Clueless writing about our sport

[Tuariki]

Do not expect serious, introspective coverage of track and field until our beautiful sport takes itself seriously. Our courageous and ambitious efforts at waging a war on PED's has cost us our place in the American consciousness and kept us out of truly high regard in the sporting world. We are to the national and international public, a shady sport of drug cheats.
We have only ourselves -- the track world -- to blame. FIFA and the NBA deal with no such problem. They just stay out of it.

Examine the different tactics employed by the NFL and USATF (and IAAF) with failed drug test disclosures. The NFLbriefly experimented with "public disclosure", that track invented. They found such disclosure only damaged the NFL image, which is the most valued in worldwide sport and they pulled back to a way more discreet policy. The NFL is more protective of its image, and less anxious to publicize drug violators, in order to better preserve the league "product".

I would suggest track should be asking the NFL how they manage such information. There has got to be a way to detect PED abuse without destroying the very name of track and field. Public disclosure has proved to be a miserable failure. It has not served as a deterrant AND it has destroyed the name of our sport. It is a lose/lose. We have years of image repair ahead of us, but there is always hope, with engaged leadership.

I thought the NFL approach to the problem was to ignore it

[tandfman]

How's this:

The hurdles for the 110H at the U20 (formerly known as junior) height are six inches shorter than at the senior and collegiate level (33"/99.1cm compared with 39"/106.7cm) so the time doesn't count on the list of UK's school records.

They've got the difference between junior and senior hurdles heights wrong, and both metric translations to Imperial measure are wrong.

https://ukathletics.com/news/2019/6/...spx?path=track

What's particularly upsetting about this is that it appeared on a website owned and controlled by the University of Kentucky.

[tandfman]

They corrected the IAFF gaffe when they put the story on their website. See link on front page.

[Atticus]

Well, IAFF is good too. It's Laff with a lowercase L and this is all getting very comical.

[tandfman]

When I first saw that, I thought it was a typo by the headline writer. But the same error is found in the story itself. Yes, clueless.

[bad hammy]

How the mighty have fallen . . .

[Conor Dary]

Meanwhile in today's RG....

[tandfman]

Seems to have been updated now.

They've added a bunch of new stuff, but they still don't have Phylicia George's winning time in the 100 hurdles.

[wamego relays champ]

This one really had me scratching my head in disbelief. It's the CBC story on last night's Harry Jerome Classic. It mentions the winners of only two races and has quotes from both, but winning times for neither!

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...2019-1.5184425

Seems to have been updated now.

[tandfman]

This one really had me scratching my head in disbelief. It's the CBC story on last night's Harry Jerome Classic. It mentions the winners of only two races and has quotes from both, but winning times for neither!

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...2019-1.5184425

[KDFINE]

In talking up Jenny Simpson prior to the women's 1500 at the Rabat Diamond League meet on the Olympic Chanel they showed a graphic of American medalists in the event since 1983, when the first World's Championship was held. Steve Scott was ignored, and now that I think about it, so was Jim Spivey.

[tandfman]

Here's one in the clueless headline writers category:

>>France-based high jumper Sawe eager to soar farthest in Morocco<<

https://www.nation.co.ke/sports/athl...bgq/index.html

[tandfman]

It may be neater, but nobody talks that way.

[lonewolf]

Recent book I read on the Irish-American Athletic Club – was OK, but the author, who appears to be British / Irish, does not appear to know much about track & field. For the most egregious example, he discusses in the intro how he will list the marks – all from the 1900-1914 era, and all measured Imperially. A typical listing is 38:8:25, which is the style he chose. That equals 38-8¼, or 38’8¼”, in standard nomenclature. Makes it difficult to read, and I have no idea where he came up with that.

I noted that in the several Middle School meets I attended this spring that the board judge called out imperial measurement, the student recorders used a decimal system:
18' 1 1/4" = 18.1.25..actually neater than fractions.

[El Toro]

A typical listing is 38:8:25, which is the style he chose. That equals 38-8¼, or 38’8¼”, in standard nomenclature. Makes it difficult to read, and I have no idea where he came up with that.

Some CAD software uses (or used to use) the colon after the foot element to enter data but I thought the inch/partial were then delineated by a period as you would expect.

I'm not sure why he would reuse the colon (or any symbol) because, as you note, it's too easy to get confused. Just be greatful he didn't need to use miles:yards:feet:inchesartial, then you'd really be confused!