ATHLONE NATIONALS

hurdles1

Just spent weekend in athlone at national championships,WHAT A SHAMBLES....
Great facility but whats going on with this starting equipment.problems seem worse now than january opening meetings.numerous faulty starts ,D.Q.s etc.
programme falling hours behind time. NO updates on P.A. to inform people, athletes warming up then waiting around, Assembly people going around shouting for people and officals....CRAZY STUFF.....
it would only happen in ireland, having attended scottish indoors and other meetings in England ,they are run like clock work.
Today really had it all, they ran 2 hurdles races and then decided to all go for tea and left all the rest hurdle athletes primed and ready to go hanging around for another 1/2 hour. Then to cap it all we had 6/7 parents out on track sorting out kids long jump marks..... COME ON LADS its national champs NOT a school sports

RoyMcC

Shame that. That's one aspect of track & field in Ireland that I was always impressed with, the organisation of meets. Indoor and outdoor. Hopefully they'll de-brief and get it together for next time.

notsofast

In retrospect, the Sunday schedule was overly ambitious. The schedule was to start 800m heats (u14-u19 boys and girls = 12 sets of heats) at 10:30 and hurdles at 12:00.
Eventually hurdles started around 13:30 but after 1 age group there was a break for half hour. I know the officials who volunteer to give up their day need their lunch, but in the circumstances could have worked around this some way, have a rota or have a working lunch!!
Problems with the timing equipment didn't help.

Great weekend of athletics, numbers definitely up on previous years.

longjump67

hurdles1 wrote: »

Just spent weekend in athlone at national championships,WHAT A SHAMBLES....
Great facility but whats going on with this starting equipment.problems seem worse now than january opening meetings.numerous faulty starts ,D.Q.s etc.
programme falling hours behind time. NO updates on P.A. to inform people, athletes warming up then waiting around, Assembly people going around shouting for people and officals....CRAZY STUFF.....
it would only happen in ireland, having attended scottish indoors and other meetings in England ,they are run like clock work.
Today really had it all, they ran 2 hurdles races and then decided to all go for tea and left all the rest hurdle athletes primed and ready to go hanging around for another 1/2 hour. Then to cap it all we had 6/7 parents out on track sorting out kids long jump marks..... COME ON LADS its national champs NOT a school sports

I would point out that there is a shortage of officials when it comes to juvenile championships and unlike our counterparts in the UK we cater for every age-group.

With so many false starts the timetable fell behind of course it did, but experienced athletes or coaches would/should have been aware or this. Announcements were made over the PA many times.

I was on duty at 8.30am on Saturday and worked till almost 6pm with a 20 min break to eat, almost the same story on Sunday.

As to parents helping kids out with marks then yes we allowed the younger age-groups u-12/13 help from parents/coaches as for many this could have been there first All-Irelands and we are dealing with kids as young as 10 years old after all.

maybe you should have offered your services in some way the make the weekend go more smoothly.

One thing I would have a problem with and it really got my goat, was the heavy-handed attitude of the security staff on duty over the weekend. They constantly aggravated parents/coaches when keeping them of the railings when no events were being run on the outside track, almost coming to blows in some cases.
When the outside track is in use keeping people off the railings yes but when there is no danger of interfering with athletes in the outside lanes then there should have been some tolerance/consideration shown to parents of small children.
I saw one case when a father/coach was trying to talk to his 10 year-old child who was competing in the long jump he was just talking to her when man handled away from the railings, he was soon surrounded by 4 security personnel and the child got very upset, so much so that she was in floods of tears.
I would suspect that these guys are more used to dealing with drunken violent teenagers/youths out to make trouble in nightclubs not devoted parents/coaches trying to pass on advise/encouragement to their kids.

ChickenTikka

I was there both days. A couple of points:-

- What was normally 3 days competition in Nenagh was consolidated down into 2 days without due consideration of the schedule. Presumably because the track is costing so much. AAI must have fine tuned estimates from many years experience as to how long it takes to run off heats of all the different events so a more accurate timetable could be provided. In general I don't think people mind a long day if they have a reasonably accurate timetable to guide it.

- The lunch break for officials should be planned into the schedule.

- The officials work incredibly hard. They should be applauded. Some are brilliant. Some are cranky. But they all work hard.

- Scottish Athletics have a scheme whereby retired folks are trained as officials and live near the venues and get paid expenses for officiating. It would be great to have something like this in Athlone - something for sports partnership to sponsor perhaps.

