A Must Read: Video Proof That Yohan Blake - Not Usain Bolt - False Started

I wasn't nervous. I was excited.

To me this is exciting stuff.

I promise I won't ever be like Lewis Johnson was today on the telecase and have nothing to say during one of the greatest final 200s that I've ever seen in a 10,000.

The movement of a leg not one bloody inch? Where did the noise come from? The air that he pushed at such a slow pace? Those blocks are not the blocks that we used in high school and college...I sprinted too!

You may have heard the movement of a block, the guy standing on it and moving therefore producing a noise from the metal....but not a leg.

First Bolt saw it, that is false. Now he reacted to hearing it, but the other guy because the leg was closest to Bolt. I've watched and read it all.

Bolt clearly took off early and the guy who, as I said sprintgeezer, twitched less than an inch was seen by no one.

Rojo is right, but no judges saw it and Bolt surely didn't see it. Next!

So if this is the case and Blake false-started how can you stand in support of the one false start rule? Blake's 'flinch' was barely discernable to me.

lease--

If you find it helpful, here's more on the idea that I posted a while ago on a thread discussing starters and the false-start rule:

"The race doesn't start when the gun sounds, contrary to popular opinion--that is only when the TIMING starts. The RACE starts the instant they call "warmups off". The "On your blocks" call is already the second phase of the race. You're already in it. Mentally the crowd has already disappeared, your adrenaline and hormones are already surging. The "set" call is the third phase of the race--if the starter sucks, what happens is that a cognitive break is introduced into the existing race mentality, breaking the chain."

FWIW

I am now 100% convinced "sprint geezer" is a distance runner trolling. One of the very first things a good sprint coach teaches is to focus down the track. Any moderately accomplished/trained sprinter would know this. Sprint geezer is the Mr. Chest of this generation. Bolt did not see out of his peripheral AND behind him. Rookie sprinters often want to look at the starter. As a coach, you stop this immediately and focus them maybe 20 metres down the track. This can vary. Well done sprint geezer, you've got a lot of people fooled. i had my suspicions but needed the smoking gun, This is it.

There main problem with this is that most of the people on LetsRun are distance runners.

THANK YOU! No one is going to see behind them and Bolt will end up saying this himself...wait for it. I cannot believe how many people are actually falling for this. Bolt said nothing because he saw nothing, period.

This is a fun thread and the video is a great source for after-the-fact debate, but I've gotta agree with the folks who say that there is NO WAY any official could've seen the "flinch".

We can continue to review the video and try to see if Bolt reacted due to Blake (very unlikely, IMHO) but the fact remains that Bolt blew this race himself.

Channel the outrage where it belongs: The new rule.

Even the scratch of a spike can be enough to make someone jump if they are really focusing.. I can ensure you at least that happened.

trolldozer--

Right, because athletes always do exactly as they are coached.

Exhibit A: Marion Jones, 2000 Olympic trials, at around 1:24

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhE7EAEZzCs

Not to mention tons of others, except for Lemaitre.

Watch the Daegu final video.

Thanks for playing.

Um....No.

STOP trying to make Bolt out to be done wrong here. People are searching for a reason. Quit blaming other people. If Bolt had gone because of a twitch, he would have IMMEDIATELY said something; not take his shirt off, yell and walk off the track. THERE is your proof he didn't see/react to it.

I love Bolt but he messed up. Not the guy next to him, not the IAAF, not the cameraman. Him. Bolt did it.

Again...Stop blaming others. It was all Bolt.

One final point as outing "sprint geezer" has pretty much made my day. Thought he'd make it harder though. His defense is just too desperate.

If there was enough movement in Blake's flinch to be noticed by Bolt, the sensors on the blocks would have picked it up. You can't jostle a block enough for people to hear it without upsetting the sensor.

lewickerman wrote:

Um....No.

STOP trying to make Bolt out to be done wrong here. People are searching for a reason. Quit blaming other people. If Bolt had gone because of a twitch, he would have IMMEDIATELY said something; not take his shirt off, yell and walk off the track. THERE is your proof he didn't see/react to it.

I love Bolt but he messed up. Not the guy next to him, not the IAAF, not the cameraman. Him. Bolt did it.

Again...Stop blaming others. It was all Bolt.

You really want to play guessing games with how you would expect Usain Bolt to act when the cameras are on him? We're not talking about a guy who has ever met the status quo.

dozer--

Nice life!

Again, it's great for track that people are debating about this, and will write about and report about it.

The real beneficiary of all this nonsense is Kim Collins, who did everything he possibly could to earn a medal, and who was rewarded for his efforts.

Even if some don't think it particularly impressive, and see him as having backed into the medals, he will still be hugely celebrated in his native country, and rightfully so.

I would rather see Kim Collins win bronze than see Bolt win gold.

Wow! SG got owned.

Rojo,

Kudos to you for actually uncovering this shocking error on the officials part. I for think they should strike the 100m final from the record, and just re-run it, WITHOUT BLAKE, as he should be DQd from the competition.

Thank you for catching this. Have you and Weldon made any effort to get this out to the media at large, beyond the distance running community? I doubt the officials will have the balls to reverse this decision (no pun intended Caster).

patrickbateman wrote:

Rojo,

Kudos to you for actually uncovering this shocking error on the officials part. I for one* think they should strike the 100m final from the record, and just re-run it, WITHOUT BLAKE, as he should be DQd from the competition.

Thank you for catching this. Have you and Weldon made any effort to get this out to the media at large, beyond the distance running community? I doubt the officials will have the balls to reverse this decision (no pun intended Caster).

trolldozer wrote:

I am now 100% convinced "sprint geezer" is a distance runner trolling. One of the very first things a good sprint coach teaches is to focus down the track. Any moderately accomplished/trained sprinter would know this. Sprint geezer is the Mr. Chest of this generation. Bolt did not see out of his peripheral AND behind him. Rookie sprinters often want to look at the starter. As a coach, you stop this immediately and focus them maybe 20 metres down the track. This can vary. Well done sprint geezer, you've got a lot of people fooled. i had my suspicions but needed the smoking gun, This is it.

I see a lot of people in these threads, including Rojo, as distance runners who don't know what the hell they're talking about.

First of all, Bolt is not a rooking sprinter. He is only the best of his generation, so of course, some wannabe high school distance coach is going to tell him how to start.

Virtually every pro sprinter these days is using some version of the HSI start, and this includes looking down or back when in the set position. I personally look back at my toes, so in my case it might have been possible to see slight movement in my peripheral vision, EXCEPT every sprinter worth a damn is very tightly focused on what they're going to do NEXT. In Bolt's case, he cues the drive and I copy him. It looked like Bolt was looking down, not back, so it is unlikely that he would have seen any flinch.

You do NOT focus DOWN THE TRACK when you are in the blocks. You focus on your first cue, which is either the push, the drive, or if you follow Charlie Francis, lifting your forward hand. Anyone who would suggest that Bolt would be focusing down the track when waiting for the gun is not qualified to comment in a thread about sprinting.

However, there is a protest mechanism in the rules. Bolt and his team coach did not file a protest (would you follow a protest that denied your teammate a victory?). Therefore the results of the starter and the IAAF-approved false start mechanism stand.

I wonder how often people make small flinches like that which then go unnoticed (and un-reacted-to) because the tape isn't scrutinized by millions of people and how often those small flinches occur in conjunction with false starts by their neighbor; I'd guess not too often. To be fair, Bolt is a different breed than the rest of us.

One other relevant point: our peripheral vision detects motion much better than our central vision, so it really is conceivable that despite being the tiniest of flinches, it set Bolt off.