On Saturday morning, the first event on the track at the New Balance Outdoor Nationals was the 4x1600 relay. After a single heat for the girls, the first of two heats for the boys stepped on the track.
After two legs (3200 meters), Christian Brothers of New Jersey had the lead at 8:40.85, five seconds ahead of second place with Pembroke, MA, in fifth. At the back of the field and 13 seconds behind the leaders, Bishop Guertin's Chris Cogliano received the baton to run the third leg. The officials were about to do something wrong, but he was about to do something right.
After 800 meters of leg 3, officials put the anchor runners on the track. As the leg 3 runners came into the exchange zone expecting to run their final lap, they found their teammates there to take the batons. As instructed by the officials, they made the exchange and disqualified their teams. All of them but one.
Chris Cogliano kept running, completing his four laps before handing off to anchor Jeff LaCoste. It must have been a strange sight seeing Bishop Guertin, whose team ran the full 16 laps, come in dead last in that heat, 54 seconds behind the second to last team. I wonder what kind of applause they received?
After the race, meet Director Jim Spier acknowledged the mistake made by the officials and decided to award medals to the top six teams in the first heat -- the ones who had run 6000 meters instead of the proscribed 6400 -- AND to the top six teams that had run the full distance. That included five teams from the second heat and Bishop Guertin, whose time of 17:50.63 placed them second, just ahead of a fine performance from Lowell.
I have no idea why Chris Cogliano didn't stop running after three laps when every other runner in the race did as he was told. Maybe it was because he was so far back that a coach or official told him to go ahead. But I like to think it was because he knew he wasn't done yet, and so he ran through the remnants of the chaos to finish his leg.
It just goes to show that the world is full of well-meaning people telling you what to do. Unfortunately, some of them are wrong. In this race, the officials were wrong and Chris Cogliano did the right thing anyway. Good job, Chris.
Congratulations also to All-Americans Lowell (3rd in full race) and Pembroke (6th in the short race).
Results of Boys 4x1600 Relay (lap short)
Results of Boys 4x1600 Relay (full distance)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Hard to see why the other 3rd legs didn't also run thru the official's stop signs. They knew they had run only 3 laps. And why did the 4th legs take the baton?
HS kids are taught to listen to officials during a race and their nature is usually not to defy them. I was there watching in horror as this happened, and many of the kids felt afterwards that it was their fault- but how on God's earth can an official at a national meet make this kind of mistake? OBE, you make it sound like BG was through first, but they were last, gapped by a decent margin. They had time to react. The rest of the kids were in close races and had officials screaming at them to hand off, why wouldn't they? In the end, NB did the right thing, but 6 teams missed chances to set their state records and 6 others are all Americans, but know they wouldn't have been had the other heat went correctly. What a mess!
I understand how it happened, but maybe, as in the military, kids need to be taught to disobey orders they consider wrong. .....And congrats MCRUN on your team's success.
Post a Comment