so crazy.. was shocking.. he just kept flying the last 100m.
ya i've never run track so i don't REALLY know the significance of lane 8.. must be hard af (nearly impossible) to mostly "race yourself" and still get a WR.
Yeah, traditionally athletes hate to be in the outside. It depends on the sprinter of course - but since I never had any kick I always wanted to be inside of a rival on the turn, that way I could catch up, pass them, and come into the straight ahead and try to hold on... Mentally I would always rather give my opponent a "head start" than have a head start and have to run a farther distance after head start. Basically imagine if you have to race someone equal to yourself... You can have two choices - run with a 10m headstart but weights on your body that slow you down by 10m or give him the 10m head start with weights on... Obviously both are fair but mentally we would rather be the "faster" athlete with the disadvantage than the "slower" athlete with the advantage...
Truth be told though - the farther outside the lane the easier the race. All things equal you would rather be outside as much as possible because you are running more straights and less curves... The inside lanes have a sharper curve so you have to turn far more. IF (and it's a big IF) you can get past the mental block of being ahead and alone on the outside then lane 8 is a big advantage.. I think that's what we just saw. WVN is so strong that he basically flew out of the blocks and didn't look back - not having to turn as much as the other athletes provided him with a world record time... You can really see this when you watch his last turn and how close he was to the inside of his lane the whole time. Obviously you want to run on the inside of your lane the entire time - BUT on the tight curve you can't produce power and stay inside the whole time, a powerful long stride sends you to the outside in a tight turn and you end up running farther. Technically WVN DID probably run a shorter total distance than everyone else... But not cause he ran less than 400m. Because of the turns nobody can run in exactly the same place in their lane the whole time, maybe WVN ran "only" 402 meters while the others ran 405 meters..
i was thinking about the possibility of a short track.. deliberate or a mistake. If IOC wanted records to drop, could shorten it slightly every year.. even the pool.
but, in terms of this actual olympics.. I think if the track was actually shorter, we'd see better times in everything.. 10k / 1500m especially, etc. iirc, I don't think we've seen that kind of improvement. Also if it is short, it isn't short where the 100m was... hehe.
i won't even consider it until there's some serious proof floating around.. Niekerk's performance was mindblowing.
pc!
Lol, you never ran track but you just provided the best proof possible as to why the track can't possibly be short. I didn't even think of the longer races.. The 10k is 25 laps! If the track was a couple meters short those guys would be running 50m less than usual - they would ALL pr. If we don't see that we can put to rest the ridiculous idea of a short track...
However, if you want plausible conspiracy theories you can imagine some doctoring that would produce faster times. The most obvious is having the back straight be slightly downhill. There is some maximum elevation change that can occur between any two points on the track but you can imagine if you were slightly above the rule you could help guys on the back straight.. The other obvious thing to do is just run from the wrong start points. The three staggers on most tracks are for 200m (3.5 meters per lane), 400m (7 meters per lane) and 3 turn 4x400 (10.5 meters per lane)... I have been at all comer meets where they wind was strong so they ran the 200m on the first 200m of the track and accidently used the 400m start lines and everybody PRed.. I still would bet against any such thing happening in rio.
Sounds more like American haters who can't stand to see Michael Johnsons record broken. Why should we be surprised when WVN is the ONLY person ever to run sub 10, sub 20 and sub 44... IMO that alone makes him arguably the greatest - I'm hoping he adds the 200m to his events for future competitions and dominantes.
Also, the IAAF is REALLY strict about sanctioning tracks - they check to make sure the track is super level, measured perfectly, etc.