- The starting equipment definitely seems wrong. It would be interesting to see stats for the false starts to see what lanes they came from. A lot seemed to come from lanes nearest the starter. Did that make a difference? Interesting article at http://condellpark.com/kd/reactiontime.htm. Presumably either the sound is coming from the blocks or the blocks in each lane are calibrated differently to cater for the distance from the starter?

- I wonder also do we apply senior reaction times to kids? Seems a little unfair to apply the same rules for an Olympic 100m final to kids as young as 10 years old.

- The facility is fantastic but it doesn't really cater for a coach or a parent to be reasonably near an athlete to be able to shout advice. Again its probably fine for seniors but for younger kids, makes life difficult.

- The warm-up area is mad. Too many people up there. Unfortunately its where you get the best view of the track. I'd change it to rail off 2m for spectators and coaches and let no-one except athletes into the rest of it.

- Its a pity the far side of the track not railed off as then it would facilitate coaches and parents to be able to go to that side of the track and would ease the pressure on the seated side of the track. A walkway could be kept for athletes coming out from call-room to the track.

- I agree that there was a heavy handed approach by security. Some order needs to be maintained though. Perhaps additional railing could be employed so that everyone's job is made easier. Perhaps if AAI had enough volunteers, the security could be some of those volunteers. Carrot would be that you'd have the best view of the track!

hurdles1

LONGJUMP 67.. i must point out im a respected coach to many national champions over the years. I also reguarly official at munster c,ships but after sunday i wonder why i bother.
The only thing coming out of the PA was music and names of medalists.
why didnt they run the hurdles heats for younger ages during the 800m heats?
these kids were not running up to crash mats on outside track.
I left 6 athletes during warm up to use toilet and couldnt return upstairs to even get my gear. i was stopped by security and virtually manhandled.

I think from talking other coaches its time to go down the british route with age c,ships but maybe u14/ 16/18. keep younger ages a multi event team event on a county basis and relays. get rid of child superstars and develop them in a multi event way getting the skills in a team environment. something to think about.....

Getonwithit

hurdles1 wrote: »

LONGJUMP 67.. i must point out im a respected coach to many national champions over the years. I also reguarly official at munster c,ships but after sunday i wonder why i bother.
The only thing coming out of the PA was music and names of medalists.
why didnt they run the hurdles heats for younger ages during the 800m heats?
these kids were not running up to crash mats on outside track.
I left 6 athletes during warm up to use toilet and couldnt return upstairs to even get my gear. i was stopped by security and virtually manhandled.

I think from talking other coaches its time to go down the british route with age c,ships but maybe u14/ 16/18. keep younger ages a multi event team event on a county basis and relays. get rid of child superstars and develop them in a multi event way getting the skills in a team environment. something to think about.....

Plus 201 there hurdles1! I'm tired of child superstars who never make it to 19s! The multi event approach at younger age groups would be of more long term benefit and would force a sea change in the approach to coaching in some areas/clubs. It depresses me to see coaches posting on social media about their latest 12 year old star.. The dynamic is all wrong.
And the added benefit would be that NATIONALS, had the athlete stayed the course and progressed to all of 15, would be prestigious and a genuine aim for both athlete and coach..

RoyMcC

hurdles1 wrote: »

I think from talking other coaches its time to go down the british route with age c,ships but maybe u14/ 16/18. keep younger ages a multi event team event on a county basis and relays. get rid of child superstars and develop them in a multi event way getting the skills in a team environment. something to think about.....

I'm bewildered why Ireland continue with single year age groups. All it means is a huge organisational burden, young athletes competing against the same small pool of athletes throughout their teens and cheap medals.

I'm not saying the UK pattern is perfect but at least you have a changing dynamic year on year - one year taking on older, stronger athletes and the next year being able to have a crack at winning something.

Any arguments in favour of retaining the status quo?

notsofast

The majority of teenage athletes will probably give up athletics when they leave secondary school. To me getting them that far, off the streets and parks is a goal in itself. I'm talking about the athletes not at the top but movitated enough to keep at it during the early teens when many drop out. I think the current system encourages those athletes to keep going as they are more likely to be successful in single year age groups.
I don't buy the argument that year1 athletes want to have a crack at those a year older in the 2year system. They want to be in the first three at provincial and qualify for national.
I would be in favour of starting national champs at maybe u13 though, the current national pairs champs for u9 (could be 7 year olds) just doesn't make sense to me.

RoyMcC

notsofast wrote: »

I don't buy the argument that year1 athletes want to have a crack at those a year older in the 2year system. They want to be in the first three at provincial and qualify for national.

