I follow a bit of athletics but not seriously. Saw the Golden Games results, seriously strong running from the Scottish middle distance team. Olympics is still a while away but excited for the build up.
Ingebrigtsen takes a whopping 3secs of the 3000m WR & Duplantis does Duplantis things.
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I quite like the fact that they run these less common distances at the Diamond League. It keeps it interesting. I see Jemma Reekie also ran the 1000m. Literally never even heard of that as a race distance, apart from doing reps of those at track sessions
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Used to love watching the mile, Coe and Ovett, fond memories of The Golden Mile series, didnt they win some solid gold for it.
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Youâd think the 1km would-be more normalised. The 1500m really is an odd distance, not even whole laps of a track, which the mile practically is.
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I think they might still do a mile race at the Bislett games but not the golden distance it used to be.
A sign to all you Neanderthals to start using METRIC distances 
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saw some comments on a Threads post this morning saying âwhy doesnât Duplantis put 10cm on the raised bar as itâs clear he can do itâ. simple reason is that by raising the WR by 1cm at a time, he gets $50k each time so maximising income. Bubka used to do the same.
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On the Duplantis topics, itâs brilliant that yes quick enough over 100m to qualify from the early rounds. Not too surprising really given the speed needed to be a good vaulter.
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Iâd guess the same in the long jump and triple jump, Lewis was a long jumper and Edwards was flying when he hit the board.
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I wrote a (not very) interesting biomechanics essay on this last year, will try dig it out tomorrow
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So in true TriTalk fashion, I wrote a brilliant essay that got lots of people interested, but I have no record of it. I think the âinterestingâ stuff didnât make the word count cut.
Iâm also not remotely a biomechanist or any interest in physics, so canât offer much more than a simple breakdown of:
- Run as fast as possible up to the board: Jumpers typically reach 95-98% of their max speed, slightly sub-max to allow them to sight the board. Some will then lose some more speed in those final 3-5 steps. Their approach speed will be proportional to final distance.
- Long penultimate slide lowers centre of mass by ~10cm.
- Touch down is trying to keep the take off leg almost as straight as possible, they really donât bend and âjumpâ like us amateurs would try, they instead aim to pivot over a straight front leg to create a vertical ground reaction force, and let their existing forwards momentum do the work.
- This requires huge eccentric force to control that and resist the knee bending, eg 12X body-weight through some of the quad muscles as well as large contributions from glutes
- Optimum take off angle is about 20-30degrees, compared to the 45d for a normal projectile, because the actions to create a steeper angle lead to too much loss of horizontal velocity.
- The actual flight there are 3 different techniques, but all are trying to maintain the flight parabolica that has been created at take off, and move limbs out the way so itâs the centre of mass that becomes the landing point.
Then I realised that most of the worlds best long-jumps are relatively very old in sporting record terms, eg 1990. Only 3 of the 10 furthest jumps are from this millennium. Now I know there are other factors like altitude etc, but considering approach speed is one of the biggest predictor of jump distance, and sprint times have fallen quite a lot in the last 30-40 years with training and shoes/track surface, I went on to argue that having very detailed biomechanical analysis with motion cameras and force plates clearly hasnât helped modern jumpers compared to coaches doing it by eye, a risky move when its getting marked by a biomechanist.
What I wanted to include here and in the essay but clearly culled in favour of the word count, was the maths on what the long jump record would be if Usain Bolt had had the same jump efficiency as Carl Lewis with the difference in their 100m times
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Interesting. Google suggests Rutherford did 10.26 for 100m at Gateshead in 2010. Thatâs rapid for us but pedestrian for the 100. But he probably wasnât training for that.
Edit: Edwards record has stood for nearly 30 years, not sure if thatâs because he was so good or just that the event isnât as glamorous so less people do it 
but youâd think the record would have been broken by now.
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The aliens stole it
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A jumpers 60m time might be more interesting too, given they definitely donât need to train to resist the speed decay from 50 to 100m. They also donât need the absolute acceleration out the blocks, but they do ideally need to get to the same top speed without incurring too much fatigue
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He was that good - simple as.
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Edwards record is in danger with a couple of jumps fairly close to the WR in the last year or so
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nothing to see here, please move along.
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I wonder if financially thereâs less incentive for the top sprinters to do long jump now?
Arenât there plans to use technology to measure the actual distance jumped from the takeoff point? That presumably would increase distances recorded because jumpers would be able to hit their takeoff faster if they donât have to be so precise about hitting the board 
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Yeah which I think is a shame, the art of hitting the board is a large part of the skill IMO, but itâs because they need to do something to improve distances and get new records and hype around sport.
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