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Jthundercleese t1_iu3d8xt wrote

Reply to comment by The_Critical_Cynic in TIL Devon Allen, track & field athlete/Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver, was disqualified in the World Athletic Championships for a controversial false start. The starting blocks measured his reaction time from the time the gun went off at 0.099, which is 0.001 seconds faster than legally allowed. by The_Critical_Cynic

I listened to a pretty extensive podcast on the issue. It's lead to runners purposefully hesitating in order to not get DQed for false starts. It's screwing over the athletes who are actually just the best at what they do, and everyone involved knows it but won't do anything.

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The_Critical_Cynic OP t1_iu3ev1c wrote

Based on what I've read and heard about it, I figured something like that was bound to come up. I mentioned to u/JuzoItami that there should be some sort of an appeals process, and the standards addressed accordingly.

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geniice t1_iu4o14x wrote

The athletes are free to show that can pass a random reaction time test with a better than 0.15 second time. Until then we can ignore such claims.

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Jthundercleese t1_iu52h8n wrote

So your assumption is that athletes are consistently guessing when the start time is? The science of reaction time doesn't support your BS.

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