Thankfully, with the advent of hi-tech finish line systems like Finish-Lynx,
the era of the amateur track official is nearly over. I say thankfully 
because, while I enjoyed the opportunity to watch top rank collegiate
competitors from a perfect trackside vantage point, I can't shake the
feeling that I unknowingly helped to cheat many a finisher out of a well
earned place.

The dirty little secret is that several aspects of the amateur track
official's job were simply impossible.

A big part of the problem was that there were never enough officials. (I 
assume this is pretty much true about collegiate meets everywhere - it 
was certainly true here at Syracuse.) In theory, there were supposed to be 
two sets of officials watching the finish of a running event: timers, and
judges. Timers were supposed to concentrate on getting an accurate finish
time for a designated person or place, while judges were supposed to figure
out the order of finish. In practise, these tasks are almost always 
combined in a single job, that of timer-judge. Even worse, there usually
weren't even enough timer-judges to assign one to each place. You had to
cover multiple places. 

The most impossible job of all was that of the head timer-judge. Here at
SU that unenviable position has usually been filled by one Mike Guzman, 
a local track coach/ballroom dance intructor of hispanic extraction. Mike
had an amazing photographic memory for race finishes, and the touch of
latin chutzpah necessary to be able to project confidence about decisions
he new in his heart to be pure bullsh*t.

The most obvious impossible job is that of deciphering the outcome of a
blanket finish in a short dash race.

A typical official's conversation after the finish of a 55m dash final might
have gone like this:

Mike: Jim, who'd you have in first?

Jim: Lane 3. And it looked like lanes 1 and 5 went 2-3, but it was very
close.

Mike: Joanne? 

Joanne: Mike, I thought lane 1 actually got first. Also, the runner in
lane 4 was coming on at the end and I think he snuck in for second.

Mike: Okay, who was picking third? Terry? Who got third?

Terry: Dunno, Mike. My watch crapped out. 

Mike: I wanna know third place lane, not third place time!

Terry: Oh, sorry. I thought you wanted the time.

Okay, quick! What was the most probable finish order?

Runners always wondered why the officials gathered in a tense knot after the
sprint finishes, and any who wandered over to inquire about their time were
curtly waved off. More often than not, the "official"
finish order was the end result of complex negotiations among the judges.

An even more impossible job was picking some finish places in long distance
races. I was once assigned to pick 12th and 13th places (!) in the men's 5000m
final of the Big East indoor championship. There were 25 competitors of
widely varying ability running 25 laps of a 200 meter track. After 15 laps
or so, the runners appeared to be uniformly spread around the track, some
having been lapped two and three times. 

There you are, turning in slow circles as you follow the two people you
think are currently in 12th and 13th place. Suddenly your 12th place guy
passes a runner. Has he moved into eleventh? Or is he lapping somebody?
Deciding upon the former, you call out "who's got 14th place?" No answer. 
At some point, you decide to start counting finishers, hoping on hope that
12th and 13th won't be close.

Air traffic controllers have it easy.