Sprint Fly

The Sprint Fly

Simply put, the Sprint Fly is a series of collaborative time trials. Each team fields 5 sprinters who take turns running the fastest 20m segment possible. Each participant gets 3 attempts (i.e. one attempt per round, with 3 rounds). The results are converted to points where the sprint squad with the highest combined total wins.

Scoring

Both teams start with 45 seconds of time points. Each attempt subtracts time from your team total. For example if a sprinter runs 2.05, their team time points would go down to 42.95. Logically the faster a team runs, the more time points they will have at the end of a match.

When all the sprint flys have been run, the remaining time points are multiplied by 10 to get the match score. For example if a team of 5 averages 2.00s in a match they would have 10 fewer time points every round. By the end of round 3 they would have around 15 time points (45 > 35 > 25 >15). And then the 15 points would be expressed as 150 for the final score.

	round 1	round 2	round 3	total points (x10)
sprinter 1	1.96	1.93	1.98	(31.3)
sprinter 2	2.03	1.97	1.95	(30.5)
sprinter 3	2.08	2.04	2.03	(28.5)
sprinter 4	2.00	1.99	2.05	(29.6)
sprinter 5	1.99	1.99	1.97	(30.5)
time points (45)	34.94	25.02	15.04	150.4

The individual contributions can be seen if you share the time points between the team members. So 9 time points – (attempt₁+attempt₂+attempt₃) all multiplied by 10. In this example sprinter 1 is the mvp because they ran the fastest series and contributed 31.3 points to the total.

Rules

A sprint fly must be measured electronically with laser gates or sensors. The increments are too small for something like a stopwatch to be reliable.
The 20m fly zone must be marked out accurately to avoid inflated times. This is best done with a clickwheel, though a straightened tape measure and track markings are acceptable (100m hurdle #2 and 110m hurdle #4 are 19.9m apart). You should add 10cm to the fly zone if using the hurdle markings.
The match must be completed in under 30 minutes (2 teams of 5 people taking 3 turns = 2x5x3 = 30). This means that each athlete has 1 minute to make their attempt or they forfeit their turn.
Participants are allowed to use any distance they need to accelerate to top speed. Sprinters typically begin their run 40-60m before the start of the fly zone.