Every time a race walking competition is discussed again in a well-known Italian newspaper or in posts and comments on social media, the amount of incorrect concepts used is amplified when it reaches the generic sports fan, who perhaps thinks he knows all the sports rules and trusts what he reads from others, but in front of the “heel and toe” world gives in to the banality of imaginative and improper reasoning: all to the detriment of the image of the discipline of racewalking. Here are some clarifications within everyone’s reach about the judgement in walking, in particular regarding the loss of contact:
Can I say that a racewalker has loss of contact using as evidence a single photo of him with both feet off the ground?
The answer is no.
The definition of racewalking is as follows:
“Race Walking is a progression of steps so taken that the walker makes contact with the ground, so that no visible (to the human eye) loss of contact occurs. The advancing leg must be straightened (i.e. not bent at the knee) from the moment of first contact with the ground until the vertical upright position..”
Therefore, the violation of loss of contact is to perform the progression of steps in which the possible loss of contact is visible to the human eye of the designated race judge. First of all, the racewalking judge is an experienced and trained race official who acts independently from others and evaluates the regularity of the athlete’s progression of steps with his own eyes, and cannot use electronic tools, freeze frames, slow motion or a single photo. If he sees from his eyes loss of contact (both feet off the ground) it is a violation of rules and he will act accordingly, if he does not see it is not loss of contact and he will do nothing; it is a question of milliseconds, so a very short loss of contact (for example less than 40ms), as in the progression of high-level athletes with a correct racewalking technique, is in fact invisible to the human eye and is not sanctioned.
A modern camera or smartphone can collect 120 fps (frames per second), so a single photo is a single frame and is not indicative of anything. It does not matter if the feet are both “detached” from the ground at a given moment, what counts instead is the total time of the loss of contact and therefore its visibility or not to the human eye. From a photo you cannot say “we notice a certain loss of contact“, it would be an improper trivialization.
What counts is what the race walking judge sees, not what he deduces or hypothesizes; if he is sure that he saw the loss of contact he will proceed with sending the red card (proposal of disqualification) for that athlete, otherwise he will not act. To make the decision to send or not a red card for that athlete, the judge will also evaluate the continuity of the loss of contact violation, so a single step with loss of contact is not enough to be sanctioned, there must always be a certain continuity of violation.
Using a series of photos can still be useful to a coach to catch technical errors of his athlete, but it is a question of technical training and not of judgment in competition.
Can I say that a walker has loss of contact from a video in which, by reducing the speed, I see both his feet off the ground? The answer is no (with some exceptions).
Without the rule limit of the judge to evaluate the athletes with the only observation of the human eye, with an professional video camera it is possible to obtain very detailed videos (for example 240 fps) from which to detect if the loss of contact time exceeds the value of non-visibility of the human eye, but it is necessary to identify exactly when the “flight phase” begins (when the pushing foot leaves the ground) and when it ends (when the other foot touches the ground). Without precision, it is not possiblea reliable measurement of time.
People often try to find an athlete’s loss of contact by watching slow motion videos found on the internet, which have a low number of fps, usually 25/30; from a video of this quality not only are important details lost, but it is impossible to identify the exact moment in which the foot leaves the ground and when the other foot touches the ground, so the time detection would be approximate and misleading. Unless the flight time is so high that, even with an approximate figure, the minimum and maximum hypotheses for loss of contact time are both well over 60 ms.
The use of a video, even of medium quality, can still be useful to a coach to catch technical errors of his athlete, but it is a question of technical training and not of judgment in the competition.
Is there a warning for an athlete who does not respect the technical regulations of the racewalk?
The answer is no.
Often the fact that the race walking judges “sanctions” about a walker is confused with “warnings”, as if we were talking about yellow cards in a football match. In reality the word “warning” is not present in the technical rules of racewalking, where also the concept of warning does not exist.
In race walking, when the judge is not completely satisfied that an athlete is about to violate the rules, he can show him a yellow paddle of caution, but the yellow color should not mislead, there is no warning: the caution has no sanctioning value, it’s just a call for caution, an aid to correct the athlete. An athlete may be shown more than one yellow paddle during a competition by different judges, and this does not in any way affect his possible penalty or disqualification.
Yellow paddle – Loss of contact caution shown to the athlete
Instead, when the judge is convinced that an athlete has violated the technical rules (for example, exhibiting visible loss of contact )he sends about him a red card without showing him anything,and from that moment on he will no longer evaluate that athlete because for him it is as if he were already disqualified. The athlete will be able to check whether or not he has received red cards by looking at each lap at a special posting board managed by the chief race walking judge and placed on the race course.
Form for sending the proposal for disqualification (Red Card)
When the chief judge receives three red cardsfrom three different judges for the same athlete, he will stop the athlete in the penalty zone for the period of time stipulated in the rules (which depends on the race distance), and will allow the athlete to continue the race as soon as the penalty has been served. A fourth red card from a different judge than the previous ones for the same athlete, will correspond to disqualification from the competition, therefore the chief judge will stop the athlete as soon as possible by showing him a red paddle.
Red paddle to notify disqualification
Is it fair to say that a racewalking jury evaluates subjectively? The answer is no.
This is one of the most debated aspects, but the point of view is often wrong. The judgment of the single judge is obviously subjective, but a single judgment is not enough for a disqualification. The judgment in the race walk must be considered as a whole, only the contribution of several judges can concretize a decision: 3 red cards for an athlete concretize a penalty, the fourth becomes a disqualification, but all must come from different judges. Once this coherence exists, the subjective decision of the single judge made independently of others, is added to the others and strengthened, becoming objective in fact: it is one thing for an athlete’s loss of contact to be detected by a single judge, it is another thing for the same loss of contact to be seen by three or four different racewalking judges.
The racewalking juries are composed of several race walking judge (5-8 officials depending on the type of race), to guarantee balance and so as to have decisions certified by more expert people. Assuming that in a track race with 5 racewalking judges there are 2 of them who have not noticed the loss of contact of an athlete, the remaining 3 always guarantee adequate control of the race: the loss of contact must be seen, if it is not seen then the athlete in that race is correct, unless there are too many judges who make the wrong assessment. For this reason, the racewalking judges, both with experience in races and with continuous training, always try to improve their ability to judge but above all their coherence (consistency) in the judgement, so that even the single subjective judgement becomes objective.
