Flashes of Panic

In recent years, as world records have become harder to come by (and American records even harder) there’s been increased interest among the record-promoting community in all-comers records. In as much as I consider records an exciting part of the sport, I like the idea of all-comers records, but I have issues with the way they’re sometimes presented.

The concept is pretty simple, if hard to explain. A world record is the best mark in the world for a given event under a given set of rules. (This is why world records in the javelin had to be rewritten a decade or so ago when the weight of the spear was changed.) There’s a sort of implicit additional idea that the record must be set on Earth, that there might be some superset of interplanetary or universal records. In the other direction, there are continental (or area) records, and national records. (Look at the list of records Roger Bannister set in one race.)

These get complicated because they are tracked two ways, by citizenship or by venue. An American record is a national record; it could be set anywhere in the world, and the criteria is that it is set by a citizen of the USA. A U.S. all-comers record, however, may be set by anyone; the criteria is that it be run within the borders of the country. (There are Area records—Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, etc.—kept the same way.)

The problem I have is that announcers so often wax lyrical about the “fastest time on American soil!” Oh, come on. There’s no soil out there; it’s a few centimeters of synthetic fabric. A media rep I talked to last night agreed, but further noted that only track geeks understand the label, “all-comers record.”

“Why not just say, ‘Fastest time ever run in the US’?” she asked.

I happen to like the evocativeness of the phrase “all comers,” with its expansive implications beyond just the dry word “record,” but when it comes to using a definite phrase, why not?