I might have missed some of the follow-up conversation on this but I do not see where you are getting this information from.
I am looking at a set of results from the press room and the following is a sample of the times: Place/Name/Chip Time/Gun Time 11. Ben Kimondiu/2:13:55/2:13:57 12. Kyle Baker/2:14:12/2:14:13 13. Clint Verran/2:14:16/2:14:17 14. Keith Dowling/2:14:21/2:14:22 15. Ryan Shay/2:14:29/2:14:30 16. Peter De La Cerda/2:14:40/2:14:41 17. Kentaro Ito/2:14:40/2:14:41 18. Josh Cox/2:15:00/2:15:01 19. Ian Syster/2:16:02/2:16:04 20. Abdelah Behar/2:16:12/2:16:14 Weldon Johnson, the women's pace-setter started well behind the start line and had chip/gun times of 2:17:50 and 2:18:10. The next guy with a bigger discrepancy was the 35th finisher The top 10 women had identical chip/gun times; after that a series of 2-3 second differences appears. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2002 4:25 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: t-and-f: chip vs. gun times at Chicago Looking at the Chicago results, virtually every person outside the top ten, including names like Kimondiu, de la Cerda, Dowling, Cox, and Shay, had gun times that were 20-25 seconds slower than their chip times. I've seen pictures of the Boston start, and heard similar stories from New York, with the elite getting a substantial buffer zone on the masses. But do even sub-2:15 guys now count as the masses and have to give up what appears to be, based on the time involved, upwards of 100 meters? I can't imagine any race actually has a buffer zone that size - that's bigger than a city block in most downtowns. What's going on here? Another question: are the split times listed chip times? Kimondiu's half-way split (1:02:10) is faster than the top finishers by almost exactly the difference between his gun- and chip times at the finish. My interpretation is that he made up the 21-second gap from the start and was running with the leaders at halfway, but maybe I should read all the reports for myself. david
