In a bizarre incident, Tamil Nadu’s R Harshitha was made to re-run the women’s 400m hurdles alone on Saturday due to a goof-up by race officials, and she eventually failed to qualify for the finals at the National Inter-State Senior Athletics Championships.
On Friday, the 21-year-old Harshitha had finished third in Heat 1 with a time of 1 minute, 01.03 seconds and was initially adjudged to have qualified for the final.
However, it was later discovered that Lane 8, in which she was running, had only nine hurdles instead of the mandatory 10, with the fifth hurdle missing due to a bizarre goof-up by the race officials.
After clearing the fourth hurdle, a confused Harshitha crossed over to lane number 7 and cleared the hurdle there. She then moved back to her original lane and completed the race. Karnataka’s Megha Munavallimath was way behind in the race and so there was no collision with Harshitha.
Later, Harshitha was asked by the officials to re-run the race alone at 9.30 am on Saturday, citing World Athletics Competition Rule (CR) 18.7, which allows the race referee to order a re-run in certain circumstances.
She did so but clocked 1:02.54, 1.51 seconds slower than her original time, and failed to qualify for the eight-athlete final.
World Athletics Competition Rule 18.7 says: “If, in the opinion of the appropriate Referee, circumstances arise at any competition such that justice demands that any event or any part of an event should be contested again, they shall have authority to declare the event or any part of an event void and that it shall be held again, either on the same day or on some future occasion, as they shall decide.”
In fact, she herself lodged a verbal complaint after the race as to why the fifth hurdle was missing in her lane.
“I was confused that there was no hurdle in may lane after the fourth one. I had to take a decision in a split second and so crossed over to the hurdle in my left lane. After that I ran in my (original) lane and completed the race,” Harshitha told PTI.
“Even the race officials told me that I had committed a mistake. I am surprised what fault have I committed,” said the youngster who initially thought after the re-run that she had qualified for the finals.
She, however, took it sportingly and said she would move on and do better in the coming events.
“I am disappointed but what can I do now? I could not qualify. But it’s alright, I will do better in the upcoming events like the National Open,” she said.
An official of the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) admitted to the goof-up but said human errors occur even in big events.
“I agree those officials who are looking after the race should have avoided the error. The people who are involved in taking and bringing the hurdles must have forgotten to put one hurdle in that lane,” the official said on conditions of anonymity.
“Just before the women’s hurdles heat races, the men’s hurdles heats happened. The officials reduced the height of the hurdles for women, so may be at that time, there could have been confusion and the error.
“But, we have done what we could have done, gave her another chance to qualify for the final. The better timing in her original heat race could be because she covered less distance by crossing into the left lane to clear the hurdle there.”
The race official cited the case of Indian javelin throw superstar Neeraj Chopra whose first throw was not recorded by the officials at the 2022 Asian Games in China because of a technical glitch with the electronic distance measurement system.
The scoring system experienced a technical delay, failing to log the distance. While Chopra was waiting for his score, officials gave the green light to the next thrower and Chopra’s exact landing mark was lost.
Chopra accepted the re-throw and won gold with a best of 88.88m.