Waqa helps kids
FIJI’S qualified athletics race starter Osea Waqa utilises his free time teaching primary school athletes on the techniques and rules of every track event before the FMF Chow Games begins tomorrow.
Waqa’s is not simple as it sounds. He determines the outcome of a race and has to make the call on the disqualification of an athlete.
Waqa does his job out of passion and goes by the book with his decisions.
The qualified starter has been giving athletes tips and training on the basics of reacting after the gun as mentioned in the IWF rule 162. Some of the tips are:
■ there is no such thing as a bullet start because according to the IWF Rule 162, ‘Bullet start is a false start’ because athletes should make their move after the gun;
athletes cannot run with or before the gun, they can only react and run after the gun;
■ a false start is when the hand loses contact with the track and the foot lets go of the starting block;
a warning will only be given to the athlete with an unfair start and that is when the athlete makes body movement on the count of “set” by the starter, but the body doesn’t lose contact with the track, but his or her movement forces other athletes to react and start before the gun; and
■ an unfair start will issue a warning to everyone and a repetition will lead to disqualifications.
“A word of advice to all the athletes that is to react only after the gun because many athletes and fans think that on the call of ‘set’ by the starter the athletes have the count of two seconds and off they go.
“My advice to them to prevent conflicts after the race is to start after the gun because the starter has the last say and whenever he is satisfied with the racers set to run, he will pull the trigger and not on the count of two to three seconds,” said Waqa.
We are mainly concentrating on the middle and long distances, not so much on the sprints so we have trained our athletes on those events well Viliame Kabakoro