Unofficially - More to be added if the athletes recorded their own times.

-    Catalina Malone             DQ

This sort of fiasco is likely to become more common as our elderly (I include myself in this) officials become slower and less capable. That would not matter if we had younger officials coming into the sport. They don't exist however. Increasingly we are having to rely on people recruited on the day, and they are always a gamble. I don't know precisely what the failure of the electronic timing was. Normally, even if the system misses the start of a race, it is possible to start the system manually while the race is in progress and take the photos at the end. If a manual time is available for any of the finishers, it is then possible to use that as a datum and arrive at the times for all the others.

The system at Wellington is a home-made video based timing system, that has been very useful in the past, but may now be well past its "use by" date.

Vanessa Lowl's time was a big PB, and Daniel Lord was only a few seconds outside the time he recorded at Christchurch recently. Daniel has improved by several minutes in recent months, and is now operating at a very different level. It is a few years since we had any junior men walking under 14 minutes. He will not want to have any more performances spoiled by failures by officials.

As a photo finish operator myself, I recommend to all walkers to record their own finishing times, and ignore the comments of officials, coaches and others who scoff whenever they see it happening. This race proves that it is simply a sensible precaution.

Jack Tregurtha