Racewalker Should Give Her $100,000 Back

I admit I will have to catch up after this, since I had to slow down to communicate with someone who apparently flunked grade school. I consider this pro-bono work now.

I'll type slower so you'll be able to read. Bragging and pointing out menial facts are two different things. People that actually passed a class understand this.

Frustrated? Hmmm. That's interesting. I find it unreasonable to take a picture that shows a 1/2 inch of air and extrapolate that into wanton cheating and disreguard for the rules. Your comments on bunching to promote cheating are a straw man, not a fact, so it's pretty hard to take them with any more seriousness that my previously mentions l

Yes, I agree that concentration isn't your long suite.

Sure. Cameras aren't lying, the fact there's a 1/2 inch of air implies to you that they're in a full flight run. I look at it and say "there's a 1/2 inch of air". Based on your comments everyone in that picture should be in full flight, since they're in a bunch and all, so how do you explain the rather obvious foot plant and hip motion on the other competitors? They all cheat right?

We could use the same argument for any track race that's not in lanes. Anyone that been around track knows it's against the rules to intentially impeed the progress of another runner. Guess what goes on in a pack? (or bunch as you call them). They're elbowing the living crap out of each other. They're bunched up intentionally to impeed the progress of those behind them. You try to box in your opponent and not let them get outside of you. HOLY CRAP! Wanton cheating! TAKE AWAY THEIR $100,000. Next thing you know they'll become something really horrible, like triathletes!

I guess you should remained concerned then. The "drivel" I beleive in is quite simple. Runners would be better served worrying about their performance instead of tearing down the performance of someone else. You compete against people by training and racing harder then they do in their event, not by eliminating them or their event from competition.

It would be nice if more here shared that view but I'm afraid that would be too ironic.

>>> One last time, please explain to us how the cameras lie, walkers never lift between judges, & never pack to hide each other.

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I won't buy too much into the arguement as everyone has their opinion but the cameras don't come into it, it's not part of the rule. You can look at them all day if you want, it doesn't matter. It's to the naked eye. Anything less than the "human eye" threshold is only a mere 15-20 msec flight phase and not considered by the IAAF to be gaining a significant enough adavantage to warrant any infringement. According to the poorly worded rule you can minimally "lose contact" with the ground and still beconsidered legal, fair enough in this day and age as walkers are fitter, faster, better trained than they were 50 years ago. Just something people have to accept when judging the merits of the sport. The human eye is the decider between whether your gaining a significant enough advantage to be considerd legal or not. It's a "concession" to modern racewalking. Even the experiment with electronic chips in the shoes a few years ago allowed for an approximate 30 msec flight phase. Let face, either way, they're still walking as running is quite difficult with a straight leg. If they were running they'd do 20km closer to ~60 minutes.

Very few walkers deliberately cheat in those long road races (seen it happen in short track races though occasionally although not that often. too hard in long races). When you're walking 20/50km to change from you're normal gait is so uneconomical. There are those who infringe the rules in their normal gait, an occupational hazard of the sport, but that's different to cheating as cheating implies intent. Otherwise everytime someone fouls in basketball, football etc... would be considered a cheat, which is certainly not the case. A few certinly hide in a pack to keep away from the judges gaze though. Not many in the US will accept the sport and everyone's entitled to their opinion. It is a far bigger sport in Europe (they get reasonable crowds at bigger road races there) where someone like 4 time Olympic Gold medallist Robert Korzienowski is a national hero. Each to their own and we all have our favourite events, some events, even sports, we like, others we don't.

Have a good day.

someone just needs to invent some type of sensor device for the competitors shoes. Problem solved

>>> someone just needs to invent some type of sensor device for the competitors shoes. Problem solved

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They experimented with that a few years ago. They too were devised to allow for a small "flight phase" to account for modern racewalking. Don't know if they're still experimenting with them or not.

walker, Congrats! Finally a coherent reply without being laced in anger.

My contention to Keith was that the fast times he was raving about were not technically walking & I called it ironic he would say that on this thread. I actually have no bias for or against the sport, just couldn't resist when I saw someone getting so defensive.

How did the sport evolve to the present where you want to go as fast as possible, but rules, even to the point of 'form' are installed to slow you down? What is it actually trying to measure? Patience of not breaking into a run? VO2 without impact issues? These questions may be naive, but are sincere.

The racewalk is like a 1500M final where the fastest guy wins ....unless of course he runs sub 3:40, cuz then he gets DQ'd.

>>>>>>>How did the sport evolve to the present where you want to go as fast as possible, but rules, even to the point of 'form' are installed to slow you down? What is it actually trying to measure? Patience of not breaking into a run? VO2 without impact issues? These questions may be naive, but are sincere.

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Rules don't actually slow you down at all (unless of course you're sitting on the edge on 2 red cards). You are able to perform at 100% (they average 3.52 per km over 20km, not slow),it's just that it's in a different gait that's causes you to go slower than you do running, not "whispering the loudest" as is the normal cliche. Probably similar to breastroke in swimming is the best example. Most can hit it flat out and not infringe according to the rules. There are alot of misconceptions about that part of the sport. At elite levels walker's VO2's, like runners, reach high 70's/low 80's and their heart rates are pretty much similar to runners at their highest equivalent intensity. Shocked the shit out of some physiology people at our university who had the same perception of walking as most about the perceived "restrictive" effects of the rules. I've had walkers here who's heart rates have topped 200 so they're not holding back. That intensity is quite exhausting.

Hope this helps.

Have a good day.

As (apparently) another walker, your contention that the "rules don't slow you down" can be taken either of two ways. As the "swimming stroke" argument shows, there are other events with defined form. If, however, we cease to define the form, so the feet may leave the ground and the knee is bent, we have a faster competition, called running. But your contention that complying is no slower than non-compliance seems to me to be true. I tend to find myself slowing slightly when trying extra to ensure compliance, but I attribute this to questionable form due to spending too much of my training running, and not enough walking.

And in regards to the question of where the rules came from, pedestrianism, as a sport seemed to originate in the late 18th Century and continued through much of the 19th. At some point, to prevent running, what was to constitute a walk was defined, and it consisted of one foot always (in appearance) on the ground and the knee straight from plant to passing under the body. The early pedestrian races included substantial wagering. In part, it was this wagering and the implications of fraudulent performances that really got the amateur movement underway. (And to some extent to close out the poor from competition with the wealthy.)

Many seem to have problems downloading from the trackandfieldphoto's site. I can from all the systems I use. Mainly from my civil service job. It's worth looking at. 100,000 outtakes from key meets are on that site for free. I save the images without any problems. There are more running pictures on that site than getty has, and they have track and field pictures too.