in the arm. Over the past four years, Bolt has provided that with his once-in-a-lifetime speed, freaky genetics and trademark ‘Lightning Bolt’ celebrations.

Not this time. No, the IAAF thinks it is better to speed up (pardon the pun) it’s marquee event by harshly punishing false starts than to present the most competitive race to the fans. Wrong.

The irony is that Bolt supported the rule change because he had never false started before. Might want to re-think that affirmation now, good sir. The popular opinion on news websites and blogs seems to be that Bolt’s opponents in the World Championships 200 meters, and indeed in the 100m and 200m at the 2012 Olympics, had better beware his quest for redemption. And they’re probably right. I hope we will see Bolt return to the form that enabled him to lower the 100m record to an unworldly 9.58, and to eclipse Michael Johnson’s never-thought-I’d-see-anyone-beat-it time in the 200m by over a tenth of a second.

But maybe Bolt will now hold back in his blocks for fear of The Worst Sports Rule Ever befouling him once more, maybe just long enough for challengers such as his compatriot Asafa Powell, American champ Tyson Gay, or Bolt’s training partner and newly crowned champ Johan Blake to catch him. Perhaps long enough to deny him the chance to re-write the record books once again, as well as the opportunity to inspire the next generation of would-be sprinters (though I fear my slow genes will limit my sons’ own racing ambitions –sorry boys! – either way).

In conclusion, there must be the element of chance and surprise in sports, and each competitor is subject to the rulebook, but when a rule that is easily changed conspires against the best possible performances, the next step is simple: change it!

The Berlin Wall 50 Years On: Symbol of Division, and of Hope

This past weekend, German citizens turned out en masse to recognize the 50^th anniversary of East German authorities putting up the Berlin Wall. Coming 15 years after Winston Churchill’s Sinews of Peace speech, this barrier was the embodiment of the Iron Curtain that the British Prime Minister (ex-PM at the time) had spoken of in March 1946. The Wall not only carved Berlin in twain, but also the political and philosophical world – with liberal democracies with capitalist economic models on the western side and the totalitarian Communist regimes on the eastern.

Many desperate souls from the east (at least 136 reported, with many other likely not counted) died trying to cross the wall and with each failed attempt, the dreams of families hoping for a different life in the west perished, too. The commemoration in Berlin was no celebration, but rather a somber affair marked by church bells pealing out and flags billowing in the breeze at half-mast on the Reichstag. In the spot where the wall stood is now a chapel, which held a memorial service for those who lost their lives during the Wall’s 28 years.

Before the concrete monstrosity went up, more than 2.5 million Germans had gone to the Allied occupation zones in the west of the city, according to The Daily Telegraph. One of the reasons for constructing the wall was the fear that this flight would leave the eastern part of the city economically destitute. Yet it was also, in many ways, a barrier to keep things out, not least “dangerous” Western ideas about freedom of the ballot box, speech and expression.

Click here to read more on the Historical Society blog. 

Democracy on Trial: The Differences Between Protest and Mob Criminality

In the past year, we have seen protests lead to the fall of autocrats in Yemen and Egypt, and incur the full wrath of dictators in Iran, Libya and Syria – where President Bashar al-Assad has used the army to crush resistance in the cities of Hama and Deil-al-Zor. With the use of jerry-rigged web connections in Egypt that overcame the government’s internet shutdown, and social networking tools such as Twitter in Iran, Libya and Syria, we in the West have had real-time insight into these demands for democracy and the repression they have prompted. From the living room to the highest office in the land, this coverage has prompted outrage over the denial of the right to protest that we take for granted. Indeed, Britain and America have led an international task force to prevent the slaughter of civilians and to remove the odious Colonel Gaddafi in Libya.

The common theme in each of these protests has been twofold: an indictment of the ruling regime’s abuses and control, and a call for elected, representative government through open and free elections. Have some of the protesters resorted to violence in the face of troops and tanks? Most certainly, but on the whole, these demonstrations have been peaceful. Perhaps this is because the protesters realize they cannot decry regime violence if they use violence in return, or maybe they know the world is watching. Whatever their motivation, they have not used their masters’ harsh tactics as an excuse for widespread looting, vandalism, and brutality toward ethnic minorities.

Meanwhile, in my native England, one of the world’s oldest democracies and a supposedly “civilized” nation, armed mobs stalk the streets, burning cars, assaulting police officers and looting shops. As with the riots in Los Angeles in 1992, this was not a pre-meditated campaign of violence at its inception, but rather a spontaneous response to the death of a young man at the hands of the police. It should be noted that the mob did not wait for the results of the inquest before reacting in the worst possible way. Now, with five days of rioting passed, the disturbances are indeed coordinated, with the ringleaders using the same tools – texting, tweeting et al – as protesters in the Middle East and North Africa to spread their call for anarchy.

Here, we come to the need for clear delineation. The tech tools of the desired ‘revolution’ may be similar, but the motives, methods and mentality are not the comparable. Participators in the ‘Arab Spring’ are rebelling against regimes that deny them freedom of speech, expression, worship and the ballot box. Every aspect of their lives – from what they’re allowed to read in a newspaper to what they can view on a throttled internet – is controlled by the state.

In contrast, the criminals, and criminals they are, who are smashing up London, Birmingham, Manchester and other English cities live in a tolerant, open society that, despite its flaws, provides all citizens with the right to vote, to speak their minds, and to express themselves. Their recent acts are like the tantrums of a toddler who is trying to intimidate his parents into getting his way. Yet a toddler is more sophisticated, for he knows that he has a defined goal – to tip a bag of flour over his head or steal a toy from his baby sister, for example. These rioters, hooded and baseball bat-wielding – have no such clear aim. Instead, they rage against “the system,” and the politicians who are supposedly keeping them ‘down.’ 


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