usc men defeat ucla

[gh]

Looking at the series w/ English in place makes it seem 99.9999% clear that it's yet another 1-meter error by the tape reader

(21-6¾, 22-5, 21-10¼, 25?5½, 22-11¾, 21-2)
(6.57, 6.83, 6.66, 7.76, 7.00, 6.45)

To somebody who doesn't REALLY understand meters (not just parroting them in a given event), I'm sure that 7.76 doesn't look like that much of an improvement over the earlier 6.83. After all, it's only an improvement of 0.1.

If you were looking at it in English, however, your reaction would be to see an improvement from 22 to 25, a factor of THREE, and all the bells & whistles would go off.

Just the way people react to numbers (the $1.99 phenomenon).

[gh]

I don't know who the officials were, or where they were from, but it's noteworthy that people in some foreign countries do not write the numeral 1 with a single straight line, the way most Americans do. Rather, they have an add-on at the top that can make it look like the way we would write a 7. It doesn't confuse them, because they write a 7 with a short line crossing the long diagonal line. But it could confuse someone reading it. Perhaps the person keeping the field event card wrote it as a 1, but it was read as a 7 by someone else.

Obviously a wild theory, with no basis at all in fact. Just trying to figure out how this mix-up might have happened.

I suspect unlikely if there was somebody running an indicator board, which would mean that the 7.76 was written and posted at the same time after the measurer called the mark.

[lonewolf]

That was my surmise.. confusion between the European 1 and the American 7.. OR, it was really 6.76 which fits the series nicely.. still doesn't excuse the failure to immediately rectify a one meter error with a coach screaming foul...

[gh]

How do you rectify it if the mark is already gone in the pit, and you as the measurer have no reason to think you screwed up? You know what you saw! If a coach came to you a couple of minutes after a jump, and there was no evidence left and said "you missed that one by a meter," you'd laff in his face, no?

[lonewolf]

maybe

How do you rectify it if the mark is already gone in the pit, and you as the measurer have no reason to think you screwed up? You know what you saw! If a coach came to you a couple of minutes after a jump, and there was no evidence left and said "you missed that one by a meter," you'd laff in his face, no?

Yep, except I would not laugh.. you have a good point, gh,.,....We are all just guessing here.. Since I was not there, I do not not really know what happened or how I would have handled it but further up this thread it was reported that Mike Powell was protesting the announced distance and others, who apparently witnessed the jump or saw in on replay said it was between 22 and 23 feet on the pitside markers..
The normal disposition of officials has two officials witnessing the reading, one to read the exact centimeter and a back up (board judge) to be sure the meter is correct... it may be a momentary embarassment for the reading or recording official but a mistake can be forgiven, a refusual to admit a mistake cannot.. anyone qualifed to sit there can tell the difference in a 25 foot jump and a 22 foot jump from the board .. this was the man's fourth jump, 1.10 meter improvement over his third jump... the pit crew certainly knows if the landing point is in a whole new world...my point is: if the distance was announced, someone around the board or pit should have recognized the anomaly..
It does create a sticky wicket if the mark has already been erased but a calm (as possible) huddle of involved officials with coaches can usually resolve these problems.. in my experience, most track coaches will not defend an obvious error in their favor...maybe because they know, sooner or later, they will be on the other horn of this dilemma.
There are lots of coaches on this forum.. lets hear from them what their reaction ( from both sides) would be if confronted with this situation.

[gh]

.....The normal disposition of officials has two officials witnessing the reading, one to read the exact centimeter and a back up (board judge) to be sure the meter is correct... ... the pit crew certainly knows if the landing point is in a whole new world...m....

That's your "normal" disposition of officials. Even at a meet as big as USC/UCLA, I wouldn't be surprised to find a crew half the size you've described as "standard." Particularly in light of other threads recently about how does one find officials. And at the typical collegiate dual meet I've ever seen, the "pit crew" is a couple of redshirt distance runners recruited from the stands. Just another day workin' for the man at the business end of a dirt tool.

[lonewolf]

Sadly, gh, I know whereof you speak.... I'll try to calm down.

[26mi235]

Are any of the statistical ledgers filing this as a normal entry or is there either no entry or an asterisk? If the latter, then I think that we likely have an answer to the validity question. For me, I find it hard to believe that the mean and standard deviation on his other jumps would lead to this being a 5-sigma performance anomaly and if you make a reasonable adjustment for the wind (which explains much of the observed SD), not withstanding that he got a positive wind, it is a 6-sigma performance.

[gh]

I love it when you guys talk dirty.