This discussion was moderated by Paul Hoffman from My Two Cents: Thoughts of a Small Town Therapist.
His last article, The Trouble with Racewalking, was highly controversial and a great discussion pursued in the comments,
Thus, we have Jeff Salvage and Margo Schulter discussing the sport further. It’s a great read, and a long read, so grab a drink and enjoy!
Thanks to Jeff and Margo for “speaking out”!
Jeff Salvage Speaks
Sports in general are governed by many rules and definitions. Often outsiders looking in could suggest they seem to be picked arbitrarily. Why is basketball’s shot clock 24 seconds or the distance between first and second base 88 feet? Race walking is no different. Technically there are many rules and a two part definition. The rules are not usually controversial in their nature; i.e. you cannot aid a competitor by giving them a lift in a car during the race. However, the definition of race walking is surrounded by controversy. The purpose of the definition is to separate race walking from running. Over the years the definition of race walking has changed quite often to reflect the times. In the early more distinguished era of walking competitions, the definitions of walking focused more on clothing than biomechanics. The current definition, as stated by USATF (USA Track and Field) and IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations), focuses on describing race walking so that it best represents the difference between race walking and running given the current state of technology.
The definition is:
Race walking is a progression of steps so taken that the walker makes contact with the ground so that no visible (to the human eye) loss of contact occurs.
The advancing leg must be straightened (i.e., not bent at the knee) from the moment of first contact with the ground until in the vertical upright position.
Controversy surrounds both portions of the definition. Some proponents would like to remove the straightened knee portion of the rule entirely. Others wish to define it with more proper biomechanical terms. I will steer clear of these debates and focus on the loss of contact portion of the definition.
To understand what the implications of the first portion of the definition are requires understanding the context in which it is applied. Someone made up the rules and umpires and referees enforce them. For years the definition of race walking stated in some manner that one foot must always be in contact with the ground. Indeed when I learned to race walk this was the stipulation. However, even back then, most people involved in race walking suggested that most elite walkers did not maintain absolute constant contact with the ground. The consensus was there was a brief and undetectable moment when an elite race walker had both feet off the ground. As a very legal looking race walker myself, I have pictures of myself walking in the low 7 minute per mile race for 20km’s where the photographic evidence showed me with a double support phase, meaning for an instant both my feet were in contact with the ground simultaneously and I had no flight phase whatsoever.
Remember, these were the days before the proliferation of digital cameras and thus the influx of hundreds of thousands of crowd sourced photographs. It was also the days before video cameras were capable of taking footage at speeds of 1000 frames per second. Quality photographs were a luxury and capturing stills from video was at best a fuzzy endeavor. When we looked at video tape, we used to concede that as long as a walker wasn’t off the ground for more than one frame, they were legal.
In the mid 1990’s as camera technology improved, more and more elite walkers were caught off the ground in slow motion playback and still photography. The problem was that if you were watching a race walker with a flight phase of less than 1/30th of a second, the human eye couldn’t pick it up. Further technology wasn’t the answer. Although there was talk of creating a run alarm, similar to detecting a touch in fencing, no viable system was created. There were issues of reliability, cost and distribution. Even if one were created, it would create a consistency problem. At what level would competitors be required to wear an “alarm?” One of the beauties of race walking is that any athlete in any country can train for it. It’s not by coincidence that race walking champions have come from characteristically under represented countries to the podium. Recent champions have stemmed from Poland, Ecuador, Mexico, Greece, Spain, Slovakia, Kazakhstan etc. Adding technology presents a great risk to the balance in the sport.
The definition was therefore modified in 1996 to reflect the spirit of what transpires on the track/road. In practicality it should have changed nothing. To state “to the human eye” is merely a clarification. If the event is judged by people and not machines, then how does adding the phrase “to the human eye” change anything? Note that at the same time “to the human eye” was added, the straightened knee portion of the rule was also changed and made stricter.
The debate about adding the phrase “to the human eye” is derived from the concept that rules shouldn’t be subjective. However, most of our sports are based on very subjective rules subject to the human eye. Paul Hoffman points out in his post the breast stroke in swimming as the rare example. Along those lines, trotting in horse racing has the same issue. The reason these sports have issues is because style is part of the rules. However, sports rules subjectivity doesn’t end there. Football, baseball, and basketball all have highly subjective “to the human eye” components. While their rulebook may not state “to the human eye,” by allowing instant replay on some issues and not others creates a tacit implication that “to the human eye” is the rule of law on the non-reviewable plays.
