Petition seeks better USATF masters records system

[TrackCEO]

Please join me in calling for needed changes in the USATF masters track records process, which currently frustrates record-setters with a series of arcane and tedious requirements. :roll:

Sign the petition at:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/USAT ... k_records/

More details on this petition drive can be found on my blog:
http://masterstrack.com/blog/005608.html

K E N

[gh]

I'm curious as to what parts of the process you find "arcane and tedious."

I definitely find it disturbing that in an era of modern mass communications that USATF still relies on 19th-century Pony Express technology as used by the AAU to begin with, whereby records are only ratified after an annual meeting long after the season is over, so that deserving recordsetters don't get their due until long after their exploits have faded from memory.

IAAF has a perfectly acceptable "ongoing" ratification process that USATF would do well to emulate.

[TrackCEO]

I've covered all the arcane/tedious issues in my blog.

One issue that's gotten a lot of attention lately is a requirement that records forms be accompanied by a measurement certificate of the track in question.

Why can't USATF have a database of all kosher tracks -- and not reinvent the oval every time a record is sought?

K E N

[gh]

The DB of acceptable tracks is such a no-brainer idea one wonders why nobody thought of it before. In the dirt-track era there certainly might be questions about any race that's not an even number of laps with no stagger because the lines on the track had to be rechalked every time. (meaning that only the 10K was an even number of start-to-finish laps).

With permanent markings, it should indeed only need to be done once (and done again on any relaying of course).

I've always thought that the certification of tracks for records was fraught with the potential for fraud anyway. So somebody runs 9.x on your track and you need to have a surveyor sign off on it.

With no oversight from anybody else. If he comes up an inch short and he says to the person who owns the track/meet, "hey, it's just thiiiiisss much short," what do you think he does (knowing nothing about the sacred nature of records) when the "owner" says, "for an inch you're gonna deny this kid a record?" I bet the average Joe signs off on it as OK, figuring "no real harm done."

Not because people are inherently dishonest, but because they're inherently kind and wouldn't work on the zero-tolerance specs that the written rules require.

[TrackCEO]

The DB of acceptable tracks is such a no-brainer idea one wonders why nobody thought of it before.

It's in the works, according to my friend Andy Hecker.

Here's the latest horror story from the USATF Records Never Ratified file:
http://masterstrack.com/blog/005611.html

K E N