mako wrote:
Carribbean sport physiologist aka Sport physiologist aka Czech guy, the new Czech talent Pavel Maslak is also short (175cm), I hope you count him as a doper as well and expect his coach Dalibor Kupka to be in touch with these Carribean coaches.
This guy is actually the living proof that 400m performance is tied to short sprint performance.
At domestic level he would be a non-factor if height was an issue since he is from a country where (in his age group) there are as much as 185cm guys than 175cm.
Yet he is quite short but then why is he the best quartermiler that his country ever produced ?
Because he is fast, he has a 60m P.B of 6"65 which makes him far closer physiologically from a 100m sprinter than a 400m.
Does that mean that height does not matter ? No, height and therefore anaerobic glycolysis does indeed matter in the 400m , and if Maslak had been 10cm taller, he'd probably got the 1sec that he missed to complete his vey strong indoor and Euro medal haul with medals in major championships...
But that is moot since, if he misses around 10cm (1.5s.d), his domestic competition may lacks 3s.d of metabolic requirement that he 's got.
Therefore he largely overcompensate his lack of height with his stronger phosphagen energy system.
This is very remarkable that in one of the tallest country in the World, the best 400m sprinter ever (who had a rather successful international career) would match the physiological requirement needed, but not the physical one. That cannot be a coincidence and is a proof that at the top, metabolism is more important.