Jon Drummond - An American Embarassment?

The BBQ Pit
1

OK, before I start - regular readers here will be aware that I have nothing but the highest regard and affection for my fellow American friends on the Straight Dope Message Board. And indeed, if Jon Drummond was actually Russian and his fellow naughty sprinters were Russian too, I would have had no worries about calling this thread “A Russian Embarassment?” - or for that matter if he was an Australian too. (Note: I think Lleyton Hewitt is a dickhead - so I’d like to think I’m pretty objective here…)

Anyways, those of you who aren’t aware - Jon Drummond held up the 2nd round of heats at the World Athletic Championships 2 days ago after being ejected for a false start. In the interests of fairness, I should explain that the last 12 months has had a rule change to the IAAF false start policy. Previously, during any heat, or semi final, or final to a race (particularly 100 and 200 meter sprints) the rule was that any competitor had to individually false start TWICE before being ejected. But now, the rule has changed… the first person to false start gets a yellow flag and a 2nd chance - after THAT - the next person to false start (regardless of whether they weren’t the original culprit) gets ejected and your World Championships are over.

My understanding is that this new rule change was brought in to avoid forever more the dreadfully petulant display by Linford Christie in the final of the 1996 Olympic 100 meters.

So, in short, Jon Drummong got busted. My understanding is that he wasn’t the ORIGINAL culprit in his 2nd round heat - but nonetheless he got busted after that and was ejected.

OK, here’s the thing, alright? Prior to Jon Drummond getting busted, there had been a total of 17 runners ejected for false starts in the 10 heats of the first round. Another 4 were ejected in the 2nd round heats prior to Jon Drummonds appearance.

Every single one of those athletes copped the decision square on the chin - it was heartbreaking for them - doubtless - but they all took it like men and walked off the track with dignity. But not Jon Drummond - oh no… no way that HE felt he was obliged to play by the same rules. Nope, he protested and and spat dummies and carried on like a pork chop for a whole hour. He actually lay flat on his back in his lane for 7 whole minutes with an official standing above him with a red flag - totally refusing to move one single inch. Later, when he got up, he threatened to punch officials, and tried to work the crowd to overturn the decision and pleaded with his fellow athletes in the race to support him. He got zero support.

And here’s why…

In Jon Drummond’s first heat - before he had even stopped running - he had already stripped off his track top to show off his wonderful physique. He walked straight up to the TV camera at the end of the track and did various pectoral flexes etc. He then spent 15 minutes getting interviewed by every TV crew possible - in some cases actually forcing himself on certain cameras.

And Maurice Greene was no better. In his first heat, after he did a “block check” and did a quick sprint over 30 meters before the start - he actually looked straight into the TV camera and did this really sick, leery, sexual licking toungue movement and assumed this pose which totally said “Look how sexy I am?”

Anyways, an American Track Team official by the name of Mike Cain actually told Jon Drummond during his petulant moments to not leave the track - that he was a star and there was no way they’d kick him out etc. Man, it got really ugly.

My question is this - at what point did sports stars decide that their sponsorships and their public profile was so huge that they were now “above the rules?” In particular, at what point did American sprinters decide that they were allowed to conduct themselves like boorish primadonnas and were no longer obliged to appreciate any “feel for the sport” whatsoever? I ask this because Jon Drummond has long been infamous, along with his fellow American sprinters, of having an overwhelmingly in-your-face degree of conceit - and his behaviour indicated that his petulant ego was sufficiently strong to overrule a policy which had previously ejected 21 other competitors.

Am I out of line here in asking, has the 100 meters been hijacked by the primadonnas to the point of no return? Most importantly, did any of my fellow American dopers twinge with just a little bit of embarassment?

Note: I made a point of reading the Sport Illustrated website to see an American perspective. No mention of Jon Drummond’s behavior was made at all, and the final was described as having been run in a disappointingly slow time due to the abscence of the traditional American stars. Very disappointing article for mine.

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Ah, they’re 1920’s style “Death Rays”.

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I’m with Michael Johnson:

"Up in the commentary box, Michael Johnson was furious with the behaviour of his old American team-mate.

“He knows the rules, and the IAAF should have something in place for this kind of situation,” he said.

"If somebody won’t go off, they should be escorted off by security. He has disrupted the entire competition.

"The rules work. The problem is what we do when we have an idiot athlete on the track. It is very distasteful.

“He should be penalised for embarrassing the sport. It is absolutely ridiculous. It is embarrassing for athletics.”

Out on the warm-up track, Drummond was inconsolable. He flopped in the arms of Smith, the coach he shares with Maurice Greene and Ato Bolden, and cried like a child who has just been told Christmas has been cancelled. "
Very weird behaviour, the guy is 34 years old . . .

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Boo Boo Foo, you gotta realize most of us Americans think that the only thing more boring than track is field.

