I set up the start wand personally at about two dozen World Cup races in the years 1995-99. Ted Savage, who as part of the FIS Timing Working Group writes a lot of the timing rules, was technical director for TAG Heuer at the time and instructed me to set the wand so that it hits the average racer just below mid-shin, a few inches above the top of the boot tongue.
I'm 6'2" and the top of my boot tongue is 14.5" off the snow, so that puts the wand at about 16"-17" off the snow. That is right in the middle of the ALGE guidelines. I usually lowered the wand an inch for the chicks on sticks.
The objective is consistency. Bad placement isn't going to cause you to miss starts completely, but Ted has proven quantitatively that even the best start wands have a lot of "mechanical slop" in them, so the outcome of a close race can be affected by a wand that is set too high (hitting the cmnpetitors across the knees) or too low
(hitting the boot cuff).
Start wands are relics from another era and hopefully will be replaced at some point by photocells, in the interest of fairness and accuracy.
Originally posted 14 Nov 2001 by James Broder
