It might seem like a fitting gesture for two athletes locked in a neck-and-neck battle for first place to put competitiveness to one side and cross the finish line hand in hand.
But for triathletes competing on the world stage, there is no room in the rule book for such sentimentality, and British duo Jessica Learmonth and Georgia Taylor-Brown found out at a test event ahead in Tokyo ahead of the Covid-delayed Olympics in 2021.
Learmonth and Taylor-Brown had been battling for first place throughout the event, inseparable during each phase of the three-stage race.
In a spontaneous moment of sportsmanship, the teammates rest of the field in their wake, they locked hands as they crossed the finish line.
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Learmonth was initially credited with the victory after a photo finish determined that she had, technically, broken the plane of the finish like milliseconds ahead of Taylor-Brown.
However, the two athletes did not realise that they had inadvertently contravened the International Triathlon Union’s competition rule 2:11f, which states that triathletes must not “finish in a contrived tie situation where no effort to separate the finish times has been made”.
They were both immediately disqualified. Flora Duffy of Bermuda, who had finished third, was instead declared the winner. And Learmonth and Taylor-Brown's GB teammate, Vicky Holland, was bumped up from fifth to third.
“I really feel for Jess and Georgia because they raced exceptionally well and I feel like they absolutely smashed it and deserved the first and second finish,” said Holland, an Olympic bronze medalist from the Rio Games in 2016. “I don’t know how British Triathlon will choose things now. I wouldn’t want to be a selector.”
Peter Charlish, a principal lecturer in law at Sheffield Hallam University, told The Guardian: “The decision is clearly right by the letter of the law, even though it is debatable as to whether this should be regarded as a contrived finish. Of course it is horribly harsh for the British athletes. But if the ITU didn’t apply its own rules, others would have surely challenged them.”
Ryan Baldi