That said, I did happen to see the guy’s antics on ESPN’s SportsCenter, and yes, he looked like a petulant asshole. You’re right, though, it DOES seem like ever since Ben Johnson got busted in Seoul, all the sprinters seem like punks.

And BTW, the feeling is mutual - Australia is breathtaking, and Aussies themselves are the salt of the earth. Can’t wait to go back there -counting down the days until my vacation in February 2004.

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Sounds to me like the bigger outrage is this rule that punishes one athlete for something a different athlete did. Doesn’t sound fair to me. I can’t say I blame Drummond for his reaction, over-the-top as it was. I’m more surprised at the 21 other runners who rolled over and accepted that sort of bullshit.

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Maybe, if any of us had been watching. :slight_smile:

Sure, it’s a little embarrassing, but at least he didn’t rape someone like a certain star shooting guard. Or have a murder and drug conspiracy like a certain university athletic department. Or hire a hit man to kill his baby’s mother like a certain NFL player.

7

Wasn’t Drummond also part of that relay team that mugged and flexed and wrapped themselves in the flag during the medal ceremony in the 2000 Olympics?

IMHO, that was more of an embarassment to the US.

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Drummond certainly wasted lots of time but so did the Parisian crowd. When Drummond was crying his eyes out the crowd started booing whenever the remaining athletes took to the blocks. The pleas of Ato Bolden and the French runner didn’t work and it took many attempts to get the race run. According to some reports members of the IOC were very disturbed by the crowd behaviour and some are questioning the “suitability” of Paris for the 2012 Games.

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The false start rule was mainly implemented for TV coverage - it was disrupting planned coverage schedules and commercial breaks, so the IAAF were put under pressure to change the situation.
Drummond’s protestations were childish, yes, and petulant and just immature. BUT (and there’s always a but), should he really have been ejected for putting extra pressure on the blocks? He didnt move, his right leg quivered and that was all. Now I know that it just takes a fart to start the sprinters off, but in fairness there has to be a human override element here too. If someone sniffs in the blocks, should that be counted as a flase start if someone reacts to it? This is obviously a case where the sensors cant tell the difference, and we end up with a misplaced faith in deus ex machina
I thought Drummond’s carry on was over the top in a big way, but he genuinely believed he didnt false start. And if you look at any official IAAF statments released since, they hide behind the ‘unacceptable behaviour’ rulings, and adeptly avoid any talk over whether the false start really was one or not.
If the IAAF are getting so sticky about obeying the letter of the law, we should see a reaction to the 3000m steeplechase last night :- there’s a rule in place governing what is termed to be acceptable pacemaking, and Shaheen/Cherono and Kemobi were most definitely flaunting it.

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And this is the point I think. ‘Bad’ decisions happen in every sport. The absolute way NOT to change things is to behave like a spoilt child or assume that the sport cannot take place without certain ‘stars’ being involved. The way to change things is to encourage reasonable debate appropriately after the event.

Drummond was never going to get himself reinstated in the race - full stop. Rules is rules. The fact it is an unfair rule augmented for the sake of TV is a different issue and needs to be taken up elsewhere. I think, unfortunately, that Drummond has helped too many Europeans reinforce their stereotype of American behaviour - and in Paris no less!

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Actually, I have every sympathy for Drummond. He no more flinched than did virtually everyone else in every other race – his flinch just happened to be with his heel. He didn’t move out of the blocks. For that matter, he didn’t even move his head. IMO his was not truly a false start at all.

This is just another example of how commentators and ex-pros like to get all high and mighty when sportspeople cross a line, conveniently forgetting how hard it was for them when they were still performing. The “Rules” are referred to as if they are dictats from God or natural laws of the universe instead of actually having being made up by some bureaucrat in an office because he thought it was a good idea at a time. I see no reason at all why the ultimate arbiter can’t temper electronic readings with a bit of personal judgment and good sense.

Worst of all, the meaurement of one cirterion is mistaken for the indication of another, completely different, criterion. The measurement here was the pressure applied by the heel to the blocks. For some reason, if this pressure changes within 0.1 seconds after the “b” of the bang (in itself ridiculous), this is adjudged to be a false start. Why? I could understand if there was some consistently applied “flinching” rule, but as a keen spectator of the sport I can assure you that I saw many, many more egregious examples of flinching in other athletes, at least two of which (in my opinion) directly resulted in the disqualification of the flincher’s neighbour, as they in turn reacted to the flinch by setting off. But those flinches were with the body or head and not the heel. Oh, well that’s okay then :rolleyes:

No, this isn’t about flinching at all. It’s about the relinquishing of the responsibility of having to make a decision. It’s about the IAAF wanting to be able to point to a machine and say, “nuh-huh” when the athlete objects. But the machine is measuring the wrong goddamn thing and there is no consistency in the false start criterion!

