The Stockholm Diamond League competition turned into a truly shameful spectacle for the competition organizers.
A life-threatening situation. This is how Arto Bryggare describes activists throwing themselves in front of 400 meter runners. PDO
The evening of the Diamond League in Stockholm was colored by, among other things, a protest at the end of the 400-meter hurdles, a discus throw measurer who risked his life, and careless officials of the pole vault.
Iltalehti’s athletics expert Arto Bryggare followed the events of the Stockholm competition with confusion.
In particular, the dangerous demonstration of hurdles raised the rounds of the ex-hurdle. The troublemakers had managed to kneel down in the middle of the track, while the runners were rushing towards the finish line on the Front Straight.
– The organizers had their hands in their pockets when they should have kicked those people off the track, Bryggare said.
– People have to be moved – not begging – but quickly moved away. There is no discussion about it. It is not a place for a panel. In Sweden, of course, things are sometimes more in line to discuss than to do.
Big risks
The organizers brought the demonstrators to the attention of the police. PDO
The demonstration was dangerous not only for the athletes but also for the protesters themselves.
– I have seen when this kind of contact happens at full speed. In it, a small person flies six meters horizontally. It is life-threatening, says Bryggare.
– When a grown man comes at a high speed, these people don’t understand what kind of forces are behind it.
The paddlers running in Stockholm slowed down in good time when they noticed that something special was happening ahead. They had almost no other choice.
– An athlete’s career can end there. When the legs are full of lactic acid and you have to stop quickly, the entire rear leg musculature can come off, warns Bryggare.
Bryggare doesn’t understand how such an incident could happen. The organizers were not at all up to their duties.
– It was unforgivable from the organizers. It was a bluff on their part that went through. They threw themselves into being the organizers, and they didn’t realize that something like that could happen, Bryggare steamed.
Incompetent administrator
Daniel Ståhl’s puck was to make a bad mark. Roni Lehti
The second dangerous situation of the evening happened almost immediately after the demonstration, when Daniel Ståhl the puck he threw almost hit the referee’s head on the field.
The referee tried to get as close as possible to the puck’s landing spot in advance in order to measure the result as accurately as possible.
In Bryggare’s opinion, the person in question seemed unfit for his job.
– It seemed that the operator’s motor ability was such that maybe it wouldn’t have been worth even being there on the slippery grass. He was not capable of making fast movements – either because of his age or his physical condition, the expert says.
According to Bryggare, it is quite easy to become an official even in the Diamond League games.
– Those who raise their hand get in. It doesn’t go through tests.
If a metal puck flies from the sky to your head, the mark is really ugly.
– In such a case, a person has lost his life, Bryggare says.
A game of cents
The expert needs an automatic measurement system for discus throwing, which would get rid of referees dodging discs on the field. One would think that there would be ways to do that when we are already living in 2023.
Bryggare wonders why the human eye is so firmly trusted in discus throwing in general, which certainly cannot see all the places where the disc lands exactly. The puck doesn’t leave the same mark on the field as, for example, a puck.
– The officials are just trying to get the smallest possible error in it. But there will always be a mistake. In discus throwing, it’s a game of luck whether you get the right results. They’re never right, Bryggare quips.
– I think feelings are completely pointless in discus throwing. To put it crudely, the results should be reported to the nearest meter.
The confusion of the organizers in Stockholm was crowned by the officials of the pole vault, because of which Australia was kicked Kurtis Marschallin the jump was marked as a fall for no reason.
Marschall crossed the bar without hitting it, but when the jumper landed on the mattress, the bar fell with him because it was poorly placed on the supports.
– I have never seen this kind of tumbling before, Bryggare updates.
– Murphy’s law came true. All kinds of shit happened today.