They may not necessarily 'want' to. But they understand that, if they struggle in the first year of the age group there's some excuse i.e. they are up against older athletes. Only the most fragile (who are maybe better off doing something else) will drop out because they've been beaten.

But we've all seen some desperately weak athletes qualifying for Nationals - from Dublin anyway. You hope they don't take the chance up, and often cop on and don't.

Agree U9/U11 is too young to be exposed to national competition.

shiibata

RoyMcC wrote: »

young athletes competing against the same small pool of athletes throughout their teens and cheap medals.

Well, thats true enough, same faces indoor,outdoor and XC, the out of age XC being the only one where one gets a new challenge. Took my own lad to an open meet at Wigan Harriers last April for a change of scenery, he enjoyed it immensley and hope to take another UK meet in late May this year, although am having difficulty finding one:(

dna_leri

RoyMcC wrote: »

They may not necessarily 'want' to. But they understand that, if they struggle in the first year of the age group there's some excuse i.e. they are up against older athletes. Only the most fragile (who are maybe better off doing something else) will drop out because they've been beaten.

But we've all seen some desperately weak athletes qualifying for Nationals - from Dublin anyway. You hope they don't take the chance up, and often cop on and don't.

.

I usually agree with what you say Roy but I think you are a bit harsh here. The objective has to be to keep the maximum number of athletes involved in the sport for as long as possible, while still developing the early talent. The incentive for many weaker athletes is to qualify for Nationals.

Development happens at different rates for all kids and we should want to keep all involved until they have reached their potential. The 14 year old who just qualifies for nationals may achieve a PB there, keep at the sport for another year, reach a final or semi U16 and by U17 may have caught up with their peers in physical development and be able to compete.

The single year age group does encourage this. For outdoors, if an athlete does not qualify for Nationals, it can be a very short season or if they do qualify, they are more likley to come up against stronger competitors and be discouraged by being out of their depth.

I agree that for indoors something needs to change but I don't think the answer is to get rid of half the age-groups.

RoyMcC

dna_leri wrote: »

I usually agree with what you say Roy but I think you are a bit harsh here. The objective has to be to keep the maximum number of athletes involved in the sport for as long as possible, while still developing the early talent. The incentive for many weaker athletes is to qualify for Nationals.

Development happens at different rates for all kids and we should want to keep all involved until they have reached their potential. The 14 year old who just qualifies for nationals may achieve a PB there, keep at the sport for another year, reach a final or semi U16 and by U17 may have caught up with their peers in physical development and be able to compete.

The single year age group does encourage this. For outdoors, if an athlete does not qualify for Nationals, it can be a very short season or if they do qualify, they are more likley to come up against stronger competitors and be discouraged by being out of their depth.

I agree that for indoors something needs to change but I don't think the answer is to get rid of half the age-groups.

Clearly the powers-that-be think along the same lines and they are valid viewpoints. It's just that, having worked within both systems, I know which one appears to me to work best.

Do you not think that a strong age-group athlete can happily cruise in the Irish system, medalling for years at Provincial and even National only to have a rude awakening when reaching the crucial stage of open-age athletics?

One lesson the UK could learn from Ireland is in having lighter throwing implement weights so that more developing young athletes can learn the event.

notsofast

Perhaps if implementing to a two year system, if there was a mandatory qualification step from county to provencial first it would help. In Dublin, split the county into 4 (similar to the schools system) and qualify from north/south/east/west to the Dublin Championships.

Any motion of this nature would be shot down at congress.

dna_leri

RoyMcC wrote: »

Clearly the powers-that-be think along the same lines and they are valid viewpoints. It's just that, having worked within both systems, I know which one appears to me to work best.

Do you not think that a strong age-group athlete can happily cruise in the Irish system, medalling for years at Provincial and even National only to have a rude awakening when reaching the crucial stage of open-age athletics?

.

You are right about that rude awakening. Maybe the solution there is to change to 2-yr divisions in the older ages e.g. use single age groups up to U18, drop U19, then move to U20 (junior) & U23. However I think the U19 was introduced to encourage athletes to stay in the sport at that difficult age but I don't know if it worked.

RayCun

At that point, aren't athletes eligible to compete in Senior or Junior competition anyway?

Go one

I have been to Athlone several times over the past few weeks at the various National Champs.Very impressive facility and a great testimony to its Mentor.The facility is delivering a new dimension to Irish Athletics.
I noticed a trend after my second visit and it was very apparent in the senior sprints.
This past weekend took the biscuit as i sat in the stand near the start line of the sprints.I noticed lanes 1,2 and 3 predominantly delivered false starts.There were a few genuine false starts among the younger age groups but the trend was consistent.My own son walked out to lane one for his sprint and i thought 'O God' this is going to happen again. It did and he was also disqualified.I spoke to him afterwards and he was devastated. He never breaks and has a very quick reflex rate.He was adament that he went when he heard the gun go.This went on all day Saturday and again on Sunday with dozens of athletes, who had trained all year disqualified and sent home,some I am sure will give up the sport in disgust .

