Athletes have been tweeting about IAAF’s decision to limit the number of races at the World Championships and the Olympics.

At their council meeting in November 2009, the IAAF stated their intention to limit all track events at the World Championships to having a maximum of three rounds. In the men’s and women’s 100m, a preliminary qualification round will be added for unqualified athletes.

The athletics schedule for London 2012 will reflect these changes too. It means that all 100m sprinters in possession of an A or B qualification mark will have one less round to compete in, while the athletes representing countries with no individual qualifiers will have to earn their way into the official first round.

No longer will the likes of 11.48 sprinter Okilani Tinilau from Tuvalu line up against Usain Bolt (as happened at the last World Championships in Berlin), with the Jamaican just going through the motions and doing the bare minimum required to get to the quarter finals.

However, having three rounds for sprint events is not unusual. At the last World Championships in Berlin, for example, both 400m events and the women’s 200m had just three rounds. And of the athletes who exited the men’s 100m in the first round, only one – defending silver medallist Derrick Atkins – was considered to be a big name. All other leading contenders safely made it through to the quarter finals.

But the decision has split the worldwide athletics community. Fans of the new schedule say that it is a good move for the real contenders, who will not need to waste their time and energy or risk injury by competing in an opening round, while still giving the outsiders an opportunity to compete at a major championships.

The critics, meanwhile, argue that it is an elitist move, that one less round will limit the Olympic experience of many of the leading athletes, and that it is simply not in the spirit of the Olympics.

Others see it as a rebranded first round for the 100m, where the better athletes to get a bye into the quarter finals – a viewpoint that has left athletes from other events feeling that sprinters are being given preferential treatment.