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Item 52 – Submitted by Sue Humphrey, Chair, Women‟s Track and Field Amend Rule 180.13(c) as follows:
Once a competition has begun, competitors are not permitted to use implements for practice purposes or to use the throwing circles, runways, or area within the sectors for practice trials, with or without implements. However, in vertical jumps, a competitor who has not taken an initial trial in at least one hour from the first attempt of the
Proposed Amendments USATF Rules Of Competition pg. 16 2010 Annual Meeting – Virginia Beach, VA
competition shall, under the direction of the event official, be allowed to use the runway and landing area, without the crossbar, for warm-up at the change of the bar to the height they enter the competitor. A maximum of one and one-half minutes is allowed for the competitor in the high jump. A maximum of two minutes is allowed for the competitor in the pole vault. See Rule 180.6, which authorizes practice or warm-up when an event is conducted in flights.
Reason: This addition follows the NCAA rules and gives our more elite jumpers an option of checking their run in long competitions where the starting height is low. In the PV especially, we start the event at a lower height to accommodate the field. This means the better jumpers are waiting. This option to the rule would allow the meet field event referee to offer this run through opportunity to our better jumpers, if they want it.

73-vaulter wrote:Is that not the logic behind not being able to use the runway or the track during the event?

Divalent wrote:I think its a good rule, for the obvious reasons of safety and for allowing athletes who enter late in the competition a fair warmup. These two events (HJ and PV) are unique in the sometimes extreme interval between the allowed warmup period and when some of the athletes make their first attempt.

I'm not sure I buy the argument that accomodating athletes this way is unwise because they won't be prepared for international competition. For one, there isn't a sport where international rules are the same as the national, pro, college, and high school rules, and it doesn't seem to be a big issue elsewhere. Secondly, it seems to me this logic would result in the international rules propagating, level by level, all the way down to the HS level, and would result in a sort of stasis in the rule books. (So why not let HS'ers set the standards at 0?) And is there any reason to think that the folks that decide on the international rules are the smartest and wisest rulemakers? Innovation (for safety as well as for technique and strategy) can arise at any level.