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Does the World Athletics Championships have a false start problem?
Devon Allen stole the headlines for all the wrong reasons when he got disqualified from the 110m hurdles final. We examine the rules and technology around false starts.
US athlete Devon Allen has made global headlines this week after being disqualified from the 110m hurdles final at the World Athletics Championship in Eugene, Oregon. He was judged to have left the starting blocks a thousandth of a second too early. On More or Less we crunch the numbers behind false starts in athletics, asking how quick is too quick when it comes to reacting to a starting gun and whether something else might have gone wrong with the measurement system.
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More or Less: Behind the Stats
Tim Harford investigates numbers in the news: are they always reliable?
