Even in the Ancient Olympics, false starts drew harsh penalties.
When the Games were first held in Greece, leaving the starting line early resulted in flogging from a judge who stood behind runners. Later, Olympians were held at the start by a husplex, a device much like the starting gates that hold today's thoroughbreds.
In recent decades, a false start was something to avoid, a mental hurdle to clear, a potential distraction. Now, it is a landmine, a source of controversy, and especially during the Olympics, a persistent headache to the sport.
A new rule has heightened the consequences of false starts in all races of 400 meters or less, a policy that, for some, has changed the strategy of one of the most high-profile events in the Olympics. For others, it's one more thing to tune out when they step into the starting blocks.
"I'm not going to change my race just because of some rule saying if you false start after a false start you're out of the race," Maurice Greene, the defending gold medalist in the 100 meters, told the Sacramento Bee during last month's U.S. Olympic Trials. "I can't afford to do that. You have to be very aggressive at the beginning of the race because the start sets up the finish."
In past Olympics, as in all international competition before 2002, a single false start resulted in a warning to that runner, who faced disqualification with another false start. Now, any false start serves as a warning to the entire field, and any subsequent false starts result in disqualification.
It's a move that was fiercely protested by the sport's elite, with sprinters such as Greene and Marion Jones leading a petition to stick with the status quo. The change, they said, cowtowed to television audiences, where false starts were said to be unnecessary delays that detracted from the excitement of a live event. Harsh as it seems, it's still not as draconian as the false-start policy for Olympic swimming, in which any false start results in immediate disqualification.
Its detractors argue that the new track rule, intended to limit false starts, might actually have the opposite effect. Consider the strategy that might encourage a slow starter to be overaggressive on an initial start: If he or she nails the start perfectly, it lessens the impact of a weak leg of the sprint. And if the false start is flagged, there's no personal penalty and it levels the field, making all runners more conservative because the next false start could now eliminate them.
Olympic sprinting has seen its share of recent false starts. American Linford Christie jumped the gun twice in Atlanta in 1996, and the veteran sprinter so objected to the computer sensors that monitor a runner flinching in the blocks that he started running a victory lap in protest of the second flag against him.
In Sydney in 2000, another U.S. runner, John Capel, all but took himself out of the 200-meter finals when he thought he had false-started and pulled up after a few steps. The start wasn't flagged, but by the time Capel had returned to full speed, he was already out of contention.
Capel's personal coach, Florida track coach Mike "Mouse" Holloway, said his reaction to the new false-start rule, like Greene, is to ignore it completely.
"We don't even talk about it," Holloway said. "We have to be prepared to execute the race no matter how many false starts there are. It's a rule you have to abide by, but not something we concern ourselves with very much."
A strong start can be key to a medal-winning sprint, just as a poor one can doom a runner before a second has elapsed.
"The biggest thing we talk about is patience," Holloway said. "We don't worry about reaction time. We're trying to be the first guy to 100 meters, not the first to 1 or 2 meters. I've talked to guys that get really caught up in that, but I'm a big proponent of hearing the gun and not anticipating it."
TIMELINE OF A SPRINTER'S START: THE ETERNITY OF 0.15 SECONDS, OR SO
0.000 seconds: Gun goes off
At most international track events since 1995, a "silent' starting gun is used, with the sound actually coming from the starting blocks behind each runner. This eliminates any minute delay associated with each runner's relative distance from the gun, but it has not been used in any Olympic competition, which still opts for the standard, traditional starting gun.
Sounds travels from gun to ear - 0.02 seconds
In most international competitions we would use the sound broadcast from the starting blocks, where it must travel about 2 meters to reach the ears. It takes longer from a starting gun, so even at the speed of sound (330 meters per second), this is the first leg of the relay and takes about 0.02 seconds.
Ear registers sound, sends impulse to brain - 0.035
This is arguably the most trainable aspect of the reaction time, with nanoseconds trimmed by methodical training to anticipate and react to a single noise in a single fashion. Overtrain, and an athlete will flinch in the blocks, and it doesn't take much of a flinch to set off computer sensors that coldly flag a false start based on the tiniest of movements.
Brain processes impulse, sends signal to run - 0.13
The conduction speed of signals within the brain is about 100 meters per second, and processing this impulse is the longest part of the process and the hardest to measure. The speed of the signal drops off to about 70 meters per second in the more suburban central nervous system. So just getting a signal the approximate 1.8 meters from the brain to the feet should take 0.095.
Signal reaches muscles, sprinter takes off - 0.15
Depending on an athlete's height, a 100-meter sprint usually takes between 45 to 50 strides, each lasting roughly a fifth of a second. The margin of victory in an Olympic final is typically a mere fraction of a stride, appreciable only in hundredths of a second. So the difference between a quick reaction time and an ordinary one can be the difference between a world-record sprint and ... an ordinary one.
- Information from Kevin Duffy of Sydney, Australia, whose research on reaction times can be found at www.condellpark.com/kd/reactiontime.htm was used in this report.
