maryland is still in the top-5 for gold medals won by country, tied for russia with 12. today's maryland champ is wrestler helen maroulis, who grew up 30-40 minutes from me.
after this weekend we should have at least 15 (durant, melo, and angel mccoughtry). gary russell (boxing), aaron russell (volleyball), and kyle snyder (wrestling) all still have realistic shots at gold, too.
suck it russia. and california.
Hahahaha. Wow you found the only thing Maryland can beat California in. Nice job... Those athletes may be FROM maryland but were they developed in Maryland? Lol. We develop pretty good athletes here at USC:
If USC were a country, its 288 Summer Olympics medals would place it 16th. And in six different Olympics, USC’s medal count would have positioned it among the top 10 competing nations.
Ok, so Maryland is good in these olympics... But... What are they all time? How many spots behind a little school from California?
aw, don't be bitter boo. we're just better than y'all this time around.
Lol. You guys can have this. You need it. I'll take the weather, women, and the weed any day of the week. And I don't even smoke weed.
didn't you say like two days ago that gatlin was "waiting for bolt"?
Good call out. "Waiting" is track slang though - I don't mean Justin Gatlin was thinking "let me slow down for Usain". I mean that after 70m in the race Gatlin's splits were worse than expected given Bolt's presence. Certainly it's what happened and he admitted in the 2015 final, I guess I can't be sure until I get a hold of the official split times - but I'm somewhat confident in my claim. It's something of a misconception that I hear a lot - "
The guy who wins the race at the end isn't running faster than the other guy, he is just slowing down less".
Obviously on it's face that's nonsense because you can't overtake someone unless you run faster - but even the intended purpose of the claim which is "At the end of the race the athletes slow down and the one who slows down the least will win and thus maintains a higher speed" is false. A look at the split times shows that while athletes don't necessarily hit their peak 10m split at 90-100m they don't actually slow down either. Here are some examples:
Ben Johnson 1988: 1.71 1.02 0.94 0.87 0.86 0.85 0.85 0.87 0.86 0.87
Carl Lewis 1991: 1.74 1.08 0.92 0.89 0.84 0.85 0.84 0.83 0.87 0.86
Mo Green 1999 1.72 1.03 0.92 0.88 0.86 0.84 0.85 0.85 0.85 0.86
Usain Bolt 2009: 1.73 0.99 0.90 0.86 0.83 0.82 0.81 0.82 0.83 0.83
One one hundreth is kinda a joke for 10m splits because you aren't always between the same number of strides within 10 meters and the lean at the line can mess things up as well. However, you can see that while nobody speeds up after 60m (although actually the fastest split recorded is Bolt's 60-70m 0.81) they aren't exactly slowing down either. They are maintaining almost constant speed with a little noise... This really isn't that hard - when I was in shape my splits looked exactly the same with one exception, I'm slower. However, I would run somewhere around 0.90 on my fastest split and then run 0.9 to 0.93 for the rest of my splits past 50m. Being just 0.08 slower from 40-100m from a sub 10 guy ends up being a half second disadvantage...
These are all splits from race winners however.. Sometimes athletes do slow down considerably past 60m but it's not because of fatigue so much as it is because of competition. If you watch Asafa Powell in 2007 when he loses to Tyson Gay you can see a great example of this... It's happened to me to, and it's not a conscious thing but sometimes a faster running approaching causes us to run much worse than we would if he wasn't there... When this happens you coach says "you waited for him". Obviously in one race we can't be sure, maybe Justin Gatlin simply misstepped or was fatigued from the short break, obviously I don't know, but it sure looked to me like he waited for bolt. That's not to say he would have won had he not, but it is to say he would have lost by less...
There are some weird things that go on at high speeds when you are nearby people... It's hard to explain if you don't run the 100m.. I would even argue that had Gatlin ran faster Bolt would have too... There is some maybe unconscious thing that makes us stride match nearby people, maybe its drag, maybe it's psychological I don't know... But it can make you either PR or drastically underperform depending on the day... It is one reason I think it isn't just an old adage that "iron sharpens iron" or "speed makes speed" but there is some actual truth that if you sprint with fast training partners you will get faster better than if you train alone... It's why seifullaah absolutely needs to find a way to train with someone else if he is serious about improving...