IAAF adopt zero tolerance policy on false starts

From Steven Downes in Berlin

USAIN Bolt's bid to defend his Olympic 100m title at London 2012 could come unstuck by one wayward twitch or move, after the IAAF opted for a controversial change its rules on false starts.

THING OF THE PAST: False start rules to be changed to one stirke and you're out

From 2010, there will be no warnings or second chances for runners who try to beat the starter's gun, after a vote at the rule-making Congress of the IAAF.

Meanwhile, another proposal, backed by Britain, to ban drugs cheats from the next World Championships after their failed doping test, was rejected.

And the sport's oldest annual world championships - in cross-country running, first staged as an international race between the Home Countries and France in 1903 - will be scrapped after 2012.

International athletics has been experimenting with its false start rule since 2005, allowing the field one starting error before automatic disqualification for any further offenders.

Today it adopted the stricter rule used in international swimming, in which anyone detected as moving before the starter's gun is ejected from the race.

With pressure sensors on sprinters' blocks, even the slightest movement more than one-hundredth-of-a-second can register as a false start.

The move that will please television stations around the globe, but will test the discipline of the world's top sprinters, and was not without opposition from meeting promoters and leading sprinters.

Martyn Rooney, the 400m runner in the British team for the World Championships, said, "I don't agree with it.

"Can you imagine how an organiser who paid a load of money to have Usain Bolt would feel if he was disqualified before he had even run?"

The tougher anti-doping rule was supported by Britain and other nations, frustrated that some drug cheats, having served the mandatory two-year ban, could in theory still get to compete in the next World Championships.

But that proposal was opposed by the IAAF's ruling Council, which fears that such a break from the World Anti-Doping Agency's Code might attract immediate legal challenges.

The IAAF Congress voted overwhelmingly to move its world cross-country event to once every two years, rather than annually, as it had been staged for 106 years with the exception of the world wars.

The world governing body has grown weary of the competition being a virtual benefit event for two or three countries from east Africa.

Between them, Kenya and Ethiopia have dominated the senior men's team title since 1981, collecting the lions' share of the annual £200,000 prize fund from the IAAF.

And recently, few European nations, including Britain, have even bothered entering full teams. The last time a European-born runner won the individual senior men's title was Portugal's Carlos Lopes in 1985.