A hurdle runner at the 2022 World Athletic Championships was disqualified from entering the final race on Sunday after starting too soon by one-thousandth of a second.
Devon Allen, a wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, secured an automatic spot as one of the eight finalists with a second-place finish of 13.09 seconds in the 110-meter hurdles semifinal earlier in the day, but he could not run the final race due to starting 0.001 seconds too early. Regulations state that any reaction time within 0.100 seconds of the sound of the gun indicates a false start, according to the NFL.
“There’s not really much I can do,” Allen said after the race Sunday night, according to Pro Football Talk. “It’s just one race, which is frustrating. Track and field is so difficult because you train a whole year for one race. It happens and I’ll learn from it.”
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Allen’s disqualification prevented a U.S. sweep in the championship. Fellow U.S. athletes Grant Holloway and Trey Cunningham picked up first and second places in the final, with Holloway finishing in 13.03 seconds and Cunningham in 13.08 seconds.
Allen is a three-time U.S. national champion and a two-time Olympian, reaching the 110-meter hurdles finals in both the 2016 Rio de Janeiro and 2020 Tokyo Games. He has never finished better than seventh place in a World Championship.
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The hurdle runner, who signed a three-year contract as a wide receiver with the Philadelphia Eagles, will now focus on football. He is due to report to his first training camp with the team on July 26.
