Track and Field (and Road) Athletics

[Phil H]

The other point about Kipchoge's run, if it's not too obvious to be worth saying, is that there wasn't anyone else in the race - the event literally only existed to try and get him below 2 hours.

I remember watching it live and I still think it's one of the best things I've seen in sport, but equally I don't think it's remotely comparable to a record set in a traditional competition.

[Gavin Chipper]

In other news, Dwain Chambers made the UK indoor championships 60m semi-finals at the age of 45! He has previously served a drugs ban of course.

And Josh Kerr beat the 2-mile indoor world record. It's "only" the indoor record obviously, but his time of 8:00.67 would be the 4th fastest time and 3rd person on the all-time list outdoors. It is, however, a non-standard event, so arguably the competition level is lower.

[Gavin Chipper]

Also Grant Holloway beat the 60m indoor hurdles record.

And an outdoors one - Letsile Tebogo beat the 300m world record with a time of 30.69, beating Wayde van Niekerk's 30.81 and Michael Johnson's 30.85, which was the record before that.

[Adam Gillard]

And on the high jump / pole vault thing, surely nowadays they could have a system of laser beams or something to measure the height you reach, so each jump is properly measured, rather than having to get over each set height!

Aye, but you can't ask people to jump over nothing. The bar provides a point in space to aim for, and tactile feedback, both crucial. I'd agree that the distance above the bar might also be measured by such a method, another way of doing this could be to have them jumping over a large pile of tiny bricks which would act in the same way as sand.

The long jump and triple jump are also pretty crude. Your jump is measured by the further back bit of sand that is disturbed I believe, but when you land, it must be pretty random how far backwards the disturbance goes. Lasers all round!

In this case, not falling backwards is part of the skill. It's easy to throw your feet way out in front of you, but there's not much point just measuring where they land if you're laying flat on your back afterwards. I'd suggest that the long jump can be seen as analogous to getting across a river, and where any of you hits the surface is crucial in that situation.

When it comes to long jump (and triple jump for those that consider it a non joke event) it would be nice if the measurement was from take off to landing.
Some big jumps were from before the plasticine mark

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/68345703

[Gavin Chipper]

That would be very interesting but by reducing the take-off gap to zero, it does kind of break old records. They do generally show the gap to the line nowadays anyway, but I don't know if they know the gaps for the old records of Mike Powell and Jonathan Edwards.

[Marc Meakin]

Aye, but you can't ask people to jump over nothing. The bar provides a point in space to aim for, and tactile feedback, both crucial. I'd agree that the distance above the bar might also be measured by such a method, another way of doing this could be to have them jumping over a large pile of tiny bricks which would act in the same way as sand.



In this case, not falling backwards is part of the skill. It's easy to throw your feet way out in front of you, but there's not much point just measuring where they land if you're laying flat on your back afterwards. I'd suggest that the long jump can be seen as analogous to getting across a river, and where any of you hits the surface is crucial in that situation.

When it comes to long jump (and triple jump for those that consider it a non joke event) it would be nice if the measurement was from take off to landing.
Some big jumps were from before the plasticine mark

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/68345703

Even though I'm all for records being broken but isn't the take off board part of the discipline and therefore levelling the playing field somewhat.
I mean Javelin throws are under the same type of problem, judging when to release.

[Marc Meakin]

That would be very interesting but by reducing the take-off gap to zero, it does kind of break old records. They do generally show the gap to the line nowadays anyway, but I don't know if they know the gaps for the old records of Mike Powell and Jonathan Edwards.

I agree that old records should be preserved and effectively a new discipline is created.
You could take it a srmtep further with other athletics events like doing away with false starts and measuring times from the blocks which could turn the 100 metres into a VAR situation where the athlete who crosses the line first maybe didn't actually 'win'

[Ian Volante]

I can fully understand why existing athletes are whinging about this idea, as they've practised for a long time to perfect the take-off. If it becomes just a long jump event rather than a long jump from as close to an arbitary line as possible, then it simply renders a lot of their work obsolete. Doesn't mean it's not a much better idea though.

I wonder if it might encourage more sprinters to double up again. Carl Lewis is the last person I remember being particularly successful at both.

[Marc Meakin]

I can fully understand why existing athletes are whinging about this idea, as they've practised for a long time to perfect the take-off. If it becomes just a long jump event rather than a long jump from as close to an arbitary line as possible, then it simply renders a lot of their work obsolete. Doesn't mean it's not a much better idea though.

I wonder if it might encourage more sprinters to double up again. Carl Lewis is the last person I remember being particularly successful at both.

I think his sister doubled up too.

Maybe they could use it for the Decathlon/Heptathlon first

[Gavin Chipper]

I can fully understand why existing athletes are whinging about this idea, as they've practised for a long time to perfect the take-off. If it becomes just a long jump event rather than a long jump from as close to an arbitary line as possible, then it simply renders a lot of their work obsolete. Doesn't mean it's not a much better idea though.

I wonder if it might encourage more sprinters to double up again. Carl Lewis is the last person I remember being particularly successful at both.

I agree it's probably better overall if you were starting from scratch. I'm not sure it would make that much difference to sprinters though. Of the skills required to double up as a long-jumper, I don't think being able to get near to the board is probably the most challenging.

[Gavin Chipper]

I can fully understand why existing athletes are whinging about this idea, as they've practised for a long time to perfect the take-off. If it becomes just a long jump event rather than a long jump from as close to an arbitary line as possible, then it simply renders a lot of their work obsolete. Doesn't mean it's not a much better idea though.

I wonder if it might encourage more sprinters to double up again. Carl Lewis is the last person I remember being particularly successful at both.

This would obviously be crazy!

I've said before though that an argument could be made for reducing all times by 0.1 seconds, as you're not allowed to start until that amount of time has elapsed, so it's effectively not part of the race.

But then it might technically be possible to win a race in -0.1 seconds. At the start, your fingers have to be behind the line, but at the finish it's some other part of your body that has to cross the line, so if you had a long enough body, you could already be across the finish line when the guns goes off.

[Ian Volante]

I can fully understand why existing athletes are whinging about this idea, as they've practised for a long time to perfect the take-off. If it becomes just a long jump event rather than a long jump from as close to an arbitary line as possible, then it simply renders a lot of their work obsolete. Doesn't mean it's not a much better idea though.

I wonder if it might encourage more sprinters to double up again. Carl Lewis is the last person I remember being particularly successful at both.

This would obviously be crazy!

I've said before though that an argument could be made for reducing all times by 0.1 seconds, as you're not allowed to start until that amount of time has elapsed, so it's effectively not part of the race.

But then it might technically be possible to win a race in -0.1 seconds. At the start, your fingers have to be behind the line, but at the finish it's some other part of your body that has to cross the line, so if you had a long enough body, you could already be across the finish line when the guns goes off.

This might be more relevant in races with a standing start. As it is, having the hands behind a line makes as much sense as anything. In longer races, it's feet behind the line, as that's easiest to measure and because reaction times are irrelevant at that distance anyway.

If you were going to change anything, I'd suggest that the starting blocks be the point at which a race starts: make them fixed behind a line, and force athletes to use them. You don't need to faff with checking finger positions then.

Another potential change would be to measure the first body part/ski across the line like they do in cross-country skiing or parallel ski racing for example. Not worth the bother of resetting previous records though.

[Marc Meakin]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/68440268
Still wanna see his one day