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The federal board for the organisation for competitions of the German Athletic

Federation (DLV) has reached a decision that many street racers have been

awaiting for quite a while: the statisticians who put together the lists of the

year’s fastest times will be permitted to use the net times.

Net and gross times

Through the use of the transponder/chip timekeeping device that is common at

all large street races, not only the time between the starting shot and the

crossing of the finish (gross time) but also the exact time between crossing

the starting and the finish lines (net time) can be determined. For those

runners who start in the back blocks, this often means a difference of several

minutes.

IAAF rules: the gross time is the official time

According to the international athletics rules, only the official time is valid

for the rankings. Up until this decision, the DLV also heeded this rule on the

national level, which caused a general lack of understanding from the

competitors in street races.

The statisticians also had their difficulties with this complete assumption of

the IAAF rules, as, on the one hand, they had to search the result lists for

the gross times, and on the other hand they understood the objections of the

athletes who had the undesired “extra“ time added to their achieved

times.

The quarrels will find an end in 2005

With this decision by the federal board (Bundesausschuss (BA)), the quarrels

between the runners and the statisticians will be ended starting in 2005. For

both individuals and teams, the net times will be listed in the

rankings.

Rankings for each individual race will continue to be determined by the

order in which they cross the finish The gross times will continue, however, to

be very important: the federal board clearly set that the rankings for each

individual race are to be determined by the order in which the runners cross

the finish, which means the gross times. A runner who crosses the finish ahead

of another runner will place higher in the rankings, whether or not the other

had a faster net time.

German runners in the international arena have always had the same

net and gross times anyway!

There are no discrepancies with the further valid IAAF rules to be expected

through this new decision to recognise the net times nationally. The German

runners who are placed in the international rankings of fastest times

(unfortunately very few of them) always start in the front rows of the races

and thus always have the same net and gross times.

Eberhard Vollmer

German athletic federation

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