Football doesn’t check the proverbial video tape for holding calls. Neither for that matter does basketball. Baseball could easily call balls and strikes using technology, but instead they choose the human’s ever moving strike zone that is loosely defined.
The problem with race walking’s definition isn’t the definition; it’s the interpretation and training of the judges. Science could and should define what “to the human eye” means. The consensus amongst my peers is somewhere between 1/30th and 1/50th of a second. If we use the more generous value of 1/30th of a second, then judges should be trained to recognize the distinction between walkers with a flight phase of less than 1/30th of a second versus over 1/30th of a second. Using high speed video, exams could be determined that test definitively whether a judge’s disqualification calls mirror reality. Instead, the highest level of judging in the world, the IAAF, uses a popularity test with no basis in science to determine what the correct answers to the video test for judging are. The result is a wildly inconsistent evaluation of race walking illegalness.
Changing the definition back so that “to the human eye” is not included increases subjectivity and encourages judges to look for other signs that a walker is off the ground. These include bobbing heads, high knee drives, and other extraneous motions. If instead judges are trained more scientifically and spectators are educated to the meaning and implication of the rules, race walking would be just fine.
Margo Schulter Speaks
It’s a great pleasure to join in this dialogue with Jeff Salvage, a world-class athlete, scholar, and scientific investigator of modern racewalking. Whatever "outsiders looking in" may think, this is mainly a family discussion among people devoted to various styles of athletic walking: "Which styles should be legal in which events within our discipline?"
As in the discipline of swimming, so in walking, the reality of "different strokes (or strides) for different folks" naturally leads to a range of recognized styles or techniques, event types, and rules. Greater diversity can make walking a more accessible and thriving discipline of track and field, with events under the current 1996 rules as part of the mix. Athletic walking should be a beautiful gaited horse with many paces and styles, not a one-trick pony limited to a single gait, however impressive or meritorious.
It’s a brute fact of physics that any form of really fast competitive walking done by humans on the Earth’s surface will involve some of the biomechanical incidents or techniques of running — in a straight-knee or bent-knee style, and quite apart from any legal or illegal flight phase that might occur! Froude’s Law sets a limit of around 10 km/h or 6 mph (a 10-minute per mile pace) for natural or "inverted pendulum" walking. Different walking styles and rules incorporate some features of running while excluding others, and sometimes also excluding a natural, everyday, walking gait. But no one is pure and pristine who goes beyond or outside the limits of brisk street walking: not people walking under the 1996 rules nor, for example, those of us training or competing under rules strictly excluding a flight phase but otherwise permitting any technique.
To say that style rules like those adopted by the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) in 1996 "separate racewalking from running" is rather like saying that the rules for the breaststroke "separate swimming from running." Indeed they do, while additionally separating the breaststroke from other forms of athletic swimming: e.g. the backstroke, or the crawl favored in freestyle.
Likewise, the 1996 racewalking rules define one type of walking event and set it apart both from ordinary running, and from various other styles of racewalking illegal under these rules, but legal under earlier IAAF rules adopted at various points in the 20th century. The 1996 rules, like the breaststroke rules, describe one athletic style or fashion, not the totality of walking or swimming!
Very simply, the 1996 rules legalize something strictly excluded by earlier IAAF walking rules: an aerial or flight phase, where both of the walker’s feet leave the ground at the same time. Traditionally this is known as the technical fault of "lifting," but the 1996 rules make it legal as long as the artful optical illusion of continuous contact with the ground is not clearly broken, as judged by the human eye in real time. To compensate for this artistic liberty, the rules set very strict limits on knee action, excluding a vast range of walking forms as well as ordinary running — just as the breaststroke rules exclude other forms of swimming.
Imagine a breaststroke race where slow motion videos reveal that the athletes — quite legally! — are covering something like 135 meters of each kilometer by jumping out of the pool for very brief periods and running on the deck! That is about what the 1996 racewalking rules authorize, with flight phases often just at the threshold of realtime visual perception, say 0.030 or 0.040 seconds. This compares with an aerial phase on the order of 0.115 seconds for a marathon runner such as Kara Goucher whose style tends to stay "close to the ground."
