Officials with Special Olympics Washington are apologizing after hundreds of athletes were disqualified from races for performing too well.
“We were seeing adults and children, athletes just crying, really upset, really hurt,” said Joshua Strickland, a longtime mentor and volunteer with the Special Olympics in Federal Way.
Organizers began enforcing a new rule at competitions over the weekend: if an athlete records a time more than 15 percent faster than their qualifying time, they’re disqualified. That includes athletes like swimmer Joshua Coy.
It’s known as “Honest Effort,” and the goal is to make competition fairer, said President and CEO Dave Lenox. It became necessary as the organization grew, and space became more competitive.
“So now, they need to win a gold medal to move on to the next level,” said Lenox. “What happened then is people started to turn in times that were a little bit slower than what the athlete could really do. Sometimes it was accidental, but there were a fair number of times it was done intentionally.”
Lenox said parents and coaches would often complain that some races were unfairly matched. But organizers quickly realized that 15 percent was far too strict, he said.
“But they didn’t have a way to fix it so that they didn’t penalize athletes who ran early as opposed to those than late,” he said.
Hundreds of athletes were initially disqualified, Lenox said. Too many, Strickland believes.
“Really it doesn’t live up to the mission standards, which is to give the kids a place where they belong, a place they can compete, and where they can belong as part of the program,” Strickland said.
Lenox said they’ve now revised the cutoff from a 15 percent improvement to 30 percent -- that covered 75 percent of the disqualified athletes. Awards for those athletes have been reinstated.
Special Olympics Washington is also planning a conference call with coaches Thursday to gather more feedback moving forward.
“Our commitment is to quality competition for our athletes,” Lenox said. “So we’re going to listen to them, listen to the coaches and look for some answers to get to the best we can get.”
In the meantime, Lenox offered his apologies to the athletes that were disqualified.
“We’re sorry this impacted you this way,” he said. “We’re sorry your competition experience ended the way it did that day. But know that our intention was to give you the best competition we can, so stay with us.”
For the sake of transparency, we do want to mention that KING 5 is a media partner with Special Olympics Washington. We will support Team Washington at the 2018 games this July.
