I came across this interesting issue that came up at the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco last weekend. Arien O’Connell, a 24-year old teacher from New York, ran the fastest time of 2:55:11. However, she was not declared the winner of the race because she did not start with the elite runners. The elites began the race 20 minutes earlier than the rest of the field, and the fastest elise finish in 3:06.
Nike changed their mind this morning and declared O’Connell the winner.
Let the gun time vs. chip time debate begin…
Well, you got it part right. Nike declared O’Connell “a winner” and gave her the same prize awarded to “the winner”.
There is something simple about this: the rules. You can’t just say, afterward, that because something unexpected happen, we should change the rules and strip the winner by the rules of the title and give it to someone else.
I don’t care if you believe in gun time or chip time: what matters is what USATF and IAAF believe, since they get to set the rules.
And if you’ve ever done any competitive distance running, you’d HATE the idea that you could lose to someone who you sprint to the finish to pass if they had started five seconds behind you. Gun time is the only way to make it a race rather than a massive set of time-trials.
Gun time should always count – but all the runners of a given gender should start at the same time. It’s the only way, right? I can’t think of any other option that’s fair. Unfortunately, I can see how it’s impractical in mixed gender races sometimes due to pacing concerns. However, in a race with primarily one gender like the Nike race and without true professional runners, it seems like a no-brainer.
I thought this coverage was good:
http://www.letsrun.com/2008/wtwas1022.php
Did you hear that something similar happened in Chicago? The guy with the 4th fastest time wasn’t in th elite group and started 2 minutes after the other runners and so wasn’t directly competing with them.
Dave — thanks for the clarification. You’re right, she was declared “A” winner, not “THE” winner.
I’m not an elite runner, nor will I ever be battling it out at the finish line for a prize. But I do understand why gun time is used, and I agree with the reasoning. It’s just a shame when something like this happens because obviously O’Connell would have fit in with the elites in this race, and it’s understandable why a lot of people think it’s a big enough issue to get media attention.
I like Jen’s suggestion that all runners of a given gender should start at the same time — especially in this particular case of a single gender race that didn’t draw the type of elites that bigger races do (the first winner’s time of 3:06 is certainly impressive, but it’s a half hour slower than, say, the Houston Marathon winner each year). Then again, you could make a very reasonable argument that O’Connell should have applied for elite status. The article never said what her fastest previous time was, but it did say she hadn’t quite managed to break 3 hours, which makes me think that she’d at least come close and could have gotten elite status for this race if she’d tried.
I have a slightly different perspective on the usefulness of chip times because I do a lot of triathlons. In open water swims, gun time is used, but many of the shorter triathlons have pool swims where people start single file in 10 second intervals. You’re seeded by your swim time, not by gender or age. So it’s impossible to race against anything but the clock, and your chip time is your official time. Since the swim is the shortest part of the race, the overall winner *very* rarely has the fastest swim time, and thus probably started anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes after the first person in the water. And because of that, the winner is sometimes not the first person to cross the line!
I think Nike needs to learn the definition of “elite”.
Ok having never run any kind of race (though considering it) it seems to me that the person that runs the fastest should win, regardless of when he or she starts. Yeah it takes away from the breaking the tape finish excitement, but that’s gotta be dang discouraging to be O’Connell and know you blew away the competition, but weren’t “the” winner because of seeding.