Time has come for World Athletics to budge from its outmoded policy on false starts

This is a column by Morgan Campbell, who writes opinion for CBC Sports. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

What can you do in one one-thousandth of a second?

Voluntarily, I mean.

Hang up on a robocall?

Block a forex/crypto grifter's follow request on Instagram?

Hit "don't recommend channel" when YouTube's algorithm serves up a Joe Rogan/Jordan Peterson collaboration?

Many of us could make many of those decisions in a flash, but not in .001 seconds. In the real world, thousandths of a second barely exist. Anything we can measure that closely is a matter of reflex or luck.

But in the alternate dimension known as the World Athletics Championships, one one-thousandth of a second can determine the difference between a great start and an illegal one; a keen competitor and a cheater.

WATCH | Making the case to abolish the false start rule in track and field:

Witness Devon Allen, the future Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver and the third-fastest 110-metre hurdler in history, looking to win a medal in Eugene, Ore., where he competed as a collegian at the University of Oregon. He registered a reaction time of .101 seconds in his semifinal on Sunday. A fast, but legal, result, according to the World Athletics rulebook, in line with the governing body's ideas about the fastest possible reaction to a starter's pistol.

In the final, Allen reacted in .099 seconds — a negligible difference everywhere but in World Athletics' guidelines, which state that any figure faster than .10 seconds is a false start, and the result of an athlete anticipating the gun. Common sense says that Allen could not possibly have decided to react one or two thousandths of a second faster in the final, but World Athletics' zero-tolerance rules said he had to go. He offered a mild protest, but officials hustled him away from the start line, and the TV broadcast maintained its brisk pace.

Allen was the third athlete Sunday night to earn a false-start disqualification. Julien Alfred (reaction time: .095) and TyNia Gaither (.093) were both bounced from their 100m semis for reacting after the gun, but before the rule book says they should have. 

Veteran track coach P.J. Vazel tallied every reaction time in every men's 100m dash and 110m hurdles race at every world championships since 2011. All those rounds produced 30 reaction times faster than .115 seconds — but 25 of them came this week. Most years, that number is zero.

WATCH | American hurdler Devon Allen speaks on false start at worlds: