Re: t-and-f: interesting article on changes in the walks
Netters, P. N. Heidenstrom writes: Q1 - undoubtedly. At the Sydney Olympics at least the first 18 finishers in the 50k were breaking contact at every stride coming into the stadium. This is not true. That was not apparent to the judges, but why not is puzzling: loss of contact is caused by a characteristic floating gait which is hard to mistake Again you are wrong. The "cause" of an athlete to have a "float" phase is the premature firing of the calf muscles. The athletes pushes off to early in the gate cycle generating more force up then forward. This loss of contact is often very visible as it it is the oscillation of the athlete up and down which must last longer then 5 milliseconds. However, what many of the best walkers have is a forward loss of contact. This is generated from the extremely powerful forward push. Because the timing is so perfect the resulting up-down oscillation can last less then 3 milliseconds. The relative difference between 3 and 5 milliseconds can be as much as .25 inches (which you wouldn't be able to see with 20/20 vision from 10 feet away anyways) to up to 1.5 inches which could be seen. To add to that because the athletes are doing this with such excellent timing and it occurs at such a high rate of speed one cannot see that for a brief moment that both legs and the center of mass are traveling forward. which was not often seen until the Mexicans (walkers or coaches or whoever) developed the technique in the late sixties, propelling that nation from nowhere to a position of pre-eminence among pedestrians. Actually the modern Mexican Technique came much later after or during the time of Bautista who was regarded as an outstandingingly legal walker - the 1980 Olympic debacle aside. It was in the days of Canto and Gonzalases that what you are talking about was perfected and was actually perfected by the East Germans. Q2 - no. Disqualifying walkers for humanly invisible loss of contact would not change the nature of the event. It would restore the nature of the event. I am not exactly sure what you mean by "nature" of the event here. But disqualifying a walker for something that the human eye can not see would change the event and it would not be the same as years ago. For one thing by not using humans you would use cameras and that would change the nature of the event. Among judges the saying used to be "when in doubt throw them out" which often resulted in unfair disqualifications. I happen to be just old enough to remember judges with this attitude. What I have seen is judges giving loss of contact calls to athletes who on tape are in absolute contact. But again this is much like the ball/strike analogy. The "human eye" dispensation did not appear in the IAAF (snip) The reason for this change - which was a FUNDAMENTAL one - was admitted during a long discussion by the late Palle Lassen, long-time chairman of the IAAF Walking Committee. Quite simply, the athletes had "got away" and now could not be brought back without dq'ing them all and wiping out every standing record. Again you are wrong here. While I don't disagree that your conversation happened the FUNDAMENTAL reason for adding the "to the human eye" rule was a public relations issue. It was a way to stop those few media types and general naysayers from pointing to a picture of a walker with a quarter inch of air and saying "see he is cheating." So, he said, the rules should be changed to allow walkers to run, as long as they kept their legs straight! This assertion too, is incorrect. Loss of contact does not equal running. In fact to be running the knees never straiten and contact can be maintained (jogging some would call it) however I maintain and many would agree that to run you must land with a bent knee and have a flight phase. The chosen solution was like changing the rules to allow doping so long as it was done out of sight of the officials. These two things are not even in the same class. One is clearly cheating (doping) and the other is no more cheating then fouling in the long jump. Further I want to point out that Wayne's analysis is an excellent one of the difference of times in contact vs loss of contact. However, it is important to realize that Wayne's calcuations are based on the assumption that an atlete is losing contact with every single step. So yes if that were the case then the time diference would be huge. But, that is not happening. In a rewiew of events one bimecanical anylises showed that atletes lost contact at 6:20 per mile (about 1:19 pace) only 3-10% of the time. I have film of me at the Milrose games walking 6:09 for the mile and at times at 5:40 per mile pace with absoulte contact - I recieved 4 cautions in that race. In fact I have inpractice walked 100m in 17 seconds with absolute contact -4:36 per mile! So after all this to answer Pat's legitimate question - yes tecnology would change the event if we went to
Re: t-and-f: East Germany - reluctantly...
I enjoyed and learned from Mats Åkerlind's post. It is just what makes this list so valuablegood information, thinking, and writing. Tom Derderian, Greater Boston Track Club
t-and-f: Indoor webcasts
This is an open invitation to all coaches and meet directors to send me videotapes of your track meets for posting on TrackMeets.com. We can take NTSC VHS, 8mm, Hi-8 and Digital-8 tapes. We will encode them at no charge, and post them in their entirety for one full year. There is no limit on size or number of tapes: the more, the merrier. Whatever you do, please use a good tripod, and show Every Lap of Every Race in the meet that you tape. Please contact me with technical questions, and mail the tapes to me at the address below. Please label the tape clearly with the name and date of the meet, and provide contact information. Kamal DR KAMAL JABBOUR - Engineer, Educator, Runner, WriterO o 2-222 Center for Science and Technology /|\/ |\ Syracuse University, Syracuse NY 13244-4100 | | Phone 315-443-3000, Fax 315-443-2583 __/ \ \/ \ http://running.syr.edu/jabbour.html\ \
