Paul Little: Bare feet running ban a crock

It's hard to imagine what sort of bumptious pillock with a clipboard looked at Lower Hutt 10-year-old Henry Patterson's feet and thought: "Well, those will never do", before banning the helpless moppet from the final of the 60m sprint at the inter-zone primary school champs.

An organiser said the ban was to protect Henry's feet from spiked shoes.

I don't know much about how athletics events in Lower Hutt are organised, but apparently there's a section in which contestants jump up and down on each other's feet in their shoes.

It all sounds very colourful and I'm surprised it's not on Trip Advisor's list of Top 10 Things to See in Lower Hutt*.

Although, come to think of it, that's probably a list of Top 2 Things to See in Lower Hutt, the other being the sign that says "Masterton 84km".

Elaborating on the spiked shoe potential injury scenario - or possibly struggling to find a way, however tenuous, to make it plausible - an official explained young runners struggle to stay in their lanes.

I haven't seen a lot of primary school races since I was eligible to take part in them, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen one in which the fleet-footed midgets veered wildly from one lane to the other, mauling each other's feet in the process.

Neil Sargisson, a Lower Hutt School Sport Association spokesman - and can't you just see him climbing and clawing his way to that sought-after sinecure, leaving a trail of bloodied, battered and disappointed contenders in his wake - bravely carried on his attempts to elucidate: "Everybody's going to have an opinion on whether or not kids can run in shoes or not. The rule on that day is because most run in shoes."

So, the reason that kids run in shoes is that kids run in shoes.

Henry's mum, Andrena, had a small spew about it, calling the decision "cruel and inhumane", which might have been overstating the case but you can understand her getting a bit carried away under the circumstances.

Those notorious feet and mouths for rent Sir John Walker and Nick Willis piled on in praise of bare feet and their usefulness in running and winning races.

But it's hard to know how much weight to give their views.

Walker hasn't won a race in ages, and Willis, with his medals in the 1500m at two consecutive Olympics, has yet to prove he has the staying power that entitles him to an opinion.

Also Walker did his running in the '70s and it's quite possible feet have changed since then in ways that he wouldn't know about but a Lower Hutt primary school athletics event organiser would.

Regrettably, the decision allowed the barely sentient knuckle-draggers of the anti-PC legions to criticise it as - you guessed it - "PC gone mad".

Henry's bare feet ban has nothing to do with political correctness - and everything to do with stubborn and muddleheaded dingbattedness.

Will the imbroglio have put him off athletics for life? Probably not.

But let's hope it will have put him off slavish adherence to rules just because they are there, and not discouraged him from thinking for himself.

* I looked it up so you don't have to: TripAdvisor has 22 things to do in Lower Hutt.

Number one is the Light House Petone picture theatre, although this ranking probably varies according to what's playing.

That's followed by the Westfield Queensgate mall, the Orongorongo Track and a visit to the Hutt City i-SITE Visitor Information Centre ("service with a smile" reports a satisfied and informed visitor).