As far as the 1996 rules defining "the difference between walking and running," let’s consider the situation of an athlete at the 35 km mark of a 50 km racewalk who adapts Jeff Galloway’s run/walk strategy to her situation. She takes a normal walking break at 6 km/h or 4 mph, a pace of 15 minutes per mile. As someone maintaining perfect contact with a natural human "inverted pendulum" gait where the body’s center of mass (CoM) is highest at midstance with the support leg near the vertical position, she is the very paradigm of a walker in either a classical definition (continuous contact) or a biomechanical one (inverted pendulum technique). Her racewalking competitors, as shown by Italian champion Gaspare Pavei and his colleagues, are using a gaitcloser to running in that the CoM is lowest at midstance and highest at double support (the brief phase when both feet are on the ground) <see http://air.unimi.it/handle/2434/208061>. Also, these walkers might be off the ground for brief periods. Guess who gets disqualified?
This makes sense as a matter of style: using a natural walking gait in an event under the 1996 rules is like swimming the backstroke for part of a breaststroke race. As an effort to distinguish walking from running, however, these rules would be rather like a legendary Emperor in his New Clothes who orders almost everyone in the crowd arrested for indecent exposure.
Correctly noting that racewalking style in the late 20th century had already evolved to the point where "top-flight" competition was more than a metaphor, Jeff asks: How did the 1996 rules "change anything"? The answer is that they changed the ethical bounds on what kind of technique a walker may deliberately cultivate while playing by the rules, as a real-life conversation from the year 2000 may illustrate.
In a practice session, an outstanding contender managed to walk 3000m in 12:17, with a video showing flawless contact and a true double support phase. His contact was as solid as if he had been "glued to the track." Pre-1996, we could simply congratulate this walker for full legality at 14.6 km/h or 9.1 mph — about a 6:35 per mile pace!
A prominent racewalker responded, however, by asking "Shouldn’t there be a slight flight phase," and adding that it would be "legal, if not perceptible to the human eye, and should provide an advantage." When someone raised an ethical question, this walker replied: "The rule does not say that you should have a double support phase. The rule says that a walker must appear to have one foot on the ground to the human eye. It doesn’t say you must. I do not see it as a morality issue. When the old rule was in place, I advocated walking with a double support phase. We should walk within the rules."
See http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/racewalking/message/2435
Of course, that prominent racewalker was right: if you’re competing under the 1996 rules calling for the optical illusion rather than necessarily the reality of continuous contact, then it’s quite ethical deliberately to cultivate a flight phase. And there’s nothing inherently immoral about a special kind of walking event favoring a very subtle aerial gait, combined with knee restrictions which make the technique in one sense "a purer walking than natural walking."
This form, like the breaststroke or any artistic style, should continue to thrive and evolve in its own way.
However, why not also have a different kind of athletic walking event where someone able to walk 3000m in 12:17 with true double support could compete under rules favoring that technique, and allowing walkers to flex their quadriceps and their imaginations by exploring the bent-knee styles excluded by the 1996 rules?
French racewalking champion Alain Moulinet has proposed a 100 km Freestyle Walk, with the same distance for women and men, where the contact rule alone would apply, in its traditional and strict version. The distance would favor race strategies tending to slow people down to paces where flight phase problems are less likely, while presenting a contest of truly Olympic proportions
<http://www.athle.com/ftp.espaces/000014/marche/marche%20info.pdf>.
The 1949 IAAF walking rules are perfect for Moulinet’s event:
Walking is progression by steps so taken that unbroken contact with the ground is maintained. At each step, the advancing foot must make contact with the ground before the rear foot leaves the ground.
This rule permits a vast variety of human gaits, ranging from brisk normal walking and classic heel-and-toe styles to various bent-knee shuffles and "jog-trots" — but all meaningfully distinguished from ordinary running by the absence of a flight phase. And make no mistake: Usain Bolt couldn’t run 100m in 9.58 seconds, nor Michael Johnson 200m in 19.32 seconds, without benefit of a flight phase! The challenge is to see how fast we can be while maintaining continuous contact with the ground — in contrast to the runner’s air travel.
The contact rule, with its requirement for a true double support phase, could be enforced by judges using a standard like that of the UK rules for Centurion events where people walk 100 miles in 24 hours: "[I]t will be up to the walker to demonstrate continuous contact!"
See http://www.centurions1911.org.uk/Race%20walking/AboutRaceWalking.htm.
Ideally, the judges will use tools such as video replays or shoe devices to help them make more accurate and informed decisions, as Moulinet suggests — but always with humans in the loop. We must judge a "progression of steps" rather than an isolated stumble caused by an unexpected obstacle on the course or the need to swerve and avoid a collision with another competitor, etc. Video requires human interpretation, but that is no reason not to use it, as it has long been used in training and coaching.
