Track and field's brutal false-start rule ended a French runner's Olympic dream before it started
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(Patrick Smith/Getty)
French sprinter Wilhem Belocian was disqualified from the 110-meter hurdles on Monday night in Rio after he false started just before the gun.
It's a brutal twist of fate for Belocian, who trained exclusively for the Olympic 110-meter hurdles only to bow out from Rio de Janeiro without finishing a single race.
Belocian's disqualification is also an example of track and field's cruelest rule: that one false start, just one flinch at the line — at the Olympics, no less — can end your dreams of gold before you've even started running.
Here's Belocian's early start:
(NBC)
Afterward, he was gutted:
(NBC)
He tore off his bib as he walked down the wet track, completely in shock:
(NBC)
Eventually, he hit the track and started crying:
(NBC)
Here's the video:
Belocian isn't the first sprinter we've seen disqualified because of a false start in Rio, nor is he likely to be the last. But with each subsequent disqualification, it becomes increasingly clear that the one-and-done rule, as it stands, needs to go.
Athletes train too long and too hard to be penalized so severely for one minor blip. From 2003 through 2009, the IAAF instituted a rule in which the first false start served as a warning to the entire field. The next runner to jump the gun would be disqualified.
That rule presents its own problems, too, of course. For one thing, it can still disqualify an individual who has false started only once.
But as we saw Monday night with Belocian, and as we will continue to see, the existing rule is simply too harsh. Anything else, even the older version of the rule, would be a major improvement.
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