Athletes not registered with a home country association would be liable for disqualification from any meetings, according to the newly published draft of the 2016 rule book

Only athletes registered with the home country associations would be eligible to compete in track and field and possibly other disciplines under a new rule proposed by British Athletics to come into force in April 2016.

Present rules state that athletes “should” be registered and that only in home country championships is it a requirement.

Though from next year’s track and field season, athletes who are not registered and paid-up will face disqualification, assuming the rule changes go through.

Some higher-level competitions such as the national leagues and English Road Running Association relays have already begun only taking entries from registered athletes.

The main reason for not enforcing eligibility as a requirement to compete in the past was thought to be the difficulty caused to meeting organisers and post-competition potential reworking of results, including team scores. It is not yet clear whether new systems will be brought in to provide a solution to this.

A statement announcing the new rule book, which for the first time would merge IAAF and British Athletics rules, infers that the rule will affect all disciplines, including road running. It states: “Under IAAF rule 22 (UKA supplement 1) Provision is now made for Registration to be compulsory across all disciplines of athletics, with disqualification if not complied with, rather than this requirement being only being compulsory for competition in National Championships (UKA Rule- 10 (2), Note 2 in the 2014 UKA Rule book).”

However, AW is awaiting clarification from British Athletics on this, as it seems unlikely it would include road running.

Among other proposed updates on the 2014 edition of the rulebook would be that competitions requiring a UKA permit will include “fun runs”, which are events without awards or published results.

A few other minor technical changes may be of note to field-eventers and officials.

See www.britishathletics.org.uk/competitions/rules for more details. British Athletics is asking for feedback by July 27.

British Athletics also recently announced proposals to change the junior age groups to under-14, under-16, under-18 and under-20 with the transition date changed from August 31 to December 31. Consultation on these is being undertaken until May 29 and then feedback would come from British Athletics by July 10 with a final decision to follow by September 4.

A further draft of the rule book will be circulated in October.

The post British Athletics plans to make registration compulsory appeared first on Athletics Weekly.