PARIS — With his hands on his head and tears in his eyes, Mozambican sprinter Steven Sabino walked off the purple track at the Stade de France and disappeared down a tunnel.
The 18-year-old could hardly believe he would return from the Olympics without even having had the chance to race.
Just moments earlier, Sabino had been on the starting line for the second round of the men’s 100m preliminaries, but he slipped out of the blocks before the starting gun went off. Track officials ruled he had made a false start and showed him a red card indicating he was being disqualified.
“We got into a fixed position and I heard a bang,” Sabino said between sobs ten minutes later. “I don’t know where it came from. Probably from the pole vault. I don’t know. I heard a bang. That’s the kind of bang you hear when the stun gun goes off.”
Sabino briefly outlined his case to track official Vadim Nigmatov, pointing to his ears to indicate what he had heard. He said he asked to run the race under protest, but Nigmatov and the other officials refused.
“They didn’t even listen to what I had to say,” Sabino said. “I sacrificed everything for this.”
Sabino’s situation is the latest reminder that track and field’s zero-tolerance false-start policy can be the cruelest and most unforgiving rule in sport. It is more sudden than a sixth foul in the NBA finals, more damaging than a red card at the World Cup and more common than an unsigned scorecard at one of golf’s biggest tournaments. It has provoked tantrums in otherwise mature adults and left some of the sport’s legends by the wayside. Even the great Usain Bolt.
And moments after Sabino, the rule eliminated another runner, Britain’s Jeremiah Azu, from his preliminary heat of the 100 meters. Like Sabino, Azu pleaded his case without success.
Athletics’ governing body adopted a zero-tolerance policy on false starts more than a decade ago in a bid to streamline the sport and eliminate deceptive maneuvers.
Under the old rules, sprinters and hurdlers, known for their slow reactions, tried to gain an advantage by guessing when the starting gun would go off, knowing that the penalty would fall on the other participants and not on themselves. The multiple false starts slowed down the races and made it difficult for television networks to work at a specific time.
In their quest to make the sport more accessible to television, World Athletics officials also risked depriving spectators of the chance to see a top-level sprinter race. Imagine the outcry if Noah Lyles or Sha’Carri Richardson had left the track too early this weekend and received the red card that Sabino was shown.
Sabino said she has dreamed of running on the Olympic stage since she started running track at age 8. She is currently in Grade 12 at a school in South Africa, juggling schoolwork and her training.
“My training scores were showing what I wanted to see,” he said. “I thought this was my chance to show the world that I was capable and unfortunately it didn’t happen.”
The cruelest thing for Sabino? According to him, it was his first false start.
“The fact that this is my first and it’s on the biggest stage…” she said, her voice trailing off.
Brutal. Absolutely brutal.