Are The British Officials Playing Favorites At IAAF World Championships?

With so many DQs at world indoors this year, and particularly Paul Chelimo's, you have to wonder why wasn't this applied to hometown hero Mo Farah in 2017.

Mar 3, 2018 by Gordon Mack

Are The British Officials Playing Favorites At IAAF World Championships?

The emerging storyline of this year’s world championships has been the numerous disqualifications of notable athletes for minor lane and curb violations.

USA’s Colleen Quigley, who was a victim of this type of DQ at the 2017 World Championships in London, spoke out about the British officials being overzealous with their DQs at this year's indoor championships in Birmingham.

While the officials have the rightful argument that "rules are rules," this wasn’t the case a few months ago when their hometown favorite — Great Britain's Mo Farah — broke the same rules that countless others were disqualified for this weekend.

In the 2017 IAAF World Championship 10K final, Farah clearly stepped on the inside of the curb, but wasn’t disqualified. Now, for proper comparison, check out this side-by-side GIF of Farah and Chelimo tripping over themselves and taking one step on the inside of the curb.

A few notes:

Both athletes take one step on the inside of the rail
Both athletes don't gain a competitive advantage
Both athletes aren’t touched by another competitor (see below for a closer look at Farah)