In my view, we need a less blunt instrument than disqualification to address the technical faults that inevitably occur when athletes press their technique to the limits of the rules — and sometimes overstep the bounds. Time penalties or "tariffs" proportioned to the degree of the fault, the walker’s degree of intention, and the advantage gained are a good alternative. Disqualification could be reserved for unsporting conduct: outright running between judges, deliberately cutting a course short or interfering with the progress of another walker, and so on.
Elite racewalker Viisha Sedlak, who favors the traditional heel-and-toe style, offers a view showing how the contact rule can create a level playing field to test a range of straight-knee or bent-knee styles, as long as everyone stays on the ground:
In a race, a good straight-leg walker will invariably beat bent-leg walker of the same fitness level — [as] long as the bent-knee walker doesn’t cheat and add a flight phase into his stride. Flying off the ground with bent knees is no longer walking — it’s running!
<http://www.aperfectdealer.com/nbnews/jan_01_vol2/story1.html>
Whether or not Viisha Sedlak’s hypothesis about which style is fastest holds up in practice, her intuition that "flying off the ground" changes the nature of the game is something that many walkers very much share. My one friendly amendment would be to replace her verb "cheat" with "go faster than his technique allows," which any of us might do without any unethical intent. In events under the 1996 rules, of course, "flying off the ground" in a way that doesn’t cross the threshold of a judge’s visual perception isn’t a technical fault at all, much less "cheating" — it’s playing by the rules!
Let’s keep the 1996 rules for the events they govern, but also have Freestyle Walks, including Moulinet’s epic 100 km Olympic event as a living laboratory for new walking techniques, race strategies, and methods of judging using video and other technologies to assist the human eye and mind in reaching the most fair and accurate decision. Our discipline will be the winner.
Jeff Salvage Speaks
Reading Margo’s well thought out rebuttal sheds light on our difference in opinion. Personally, I am not looking to expand race walking so that different forms of walking are incorporated into track and field. We have a great difficulty fielding complete teams in international competition as it is. To further dilute the field into more events we increase our difficulties. Should we add backward walking next? My friend, after not cracking into the elite race walking world, actually tried that! Race walking has long tried to expand by reaching out to health walkers, power walkers, etc and have not had great success in producing any kind of movement there. So the focus of this discussion seems to stem from motive. I desire a single competitive sport called race walking.
As to what race walking is, it is important to discuss it biomechanically. The current rule discusses straightening the knee. This is different that straight-knee walking as one describes an action and the other describes a condition that is ambiguous. What does a straight knee mean?
If one takes the strict interpretation of Froude’s Law as suggested, then there is no race. Everyone would walk 10 km/h and there would be one giant pack of race walkers. A trained athlete can easily maintain 50km at this pace, even with a moment of double support. So where is the race? That said, I am pretty sure I can race walk faster than this and maintain contact. Margo herself sited an example of a race walker maintaining contact at sub 7:00 per mile. So how exactly does Froude’s law hold up practically in this situation?
I strongly disagree with Margo with the statement relating my comparison of running and walking being the same thing as a comparison to walking and swimming. Running and walking are both forms of ambulation. Just as the breaststroke and freestyle are forms of swimming. Any rule change obviously sets it apart from all events that came before it. Rule changes in other events/sports occur all the time, but we still consider it the same event/sport.
The rule change doesn’t change anything from a practical point of view unless we employ technology. A debate on using technology is reasonable. I don’t buy the ethical argument. If anything, changing the rule made walkers more ethical. Most elite walkers do not intentionally cheat. They don’t increase their flight phase when out of site of a judge. Since we can’t tell the difference between walkers with a double support phase and a slight flight phase without technological involvement, the change of the rule simply synchs reality with the text. As stated before, added technology creates a financial burden that race walking can’t support. Suggesting we use video replays and shoe devices is completely impractical. I’ve analyzed a lot of video. There is no practical way to use video to ensure constant contact throughout a race. Other technology hasn’t been developed and tested. So that leaves us without technological help.
Tariffs have been proposed before. They would be way too hard to employ practically. Does the walker go in a time out or have it assessed at the end. The former is impractical, the latter creates chaos at the finish line. How many people in front of you are actually behind you?
If we expanded to 100 km events as the primary events for race walking, we will have even less organizations willing to host events and far fewer participants in the event. The amount of time necessary to train would kill what’s left of our event/sport.
Now it’s your turn to speak!
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