True, when the distance is the name of description of the event, (swimming, diving, track, rowing, weight categories as in judo) there seems to be little interest in using Customary. One exception to that is long road races (marathon, bicycling, etc). However, in field events, the distance is the performance measure and (generally) different for each athlete. US Track & Field gives priorities to Customary reporting of field events (although it encourages dual if time permits). Weightlifting recommends the weight be reporting in both pounds and kilograms (I'm not sure which is accurate, I assume the kilograms).
--- On Fri, 8/3/12, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:51815] Re: NBC Olympic Track & Field Coverage (Field) To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Cc: "Valerie Antoine" <[email protected]> Date: Friday, August 3, 2012, 3:28 PM Apparently, the practice differs according to the sport. In swimming and diving, I have heard nothing but metric. In weightlifting, the weight categories were given only in kilograms, and the weights lifted primarily in kilograms, with a few inch-pound conversions thrown in. ============ On Fri, 3 Aug 2012, John M. Steele wrote: > So far, NBC has only broadcast part of one field event in their coverage > today; the qualifying round > of men's shot put. > > As expected, the announcers have avoided telling us the true performance and > settled for the > approximate conversion to feet and inches, in spite of lines on the field > being marked in metric. > Very confusing, as always. > > Oddly, the NBC website gives only official results in metric: > Overal schedule: > http://www.nbcolympics.com/track-and-field/results-schedules/index.html > Shotput: > http://www.nbcolympics.com/track-and-field/event/men-shot-put/phase=atm051900/index.html > > Just as an example, the performance of Reese Hoffa (winner in group B) was > broadcast as 70-01, but > his measured performance is 21.36 m. > > Hey NBC, the Olympics is totally metric, the athlete's performance IS the > story, hence important to > the story, so it's OK to report metric. Please tell us the athlete's true > (measured) performance > first, then throw in a conversion if you are really convinced you need to.
