This morning at the 2012 US Olympic Trials in Omaha, everyone was a bit surprised when there were no flyover starts in the prelims sessions of the trials. This is an about-face from the last we heard about the matter, which is that flyovers would be a “go” to speed up morning sessions.
There were a ton of complaints, with shouts of “this is the Olympic Trials, not an age group meet,” and that the flyover starts would toy with the sanctity of the meet. But at the end of the day, I think this was the right decision to keep this an elite meet.
But the real surprise was that nobody knew that it was coming. We’ve spoken to coaches who thought there would be flyovers, until it started.
it wasn’t a surprise to the 500+ coaches who attended the General Meeting on Sunday night where it was announced that there would not be flyover starts.