New safety rules

[alwaysinjured]

So chucking javelins, hammers and discus around an infield that people are running round isn't a risk sport? I wish it were true because I wouldn't have been getting a bunch of emails from some disgruntled athlete who nearly got hit by a hammer that went over the back of the cage!

Both 'athletics' and 'fell running' have safety issues to address - just not the same ones. "compulsory sections must contain no hazards" pretty much stuffs up every aspect of athletics. Stream crossings in cross country, water jumps in steeple chase races to name but two.

I agree, indeed most of the international athletes And events I have been involved with , are indeed throwers, and it is shameful how athletics, track owners, councils and the rest seem to treat throwers as a second class sport. But the hazards are very different, as is the way of mitigating risk. Most of the problems come from too many people together, where in fellrunning getting isolated is normally a factor in problems. Hammer competitions are generally finished before a track programme even commences to avoid the people concentration.

It is UKA who seem to dislike the principle that fell running is inherently riskier than running around a track, which is part of the attraction, or that competitors are happy with that, and so happy to absolve organisers of responsibility for them, so it is unhelpful to force more responsibilty on organisers than competitors themselves want to see. Nanny state strikes again, is alive and well in UKA. The concepts of getting lost or suffering from disorientation due to hypothermia are hardly common on a track, so there is a very different way of thinking.

An athletics event organiser is made responsible for the saftey of public and participants, and rightly so because many of them are below any age of responsibility so cannot be relied on to manage their own safety , from the moment they arrive at an event to the moment they leave. It is also reasonably practicable to do.

It is a world apart from fell running, when participants in essence have to manage their own safety from the moment they leave the start compound, to when they arrive at the finish, on a course which is inherently hazardous in between.

In contrast A hammer event properly organised when cages are inspected and set up properly poses little more risk than any other event. The main participants at risk are the judges in the outfield, which is why calling sequences are used to ensure no throw takes place until their attention has not only been requested, but also acknowledged by each of them prior to each individual throw. I have run a lot of hammer, discus and shot competitions, and a few javelin in my time! It is up to the event organiser to make sure that nobody involved in any other field or track event is at risk whilst other events takes place, generally by making sure there are none in the case of hammer.