Wesley Botton.
In 1924, when distance runner Paavo Nurmi won five gold medals at the Paris Olympics, he paced himself to his victories by carrying a stopwatch in his right hand.
Even back then, long before the introduction of electronic stadium clocks, the Flying Finn understood how crucial timing was to his success.
Four years later, an electronic results system was used for the first time at the Amsterdam Games, and by 1977 fully automatic timing was required to recognise world records in all sprint events.
Registering times and measuring distances is the most crucial element of athletics. When you tear the sport down to its absolute core, all you’re really left with is names and numbers on a piece of paper.
South Africa, however, tends to treat one of the most important elements of elite competition with a worrying lack of concern.
As is becoming the norm, there were issues with results at two domestic road races last week.
In Durban, at the inaugural FNB CitySurfRun, confusion around the winning time created a hazy cloud of uncertainty over what was an otherwise spectacular display of distance running.
When Ugandan athlete Joshua Cheptegei crossed the line, the electronic clock at the finish flashed 26:55, though the race’s live results service later offered an unofficial time of 27:04 before race referees signed off the official result at 27:28.
In Joburg, hours after the final leg of the Spar Women’s Grand Prix series, unofficial times provided by the live results service were all adjusted by 20 seconds, which could easily have become a controversial issue with bonus points on the line.
Last month, at the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon, the initial results were also messy.
Local athlete Elroy Gelant enjoyed a superb 42km debut, taking fifth place, but he was missing from the top 10 in the first set of unofficial results released on the live timing website.
He later appeared in sixth place, with a half-marathon runner listed ahead of him in the results, before being bumped up to his rightful position.
Far more than just another club race, errors and inconsistencies with live updates could have dire consequences for the Gold Label event, which could ultimately jeopardise its international status.
The carefree approach sometimes taken on the track in recent years has been equally atrocious.
In Bloemfontein last season, the stadium clock at the SA Open meeting indicated that Wayde van Niekerk had bolted to an incredible 400m season opener of 43.88 seconds.
It was revealed, however, that the electronic device had been connected to a hand-timing system and he had in fact clocked 44.11.
This year, at the ASA Speed Series meeting held on the same track, Ruan de Vries stunned the entire athletics fraternity when the 31-year-old athlete ran 13.23 in the men’s 110m hurdles, which would not only have shattered his personal best by 0.36, but would also have been a new SA record.
It took Athletics SA some time to admit the timing device had not been calibrated properly, after the manufacturer was consulted, and eventually the results from the race were scratched.
With South African athletes rapidly lifting the nation’s track and field profile, and with promoters organising multiple world-class road races around the country, the international athletics family has been forced to take note of the bottom tip of our continent.
South African athletics is no longer frolicking with the puppies on the porch, and if our nation is going to run with the big dogs, we need to be able to keep up.
We cannot continue to make excuses about the validity of performances registered by electronic timing devices and systems, or the rest of the world will soon lose interest in the spectacular growth the sport is experiencing across our country.
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