{"id":216272,"date":"2025-12-03T11:19:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T11:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/03\/world-athletics-scraps-landing-zone-idea-to-avoid-war-with-long-jump-athletes\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T11:19:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T11:19:21","slug":"world-athletics-scraps-landing-zone-idea-to-avoid-war-with-long-jump-athletes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/03\/world-athletics-scraps-landing-zone-idea-to-avoid-war-with-long-jump-athletes\/","title":{"rendered":"World Athletics scraps landing zone idea to avoid \u2018war\u2019 with long jump athletes"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

World Athletics<\/a> has scrapped controversial plans to introduce a take-off zone for the long jump rather than the traditional board because of widespread hostility from athletes, the Guardian can reveal.<\/p>\n

Jon Ridgeon, World Athletics\u2019 chief executive, said that while the proposals had trialled well, \u201cultimately you do not want to go to war with your most important group of people\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

The idea of introducing a wide take-off zone was to reduce the number of foul jumps because athletes would no longer be required to try to hit a narrow board before jumping into the sand pit.<\/p>\n

However, the Olympic long jump champion Miltiadis Tentoglou described the proposal as \u201cdog shit\u201d because it took much of the skill out of the event, while Carl Lewis called it an \u201cApril Fool\u2019s joke\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is the athletes do not want to embrace it,\u201d Ridgeon admitted. \u201cSo we\u2019re not going to do it. You ultimately don\u2019t go to war with your most important group of people, right?<\/p>\n

\u201cSo even though I would argue we identified a problem, and found a viable solution, if the athletes don\u2019t want it, fine, we drop it. But I don\u2019t regret looking at that. I think that\u2019s our job as the governing body.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Nikola Horowska of Poland jumps with the controversial take-off zone at a test event in Berlin earlier this year.<\/span> Photograph: Maryam Majd\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

World Athletics trialled the idea earlier this year after research found that around a third of long jumps at championships were no jumps, and that reduced the interest of fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely from the emotional reaction of the crowd, they lose energy with no jumps. So we said, \u2018Can we solve that exam question?\u2019 And so we created the concept of a wider take-off zone\u2019. We trialled that solution, and it actually trialled well.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it was tested at two events earlier this year<\/a>, World Athletics found that the number of no jumps dropped to just 13% and spectators enjoyed the new format. However, most of the sport\u2019s stars remained impeccably opposed. But Ridgeon insisted that World Athletics had no regrets for attempting to improve the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, I think we would be accused of being asleep at the wheel if we didn\u2019t look for weaknesses,\u201d he added. \u201cThe long jump\u2019s a really exciting and vibrant part of our sport. But I think it\u2019s our job to push the boundaries and say, \u2018look, can we make something that\u2019s already good even better?\u2019 That\u2019s what we try to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I was slightly frustrated is that everyone just jumped on that one thing, when we were looking at four or five things to improve and speed up the long jump.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey include simple things like getting the officials to rake the pit quicker. We\u2019re also working with Seiko to create a concept called instant results. So when you land in a sandpit at the moment, it might take up to 20 seconds to get the result. We\u2019re working on less than five seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

World Athletics has scrapped controversial plans to introduce a take-off zone for the long jump rather than the traditional board because of widespread hostility from athletes, the Guardian can reveal. Jon Ridgeon, World Athletics\u2019 chief executive, said that while the proposals had trialled well, \u201cultimately you do not want to go to war with your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":216273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6802],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-216272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athetics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}