for athletics at an international level, wind resistance is taken into account, and the athletes final time is adjusted to this factor.
how is this factor calculated?
I’m not aware of any records that have been adjusted but some records where wind resistance is an extremely big factor such as bicycling have some records which specify high altitude vs. low. One of the longest standing records in Cycling was Eddy Mercyx’s one hour veledrome record. The record was set at high altitude in Mexico City and has since been broken at low altitude where it is more difficult.
Well. I just checked out www.iaaf.org to see if I could find out what the answer to this was. (morbid curiosity, I guess)
The IAAF offers pdf files of all sorts of rules and regulations.
Particular to this situation is Rule 163 (for track events), which instructs where to place wind measuring instruments. They must read in meters per second.
I couldn’t find anything that discussed how times were adjusted, just this bit where it discussed how to measure the wind properly and how to express the measurement.
In the 180’s section of the Rules, there was a similar blurb in regards to field events. But the wind is to be measured in the same manner as discussed in Rule 163.
There’s lots of publications at the IAAF site, and if you’re looking for a fun project, maybe you can find specifically what you’re looking for there. I started off at the USATF site, but those rules & regs are available for purchase, not for free.
Hopefully this gets you started. I hate to see a track & field question languish. Not too many people are real into it to begin with, so it’s nice to know you’re out there!
[oh, and I’m just a casual runner with no real knowledge of official track & field rules]
I was always under the impression that it wasn’t a case of times being adjusted due to wind speeds, but rather a case of times being recorded as records only if they weren’t wind-assisted (by more than a specific amount).
IE, if the world record for the 173-yard dash was 16.82 seconds and I won a 173-yard dash in a time of 16.81 seconds it would only count as a new world record if it wasn’t wind-assisted.
It should be like the land-speed records, where you have to go both directions within a specified time to break a record.
Might work for 100m. Could be a bit rough on the marathoners.
