The repechage, some thoughts on the new addition to athletics

The repechage

I can be a bit obsessive—regular readers will have noticed. My latest obsession is the repechage. It comes from the people who brought you the long jump without a board. Say no more. (Monty Python, Nudge nudge.) And as we know, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse!

I have observed that in the women’s 800m, two athletes in the traditional six fastest losers category progressed through the repechage, but 4 did not. However, none progressed through the semi-finals – whether because they were not good enough (after all, 4 of them would not have qualified by the traditional method) or because they had an extra race in their legs. The timing of the men’s 1500 was heat, repechage, and semi-final on successive days. George Mills (GB), an athlete capable of reaching the final, ran, by his own admission, in a horrible race in the heat. He progressed to the semis but said nothing afterward that he could not run three tough races at the Olympic level in three days.

What does the repechage achieve for athletes and the Olympics? It allows athletes to run twice before a capacity crowd, but does it help the competition? In the middle distance, running an extra race certainly puts an athlete at a disadvantage compared to those who progressed without going through a repechage. It is one of life’s unanswered questions why the repechage for 1500 is the following day when the 110m hurdlers have 2 days to recover and compete in their repechage. You could also say that repechage races help fill the program.

That leads nicely into the case of Freddie Crittenden, a US sprint hurdler. Freddie was ‘slightly injured’ with an ‘aggravated muscle.’ Noting a two-day gap between the prelims and the repechage, he decided not to risk going flat out in the prelim but just jogged down the track, stepping over the hurdles and finishing in 18 seconds!

After his performance on Sunday, Crittenden said of the decision to finish last: ‘It was an intentional choice. It was either get top three or everyone gets through to the repechage. Every athlete has a chance to race in the repechage. So, I decided not to make an emotional but a smart choice. Give my body time to recover a little bit from being aggravated. Lean on my medical doctors. Lean on God. And just wait for the repechage round. Come out [here] and try to kill it at the repechage round.’ Crittenden did nothing wrong but hardly what the repechage was intended for!

In the 400, Shaunae Miller-Uibo stopped running halfway round but then walked to the finish. She was initially shown as DNF, but that has been corrected to a time of 2:22.29. Is she also planning a repechage run?