Wind, it's all around us and a daily occurrence. And, the rules of track and field are specific about what to do when the wind blows.
Okay, I confess. I'm spending too much time answering e-mails about wind readings and performances. I'm taking a pre-emptive strike at further e-mails on the topic with this article. The hope is that I'll spend less time down the road answering e-mails and more time doing real content.
There are five events where wind is deemed a factor. Those events are the long jump, triple jump, 100, 200, and 100/110 hurdles. The wind makes a difference in every event in track and field, but it makes a bigger difference in these five events. It makes so much difference that a set of rules have been developed regarding what to do with wind conditions for these five events. If your state concerns itself with wind readings (and Colorado does), the rules go like this:
1. Every heat of the 100, 200, and 100/110 hurdles must be accompanied by a wind reading to be used for rankings, records, or seed purposes. A wind in excess of 2.0 meters per second is deemed a non-legal wind. A mark with a non-legal wind may not be used for rankings, records, or seeding purposes. The mark is, however, used for meet placement purposes and is retained in the results of the meet.
2. Every attempt of the long jump or triple jump that is not a fouled attempt must similarly be accompanied by a wind reading. Once again. 2.0 meters per second is the threshold of legality. A trailing wind in excess of 2.0 meters per second is deemed a non-legal wind and any distance attained on such an attempt can be used for meet placement purposes, but not for rankings, records, or seeding purposes.
As a result of items 1 and 2, above, I do not enter wind-aided marks into the rankings database for Colorado Track XC. If I did, they would be available for seeding purposes, and that is undesirable.
How is it undesirable, you ask?
Let's suppose you are an athlete with a wind legal 11.04 100 meter time. Let's further suppose that your are the eighth seed in a meet. Along comes another individual with a 10.96 time that is not wind legal. Maybe the wind was +3.7. If that mark is in the pool of seed times, you get bumped out of the top heat by the individual with a faster, but non wind-legal, time. You are relegated to running in the second fastest heat, usually deemed a competitive disadvantage, owing to the other individual's faster time under non-legal conditions.
Some people have observed that we have a button for wind-legal and all marks on the rankings database. It is true that we do. It is not also true that we have a button for wind-legal and all marks in the seeding database. I have put in a request for that, but Colorado is not the only state in the nation. In a network as big as the MileSplit network, all sorts of things compete for the attention of the development staff. Right now, that kind of option in the seeding database is not at the top of the pile in the list of priorities. Not everything can be at the top.
So, we wait. And, for now, the best solution is simply not to enter marks that are not wind legal into the database. That keeps rankings, records, and seeds clean.
Are there downsides to not including non wind-legal marks in the database? Yes, there are. But, there is no downside that trumps having a clean set of marks for seeding purposes.
There are all sorts of ways to reduce the incidence of non legal readings at the wind gauge. None are foolproof, and some are very long-term solutions, but many simply aren't being tried.
First and foremost, jumps runways (with the possible exception of pole vault) should be aligned perpendicular to the direction of prevailing winds, not in line with prevailing winds. Jumps runways that head north and south here in Colorado are trouble waiting to happen. Fountain-Fort Carson and French Stadium at Rocky Mountain High School are two excellent examples of facilities where some thought went into the alignment of the jumps runways. Even more so, there's actually some vegetative cover surrounding the jumps runways at French Field. And, guess what? The incidence of non wind-legal jumps marks is lower at French Field than most facilities in the state.
Tracks, on the other hand, are more or less doomed to have north-south straightaways. The best prevention here is not to stage events at the peak wind periods of the day. That isn't always possible, of course, but there are ways to play games to beat the wind more frequently than we do even so.
Meets that have a prelims session in the morning tend to get more wind-legal 100, 200, and 100/110 hurdles marks. The 200 is a perpetual problem because the 200s, or at least the finals of the 200, tend to be staged close to peak wind periods of the day. So, every once in a while, why doesn't a meet place the 200 at a different hour of the day than the usual? It's no different, really, than distance coaches lobbying for morning 3200s when temps are cooler and wind conditions are typically subdued.
If we need more time to wedge those events into more favorable hours of the day, we may want to consider trimming the number of relays we contest. In national terms, we are definitely on the high end of relays contested.