Authorities are right to stick to their guns over false-start rule, says Wells

THE athletics authorities are right to resist the clamour for reform of the false-start rule in the wake of Usain Bolt’s disqualification from the World Championships 100 metres, says former Olympic champion Allan Wells.

Wells said he had sympathy for the Jamaican, who was ruled out of Sunday’s final in South Korea after jumping the gun. But the Scot insisted the IAAF’s current rule is an improvement on before, and should not be changed again just because of the global popularity of one man.

“One start and that’s it – the rule should stay,” Wells said. “Usain Bolt was given his chance. It is sad that he false-started, but it’s wrong for one person to get another chance just because he has a lot of public sympathy.

“Because he’s such a big name and such a great talent, the public perception is that the wrong guy won. But I think it’s a false perception. According to the rules the right guy won – the one who made a legal start then ran fastest.”

The rule governing the start of a race has gradually become stricter since the days when each competitor was allowed one false start. The decision that the whole field should be put on a warning after one false start by anyone was viewed by some as draconian when introduced in 2003, but is now seen by many as fairer than the current law, which replaced it last year. According to Wells, however, the old system was open to abuse.

“In my day, a false start could be tactical,” he said. “You could disrupt the preparations of every other runner in the race. Everybody else would be psyched up to the eyeballs, having prepared for that exact moment for hours. After a false start they’d find they had used up all that mental and physical energy and only had three or four minutes to get themselves up again.”

The Edinburgh man was himself the subject of a rule change shortly before the Moscow Olympics. He wanted to continue to start races the way he always had, without blocks, but was told they would be compulsory from those games onwards. “They changed the rules for me in 1980 when they made the use of blocks compulsory as they were part of the false-start timing mechanism. I had wanted to race without blocks, but I had been using them secretly, so that when the rules were changed I was able to adapt and I won that race. That’s what any athlete has to do. When the rules are changed you’ve got to accept it.

“It’s about discipline. In the case of Usain Bolt he was probably anxious to get the race over with, take the gold medal and walk off the track. It was probably 99.9 per cent certain that he would win. I feel for him, but he knew he had false-started. His reaction showed that he knew he’d done wrong, and the fact he didn’t even wait to be shown the red card shows the morality of the guy is 100 per cent. If he had said that cameras clicking had put him off – and that has happened to me – he might have got away with it. But he didn’t even think of doing that.”

Wells is sure that, having failed to defend his 100m title, Bolt will now win the 200m even more convincingly than he would otherwise have done. He is equally sure, however, that the Jamaican will not come close to his own world record of 19.19sec, set at the last world championships in Berlin two years ago.

“He’ll not break the world record,” said Wells. “That will stay for a long time and I doubt he’ll beat it himself. But he should win in something like 19.5 or 19.6sec.”