Good riddance to eight-lane tracks

THE EIGHT-LANE running track is on its way out.

That’s the consequence of a new ruling by World Athletics. That ruling ensures that for races run in lanes, there will be nine semi-finalists and finalists.

The decision by World Athletics evens out the route to the final.

For decades, the athlete could advance by winning or placing second in their heat or semi or by being one of the ‘fastest losers’. This applies to races longer than 800 metres, too, but those events already advance 12 runners or more to their finals.

On the whole, the new provision is great.

Fluctuating wind often makes a mockery of qualifying in sprint events. For example, at the recent National Senior and Junior Athletics Championships (Trials), three of the five qualifying heats in the 100-metre men’s preliminaries faced headwinds of -4.1 metres per second or more. Five of the seven places in the next round went to men who raced in the other two prelims where the wind was far less severe at 0.7 and -1.9, respectively.

In the women’s 100 metres semi-finals, the first section faced a -3.9-metre-per-second headwind. Remona Burchell, the 2018 World Indoor 60 metres finalist and 2022 World Under-20 100 metres runner-up Serena Cole both clocked 11.44 seconds to take fourth and fifth place, respectively. In still air, they would have got times of 11.09 seconds each.

There’s no consolation for Burchell and Cole. The ‘fast losers’ came from the second semi at 11.32 and 11.39, where the wind was far more gentle at -0.9.

The new rule dumps all that in history’s garbage bin.

Instead of first and second place in each of the three semi-finals moving into the final, with two more advancing on the strength of their times, the top three will advance, regardless of their times and the prevailing wind.

We will see the new system in action in Budapest, where the World Championships will be contested on, you guessed it, a nine-lane track.

It’s an act of simplicity ... unless you’ve laid a new eight-lane track at the National Stadium as recently as 2021, as Jamaica did.

It’s a teachable moment for countries who plan to stage major World Athletics events. Simply put, one of the new requirements is a nine-lane track.

We’re lucky. Our venerable National Stadium has an old velodrome that could be removed to make space for that ninth lane. I don’t know if that would affect events like the Grand Gala but the extra lane would definitely fit.

We’ve had to wait an age for the Stadium to be brought in line with the dictates of modern sport. Now we have to tinker with the design to accomodate ‘the Budapest rule’ that will put nine athletes in every semi-final and final that starts in lanes.

Hubert Lawrence has been making notes at track side since 1980.