Commonwealth Games Athletics: Singapore miss out on 4x100m relay final after successful appeal by Bahamas and Australia

India, Tuesday, October 12, 2010 — The Singapore men’s 4×100 metres athletics relay team lost their automatic qualification into this evening’s final as heat winners, after Bahamas and Australia successfully appealed their disqualification in the same heat.

The Singapore team, represented by Gary Yeo, Muhd Elfi Mustapa, Muhd Amirudin Jamal and Calvin Kang, had placed third in the second heat of Round 1 clocking a season’s best time of 40.14 seconds.

The Bahamian team were first in 39.33sec and were followed by Australia, 0.2sec later. Both teams were first disqualified after allegedly infringing the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) rule 170.14, which stipulates that “In all Relay Races, the baton shall be passed within the take-over zone … Passing of the baton outside the take-over zone shall result in disqualification.” This meant Singapore were slated to run in the final later today but the successful appeal has put paid to that appearance.

The Australians were only notified that they were disqualified three hours after the end of their heat. By that time, they had already left the stadium. They submitted a late night appeal and were successful in overturning the disqualification based on an alleged illegal baton-exchange between their second and third runner.

There were three heats in total, and only the top two teams from each heat, as well as the next fastest two teams overall, would advance to the final. Singapore were initially only the third quickest in the latter aspect, but if the disqualification of Bahamas and Australia had stayed, they would have advanced to the final automatically as winner of Heat 2.

20-year-old Calvin, who anchored the team in the heats, said after the race, but before learning of their qualification for the final: “We ran a good race. The exchange was smooth and I’m quite certain we can get better and go below 40 seconds again. The competition was intense, especially in heat 1, where India hit 39 seconds flat. I think we have learnt a lot from this competition.”

Their coach, Melvin Tan, was satisfied with what he saw.

He said: “I am happy with their performance. There was a strong field and the timings achieved by a few of the teams like India were stunning. Our boys had a good exchange and ran a good race together. We will probably need to head for a few good overseas competitions in the next two months to prepare for the Asian Games.”

The 4x100m team will now have to wait for another chance at lowering the national record of 39.82 seconds, set at the 2009 South East Asian Games in Vientiane, Laos.

Ed’s note: This post was updated after we learnt of the successful appeal of Australia and Bahamas

Athletics Men’s 4x100m Relay Heats Results