Last weekend the USA Track and Field Olympic Trials were held in Eugene, Oregon. I happen to love track and field events, especially sprints and jumps, so I was tuning in whenever I could find time. Something pretty remarkable happened at the end of the women’s 100-meter sprint – there was a tie…a dead heat…for third place. Allyson Felix and Jeneba Tarmoh finished precisely at the same time, according to all analysis of the photo finish.
NOTE: For those not up on Track and Field rules, the winner is determined by the torso…not by arms, legs, head, hands, feet, etc. The line drawn vertically through the picture is the finish line, and as you can see, they both hit it at exactly the same time.
This was something that had apparently never happened before and the reason that we know this is because there was no tie-breaking procedure in place. None. Zero. Zilch. As if nobody have ever dreamed the possibility of this happening. You may be asking yourself, what’s the big deal about a tie for third? Well, only the top three finishers make the Olympic team, so a tie-breaker would be needed.
Not shying away from making an incredible situation devolve into something ridiculous, the USATF organization came up with an asinine tie-breaker: Felix and Tarmoh could choose between a run-off or a coin-flip to determine the outcome. To add to the ridiculousness, the decision had to be unanimous. This generated a lot of “interest” from the interwebs. Since it’s my job to read idiotic comments so that you don’t have to…I sifted through over one-thousand comments and can break them down thusly:
A portion (although larger than I expected) were racist. I’ll spare you from those.
Another portion were predictably sexist, such as:
Some were cleverly offering alternatives to the coin flip:
Then there were the folks who thought the race officials either eye-balled the results with the naked eye or thought they had better eyesight than those paid to make these calls for a living:
Another camp was made of people who wanted to change the rules of track and field to match what they (mistakenly) thought the rules were or should be:
Then there were the typical interweb crazies:
I’m sure the US Olympic committee were suitably distressed by your email “Gregory .“ Way to give ‘em “what for.” I’m sure it totally changed their minds.
WTF? “Jack,” what does this even mean?
So…Felix and Tarmoh first decided that they would have a run-off. Many thought Felix, after winning the 200 meters (her best event) might just concede the 100-meter spot to Tarmoh, since it would be Tarmoh’s only spot on the team. But Felix wanted to race, explaining that she uses the 100 to improve herself in the 200. The race was scheduled to be a “prime-time” event on Monday night in front of a national TV audience. On Monday morning Tarmoh pulled out of the race, saying that she felt “in her heart of hearts” that she had earned the third spot and felt backed into a corner. That led to more interwebs discussion, most of them falling somewhere like this:
Medal for sportsmanship…whiny baby…God, I love the internet!!!
How patriotic of you “JimH”…America’s team sucks! Hell, yeah! Let’s root for Canada!
Holy crap! Yes, "Disapline" was what was called for...at least "Jerry" had enough discipline to keep misspelling it "disapline"! What a wild detour though…from choosing not to participate in an Olympic run-off to drawing a comparison to Columbine…
Ah…yes…I knew politics would get in there somewhere.
Although I usually let the interweb denizens end my posts, I wanted to end this one with the “Olympic Creed” and let you decide whether Jeneba Tarmoh was living up to it with her decision:
The most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the fight;
the essential thing is not to have won, but to have fought well.
“Faster, Higher, Stronger” indeed.
Be Reasonable.
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