The equipment being used by the starter works well(gun and timer).The track is impressive and fast but the equipment has not being validated in conjunction with the track.ie it relies on the position of the black speaker to deliver the gun signal to each athlete at the same time.This clearly does not happen>
For the Senior championships if you check on utube the speaker is placed behind,yes you guessed Ailis Mc Sweeney and Ami Foster and the code is that if you are nearest to the speaker and have a fast reflex you will get off the blocks before the others hear the gun and you are out of the race.

For the Juvenile nationals last weekend the speaker was placed beside lane 1 all day Sat and till lunchtime on Sunday when several dozen athletes who were running in lanes 1,2 and 3 were sent home.After lunch on Sunday the speaker was placed in the middle well back from the sprint track . Disqualifications almost disappeared only to reappear for the 200m sprints on lanes 3 and 4 when the speaker was wheeled up to sit facing these two start points.Again to athletes dismay they were again being kicked out.To the innocent observer you would see an athlete ,like in the case of Ailis McSweeney clearly getting away slightly before the others but she did because she heard the gun first and did not actually break.
The solution to this is to have an individual speaker behind each set of blocks.Then each athlete will hear the gun at the same time and get rid of the big black speaker which is causing all the mystery at Athlone.
Perhaps all of the sprints for the 2013 Championships should be rerun because they are clearly invalidated and many athletes were denied medals and sent home.The Officials clearly have not copped to what was going on much to the frustration of the parents and the unfornutate athletes who are the big losers.

longjump67

Just looked through the results from the weekend and there were
37 DQ's out of 795 athletes competing in 121 races over 60m heats & final, 60m hurdles heats & final, 200m heats & final and 400m heats & final.

Would be interested to know is this a high number compared to other years

RayCun

My understanding was that false starts were detected by comparing the pressure on the starting blocks to the signal from the starting gun. If the signal from the blocks comes before the signal from the gun - false start. So it couldn't be based on some athletes being in a better position to hear the gun.

RayCun

Expanding on this slightly...
At the London Olympics, the sprinters' starting blocks had speakers and pressure sensors. The speakers ensured they all heard the gun at the same time, the pressure sensors to ensure they went at least .1 of a second after the gun, because the IAAF says that's the fastest possible reaction time.
So in Athlone there's only one speaker, and even if you're the closest athlete to it, it's further away than in the Olympics. If they're still allowing .1 of a second for reaction time, it should be slightly harder for an athlete to false start after hearing the gun. The speed of sound in air in 343m/s, so the athletes furthest away from this speaker would hear the sound less than .03 of a second later than the closest athletes.
So if there is a pattern of some lanes false starting more than others, it must be due to something other than the speaker position.

RoyMcC

Just to clarify, do we know if the races were being recalled by reference to the electronics, or by eye by the Starter or his Assistant? If the latter then maybe those nearest the speaker were being pinged for being marginally faster away compared with those in the outside lanes?

RayCun

It was electronic.

(To be clear, I'm not ruling out the possibility of problems with the timing and 'false' false starts. But I don't see how Go one's proposed explanation could be correct. The athlete closest to the speaker in Athlone is further from a speaker than an athlete in London 2012, and the time given to react is the same)

a_non_a_mouse

dna_leri wrote: »

You are right about that rude awakening. Maybe the solution there is to change to 2-yr divisions in the older ages e.g. use single age groups up to U18, drop U19, then move to U20 (junior) & U23. However I think the U19 was introduced to encourage athletes to stay in the sport at that difficult age but I don't know if it worked.

I don't believe the u19 age group works and could easy be scrapped at least for indoors
Very few numbers in u19 and most of those will also be figuring well in the u20 age group.
Talks of u9/u11...but indoors the nationals starts at u12. I personally think that is ok. Some sports have European Championships at that age!
Juvenile Games for u9/u11 in outdoors is a paired event and while I think its far from perfect it does reduce the pressure on individuals. I think maybe u9 is a bit young even for this tho and maybe should look at removing this, but I think money talks also. U9's will bring lots of parents and grandparents!

Also....found security very strict in Athlone. Parents found it kinda frustrating not being able to get close enough to see the Shot Putt. and of course they were not using the scoreboard (which was there) so people didn't know what was happening unless in phone contact with someone who was allowed over. 1 coach per athlete past the barrier...no parents allowed.

