Shawn Devereaux asks:
> Anyway, has anybody ever considered the idea of only allowing marks at
> World Championships or Olympic Games to be eligible for a world record?
People have considered that -- and in fact done a small scale variant
of it: it used to be (and maybe still is in some states) that a
state high school record could only be set in the state meet. The
problem is that for every record holder there can be a bunch of
qualifications: he/she holds the state record, but x, from my town
actually ran faster last year, and y and z ran faster years earlier
somewhere else.
If you don't trust local officials, I suppose that is what you do, but
one of the other results is that it makes being a record holder a sort of
technicality and it contributes yet another complication to trying to
explain the sport to anyone.
I think at least most such states have given that up as a bad idea by
now.
Pat Palmer
