This week's news that Edmonton has aborted its bid to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games because of economic pressures called to mind - well, mine at any rate - a previous false start in the capital of Canada's Alberta region.

Had the plummeting price of oil not had such an effect on the economy of a city known as the "Oil Capital of Canada" then the Commonwealths might have returned 44 years after they were first staged there. And 21 years after Edmonton hosted the World Athletics Championships.

Now, however, the recall gun has fired on the Edmonton bid team, which has reluctantly announced it is "re-focussing" on 2026 - leaving the field open for the only other bidder, Durban.

Reg Millley, President of Edmonton's Bid for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, has conceded economic pressures have forced the city to postpone its efforts until 2026 ©Getty Images

It was in Edmonton, on the eve of those World Championships, that the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) decided at its Congress to introduce a controversial new ruling on false starts.

For most of track history, runners have received a warning after making one false start, and have been disqualified if they made a second. Since the Seventies, that has meant reacting to the gun inside a tenth of a second, deemed to be the limit of human capability.

What the IAAF - which had arrived in Edmonton as the International Amateur Athletic Federation, confirming the change to its current name during that same Congress – did in August 2001 was simple and unsatisfactory.
The new rule - which came into effect in 2003 - meant that in events up to and including the 400 metres there could be one false-start, from anyone in the field, which did not incur disqualification. But if any runner, whether the one who had incurred the first false start or not, jumped the gun again, they were disqualified.

The thinking behind this was clearly to avoid lengthy hold-ups before races got underway. Live athletics audiences, for obscure reasons, are turned swiftly surly by false-starts, particularly if there is more than one. And above all, of course, such delays adversely affect the paramount operation of the TV schedulers.

In 2001 the world and Olympic 400m champion Michael Johnson, in Edmonton to work for NBC Television, commented: "I know a lot of the athletes are against it, but again, you have to understand that this is a business."

The men's marathon field gets underway at the 2001 IAAF World Championships in Edmonton. But there were false starts elsewhere... ©AFP/Getty Images

Be that as it may or may not be, over the next few years it became clear that some sprinters, perhaps those not best known for their own blistering starts, were working the system by deliberately using up the allowable false-start to put extra pressure on their rivals.

In 2009, this false-start rule was acknowledged as being a false-start in itself as the IAAF Congress agreed for a simpler ruling: all false starts incur instant disqualification (it has become known as the "one-and-done" false start rule).

Two years later the re-modified rule produced the highest profile victim you ever did see when Usain Bolt, Olympic and world 100m champion, was disqualified before the 100m final at the IAAF World Championships in Daegu.

That rule persists however, although it was significantly modified ahead of the London 2012 Olympics when the IAAF permitted athletes to move in the blocks without being disqualified so long as their hands do not leave the ground or their feet the blocks.

Previously, twitching or flinching in the blocks has resulted in disqualification - most controversially when US athlete Jon Drummond, recently banned for eight years for doping offences as a coach, was ejected from the 100m quarter-finals at the 2003 World Championships in Paris after equipment registered movement in the blocks.

Drummond insisted, repeatedly, "I did not move", and staged a lay-down protest on the track, eventually holding up proceedings for almost an hour before leaving the track in tears.

So much for the Edmonton false-start false start. It was not the only one of those Championships, however.

The change to the starting rules was opposed by all the countries which have, historically, provided the fastest runners, namely France, Germany, Russia, the United States and Britain, for whom UK Athletics President David Hemery made an impassioned speech.

But the alterations were constitutional, whether ultimately effective or not.

Usain Bolt is disqualified from defending his world 100m title in Daegu in 2011 as a result of changes to the false-start rule ©Getty Images

Such could not be said of the false start made in the women's 5,000m by Russia's Olga Yegorova.

A month before the Championships got underway news leaked out that Yegorova had tested positive for the banned blood-booster, erythropoietin (EPO), but that the result had been invalidated on a technicality.

The general consensus was that Yegorova should not have started at the Championships. But she did, in extraordinary circumstances.
She ran against numerous athletes who wore red ribbons on their shirts as symbols of their desire for an effective testing system to eradicate EPO misuse.

When she ran her heat, a group of British athletes in the stands, including Paula Radcliffe, held a banner with the words "EPO cheats go home". During the final she heard the chant go up "EPO, go-go-go".

When she won, people booed. She took no lap of honour. Olympic champion Gabriela Szabo called her "a robot".

At the medal ceremony she stood inert, hands by her sides, like someone facing a firing squad. One of the other medallists had boycotted the ceremony in protest at her inclusion. When she received her medal, there were more boos.

Olga Yegorova pictured after winning the world 5,000m title in Edmonton in 2001, a month after her positive test for banned blood-doper EPO was annulled on a technicality
©Getty Images

At an excruciating post-race press conference, she concluded: "Ah, it's just a piece of metal. If you want I can give it to you...it's just sports. But life goes on...should I have finished second or third to please the crowd?"

The temptation at the time was to respond to this rhetorical question with an answer along the lines of "Yes. Second or third would have been better than first. And fourth or five would have been better than second or third. And not at all would have been best of all."

But looking back now, in the light of the disturbing recent signs in Russia which appear to evidence a systematised doping regime, Yegorova appears less of a she-devil and more of a victim.

It would be good to think, if the Commonwealth Games do eventually return to Edmonton in 2026, that there will be no such besmirching events for either track and field or any of the other sports involved. Please God the Athlete Biological Passport does not prove to be another false start...

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. To follow him on Twitter click here.