Then we come to the whole idea of disqualification in the first place. Given how important the events are to the athletes, I think that disqualification should be a really drastic step, not something taken lightly because of a slight movement in the heel. 21 athletes disqualified in one event is an absolute disgrace and in itself should make us seriously rethink the rule.

I felt very sorry indeed for Drummond. He’s 34 years old and this is probably his last chance. He was fit and in form. Given the winning times in the final, he could even have won. Few of us can appreciate just how hard these guys train for this one shot and it was taken away from him because of a combination of the need to fit in with TV schedules and an overzealous reliance on a machine that measures the wrong thing so that the umpire may duck out of having to make a decision for himself.

And I feel a tiny bit sorry for myself too. The kabbess and I love watching athletics. We’ve watched virtually every minute of the coverage of the Worlds, and in England that’s a whole lotta coverage (about 20 hours and counting so far, at a guess?). And I feel that I’ve been denied seeing a great athlete compete. Not only that, but the incident clearly upset the later rounds. Ato Bolden had come back beautifully this year and easily could have qualified for the final, but he was tight in the semis. As the gracious guy he is, he insisted that he didn’t want to blame anybody or anything but himself, but it was pretty plain that he was upset and when you’re talking hundredths of a second, these things count.

It was a farce. They need to get rid of the rule, they need to stop using the pressure pads and they need to introduce a bit of fucking humility into the ease with which they disqualify people.

pan

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I don’t think there is any doubt that the rule is stupid and over-enforced. There are many of these in all facets of sport and of life. Beckham should never have got sent off against Argentina but he was. He didn’t lie on the pitch and refuse to go. Many times cricketers are given out when they know they weren’t (and vice versa) - for some it is the last big game they’ll play in their lives - they don’t lie on the pitch and refuse to leave…I could go on.

I do think that when people who obviously believe they are the elite - and are obviously role-models - behave like spoilt prima donnas then they are well out of order.

There are ways and means of changing things and that behaviour doesn’t cut it.

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Maybe not, but by that stage I was already so disgusted with the entire sham that Drummond could have ripped off his shorts and waved his tonker around and I would barely have noticed. My respect for the sport and long, long since departed by that stage.

pan

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Martiju I dont think anyone is denying that how Drummond behaved was out of order. But if you’d (generic you) taken a year of your life to focus completely mentally and physically on one event, and then be removed at the very start of it for something you honestly dont believe you did … well I’d probably acting first and thinking later. I was watching the coverage on BBC and the HSI programmes on Eurosport and you could see afterward it broke the guy’s heart.
Anyways, I think kabbes hit the nail on the head - he didnt flinch, but he got ready to launch; he never left the blocks - and the sensors cant see the discrepancy in that.
People twitching their arms in the blocks should have the same punishment meted out to them, and that never happens. IT’s a case of prople hiding behind machines.
Sure he acted like a bit of a prima donna, and he dealt with it completely the wrong way; but if he’s quietly walked away and started lodging official appeals and whatnot, the whole gets reduced to a war of words until the weight of the IAAF’s beauracracy smothers the whole thing

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Yeah, perhaps you’re right. It just bugs me when people think that they have a right to hold up an international event when they’ve been the subject of a controversial decision.

My point is really that it happens in every sport and, of course, the automation is an attempt to make the decision fairer (less susceptible to human error). The sensors determined that he started to push off (added pressure) before the gun. I think you (again, generic) either go with that or fight the system in a way that might get you sympathy. There is no way you are able to change the decision on the day and acting like a prick is not going to do you, or the country you represent, any favours.

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Quite, that’s pretty much exactly how I feel.

Also, comparisons to other sports are rarely valid. Football is a team game and even the world cup is not really comparable to the athletic world championships. There are other important games, you can come back as a player if your team gets through a few more games and the team victory tends to override your personal participation anyway. The only real comparison is Gazza in Italia 90, but he did actually deserve his second yellow then anyway.

No, in athletics there is the WC and the Olympics and they only come round every few years. In the intervening time it is all about getting ready for those events. For it to be taken away from you for something that you didn’t even really do is beyond gutting. I can pretty much forgive someone anything up to (but not including) actual physical violence at that point.

pan

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Er, utkik’s is how I feel, that is.

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I actually think we’re agreed on the main thrust of the argument except I believe that the sport is always bigger than the individual - no exceptions.

Oh, and I think you’re out of touch with reality on your team sports argument - for instance when Linekar was stupidly substituted by Taylor during his last ever England game I doubt he gave a stuff about the overall result. Didn’t lie down and hold up the game over it though.

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You’re now going to start comparing a (correct, IMHO) tactical decision by a manager with an extremely dodgy disqualification? And you’re calling me out of touch?

Good heavens.

pan

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I was trying to make a comparison between individuals in team sports and unfair (to some, admittedly) decisions. The point was the second part of the sentence, obviously.