Seemed to be a very high number of DQ's....I'd imagine in previous years it would have less than 6 a day

ChickenTikka

RayCun wrote: »

It was electronic.

(To be clear, I'm not ruling out the possibility of problems with the timing and 'false' false starts. But I don't see how Go one's proposed explanation could be correct. The athlete closest to the speaker in Athlone is further from a speaker than an athlete in London 2012, and the time given to react is the same)

Reposting link to: http://condellpark.com/kd/reactiontime.htm where I got some of the following from.

So if the athlete reacts faster than 0.1 seconds to the sound, its a DQ.

If the sound is beside lane 1, an athlete in lane 8 has 26% longer to react before its deemed a DQ as the sound takes 0.026 extra seconds to reach lane 8.

If you are 1.8m tall, it takes 0.026 seconds for the signal to travel from your brain to your feet. Very few of the 10 year olds competing in the U12 age would be 1.8m tall, so the signal would travel faster.

So the 0.100 reaction time for adults is not appropriate for kids when the speaker is placed right next to their lane.

Hence the higher number of DQs from those first 3 lanes.

The solution is to increase the allowed reaction time for kids or put the speaker further away.

RayCun

From that link

The best athletes reaction times are usually in the range of 120 mSec (0.12 sec) to 160 mSec (see graphs below). Tim Montgomery improved that to a near perfect 104 mSec - and came very very close to being false-started. The only sprinter to get closer to perfection was Surin Bruny - who managed a 101 mSec in a the 1999 WC 2nd semi-final ...
There are physical limits to how fast an athlete can react to the starters' gun. While the official IAAF rules set a limit of 0.100 seconds, it's likely that anyone reacting in less than 0.120 seconds has anticipated the gun.

The speakers at the London Olympics were part of the starting blocks, much closer to the athletes than the speaker in Athlone.
Yes, younger athletes are shorter. Say .9m for the youngest athletes, so the electrical impulse is 0.013 seconds faster getting to their feet. But does that 0.013 seconds compensate for the fact that they are further from the speakers, and are not Olympic-level athletes?
And Go one is saying that the same problem was there in the Seniors, where the athletes were 1.8m tall, or close enough.

So I could understand if there were problems with the sensitivity of some blocks, or a fault in the signalling or recording, or some other such issue - but I don't see how the problem could be that the speaker was closer to some athletes than others, given that the speaker was further away from all athletes than it was in the olympics.

RayCun

on wikipedia, it lists the reaction times for the 100m sprints
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Men's_100_metres
the lowest I saw there was 0.135 seconds

ChickenTikka

RayCun wrote: »

but I don't see how the problem could be that the speaker was closer to some athletes than others, given that the speaker was further away from all athletes than it was in the olympics.

Ok, so anecdotal evidence is that lanes 1,2,3 reacted more quickly at the weekend than other lanes. There was so much of it, its more than a coincidence.

To me, its clear that this is because they were nearer the speaker.

Its a separate question then as to whether a 0.100 reaction time that is deemed suitable for adults, is also appropriate for children as young as 10.

RayCun

ChickenTikka wrote: »

Ok, so anecdotal evidence is that lanes 1,2,3 reacted more quickly at the weekend than other lanes. There was so much of it, its more than a coincidence.
To me, its clear that this is because they were nearer the speaker.

But it takes sound 0.026 seconds to go from lane 1 to lane 8, and that's if you have a speaker to the left of lane 1. If you have a speaker 2m behind lane 2, it's going to get to the runner in lane 8 less than 0.02 of a second after it gets to the runner in lane 2. Maybe this is a problem because it gives the runner in lane 2 an advantage over the runner in lane 8, but it couldn't make the lane 2 runner react so quickly to the gun that they are wrongly said to false start.

It would be good to see an analysis of the false starts - which lanes they were in, did that change with speaker position, how borderline were they... - rather than going on anecdotal reports.

notsofast

Looking back at YouTube, the speaker was actually behind Kelly Proper's lane in the senior women's 60m, not AIlish Mc or AMy foster. Also, looking back at photos from the recent Leinster champs, the speaker was in the middle, lanes 4/5. Where was the speaker at the weekend? I didn't notice at the time and don't see it in any pics.

Go one

Yes the speaker is placed directly behind Kelly's lane but is behind the two girls disqualified. At the weekend the speaker was beside lane 1 beaming across the subsequent lanes, not behind any athlete. This was moved on Sunday afternoon when officials started to get embarrassed