>Walking has the ability to implement strict technical standards, but it refuses to do so.
Oh it does? Could you name these standards? The so-called devices that measure whether someone has left the ground do not work in practical tests. Video is certainly not an option - it would make things like the Syndey snafu commonplace because it could never be evaluated in real enough time. Someday technology may be available, but I'm not aware of any proven technology right now. > I and many other suspect this is so because it would dramatically slow down the events. Well, I would estimate that instead of 1:17, the world record for 20K would be 1:20. I actually think this may be a slow estimate. And yes, that would be fairly "dramatic", and if the technical solution existed, yes I think the entrenched walking community would resist just as the sprinters resisted the false start change. But it would (or maybe I should say will) eventually happen. >Walking is now pretty much the last event where the question of "cheating" is left solely to the discretion of a human > judge (the only other case being perhaps "Volzing"). Sorry, you can't just dismiss the hurdles because you "believe" that hitting the hurdles is slower. I know that the theoretical perfect race doesn't involve hitting them, but you'd be hard pressed to prove that hitting the hurdles (or more accurately, designing your technique so that if you miss you will hit the hurdle) isn't faster than many of the alternatives. At any rate, it fits in with voltzing and walking. > My contention wasn't about whether I liked walking or not, and certainly > respect the effort involved in the event. My point is simple: the > reliance on fuzzy standards implemented solely by human judges leaves open > the ability to incrementally squeeze past the judging standards, and this > ability should not be discounted for accounting for much of the improvement in the events. I only discount it on the basis of video. On what do you base your theory that it does account for the improvement of the last 20 years? > As for walkers using EPO to achieve these improvements, why haven't native-born European distance runners achieved the same >level of improvements? David Moorcroft's 13:00 from 1982 would still be an outstanding mark for a European, but an also ran >globally. This huge discrepancy in improvements between the two groups stands out as a glaring counterargument. All I'm saying is that in the absence of another reason for improvement - and the hard evidence of video suggests that better ways around the judging is not it - improvements in walking are somewhat consistent with improvements in the 5K/10K/marathon. If you want to separate out Europeans, fine, but you could just as easily separate Eurpoean countries, and then you'd find some countries with big improvements. - Ed Parrot
