Paris (AFP)
Venezuelan triple jumper Yulimar Rojas sharply criticized Saturday on Twitter the three-way final introduced this year in the Diamond League for horizontal jumps and throws, deeming it "absurd and ridiculous".
The organizers of the main circuit of world athletics have changed the format of the length, triple jump, weight, javelin and discus competitions with the establishment, after five trials, of a final between the first three with their results reset to zero.
"I'm trying to understand the value of this new competition format and I'm also curious about who created it. It doesn't make sense, it's absurd and ridiculous," Rojas wrote on Twitter.
"It's as if in a basketball game we played three quarters and in the last everything started from zero, regardless of the number of points accumulated throughout the game."
"It's illogical" and "it's not fair to any of the competitors," added the two-time world champion and 2nd best performer in history (15.43m).
On Saturday in Monaco in the Diamond League, Rojas was as usual well above her rivals with a jump to 15.12 m on her 2nd try but she bit the board in the three-way final and had to give in Jamaican Shanieka Ricketts won with a final leap to 14.29m.
The American Christian Taylor, two-time Olympic champion in the triple jump and founder of The Athletics Association, an athlete's union, also protested last week against the implementation of this formula.
"I hope this idea will stop after this season. I would like to understand how it could be better than the traditional format?" He wrote on Twitter.
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