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BRT wrote (see)

Black with a slice of lemon is the only way.

Spent some time in Holland or Belgium, BRT?
That's how we drink it there...
You get funny looks if you put milk in your tea.

Feel like poppping in to give my take on HH's rant on oly qualifying standards.

If you're going to raise the bar hight, then raise it properly high, not something half-arsed like 2.12
Belgium had quali time of 2.09.37 for Bejing I believe (give or take a few seconds), kiwis had something similar I bet. Not bothered to check the London requirements, but doubt they eased them.
And you must remember all those olympic marathon medals those nations scooped up by leaving those pesky merely 2.10 running underachieving wannabee olympians at home.

On a more serious note, if the international qualifying standards is met, and the maximum team member spots aren't filled, you should be allowed to go. If money is the issue, then just announce the standard to be met to have your olympic ticket financed by the federation, but don't deny people the chance to compete in the olympics altogether.
(or possibly think about leaving a few officials and/or politicians home and take a few more athletes instead, but that's just crazytalk, I'm sorry).

Good luck all, seems training is rolling along nicely for most of you. Chins up for those with more challenges in their path...

The problem, groovy, lies solely within your failure to recognise that it's UKA or equivalent book that matters, not groovy's for reasons clearly argued all over this thread.

There just isn't an element of opinion in determining the winner, unless in very unusual situations (gun vs chip time definately not being one of them).

groovy, you can tell anyone you won if you like, but nobody likes to be lied to...
You would be fully entitled to tell everyone you ran the fastest time of the day, but you simply did not win the race.

biker-sugarplum-mouse wrote (see)

kaysdee (Kelly) wrote (see)

If the second place woman was running alongside the first past the post, maybe the winner would have been faster once she realised she had some competition. What was the difference, only 6 seconds? I'm not that fast and I don't look behind me in a race to check position, but if I knew there was someone on my shoulder, I would speed up. If woman 1 didn't know woman 2 was there, she could have just been coasting to the line, whereas the woman behind would have the other lady in her sights and be trying to catch up. It's not fair to base it on chip time as the person in front can't adjust her strategy or know to push if she's not passed.

So, er, the short answer is gun time wins.

Rubish. In a race if you at female you rarely know if the runner in front of you is male or female, how many other women there are in front of you etc. It's just runers.

If you don't look behind you then you don't know who is breathing down your neck or how close the runner behind you is or isn't - so if you are coasting then your problem. Women can rarely afford to coast in a race. If you do you tend to lose.

I was first lady in a race recently - I didn't know I was first lady, I didn't really care, I wanted to finish the race in the best possible time. I knew I was some way ahead of the runner behind me but I didn't back off just because I knew they wouldn't catch me or that I knew I wouldn't catch the guy in front of me. I've run plenty of races where I haven't known who was in front of me. It really is hard to tell gender, I have ran races where two races of different lengths finish at the same point so often I don't know who is or is not in the same race. Again many of the faster runners tend to be male so there will always be a lot of runners in front - hard to spot which is female if any and I'll probably not have a 6 minute view of the finish.

I've seen a few races now where they handle this issue quite elegantly.
Have 3 stewards on bicycles with a little flag mounted about 2.5 meters up in the air, indicating the race positions 1, 2 and 3.
About a km into the race, they are waiting for the sharp end to come in and then ride along the top 3 ladies.
So the top 3 know their position and anybody else can spot how far ahead they are.

Easy to implement, I don't get why more races don't do it

Ste_S, the words you were looking for are " I have no interest in professional sports, mainly..."