Flojo's 10.49

These meters are triggered when the starting gun goes off in a standard straightaway race. At that point the wind meter takes a wind reading for a specific amount of time while the race is running(IE: during a 100Meter race, the gauge I use reads for 10 consecutive seconds) and then creates an average which is displayed as your 0.0, 1.0 etc. When used in the 200 meters, the gauge is started manually when the first runner exits the turn and it resumes(automatically as preselected in the timing program)the same system as in the straightaway races.

For the jumps, the official triggers the gauge when the jumper starts his/her approach. The gauge is again, preprogrammed for a specific time(3-7 seconds.

As a footnote, I have witnessed many many times that my wind gauge registered 0.0 for a race, even on some "gusty" days. One or two gusts will not necessarily trigger over +2.0 because it is an average over the 10 second interval.

That being said, based on the massive P.R's in that race by women who were running a HEAT race and FloJo destroying them, I have little confidence that the race was legal. I respect the opinion of the observer that e-mailed his assessments of the race conditions "directly across" from the wind-gauge, but find it odd that the wind conditions would be on the mind of a spectator at a race of that magnitude. What I mean is, when there is a wind-gauge present and there is a huge race taking place, my natural inclination is to watch the participants prepare to race, listen to the announcer and my senses are not typically on the wind, knowing that the wind-gauge will take care of that. Similar to not timing the 100m final with your stopwatch when you know the Finishlynx system is going to give you an immediate result, rendering manual timing senseless. Hope that makes sense.

As far as Flo Jo and doping: I honestly believe that the reason there were so many U.S. drug cheats that were protected and even had there positive tests thrown out(systematically in my opinion) was a response to the East German and Soviet government sponsored doping machines. We had just come off of hosting the Olympics in '84 with the Eastern Block boycott and had tremendous success in T & F in particular, which gave the modern American spectator an unrealistic expectation of U.S. T & F success for the '88 games that would include the Eastern Block and those very same athletes that were doped to the gills. The doping had never been so blatant as it was in the 80's for the ENTIRE sport, especially the women, and by no means was just an Eastern Block and U.S. issue. The fact of the matter is that in order to be competitive in those years, you HAD to be a doper.

I believe Flo Jo was a doper, just as I believe virtually every elite sprinter(Top 5-10 all-time)are dopers/doping as well. Everyone was outraged at how Ben Johnson could be so doped to the gills, yet many of the same people believe a human being is capable of running .2-.3 faster on natural ability as Bolt managed to do last summer. I don't believe Flo Jo was a bad person for doping during that era, and don't even believe that the current dopers are bad people. If their only talent is T & F and their only way to make a living in that sport is to do what everyone else is doing in order to make a living, then I have some compassion for their dilemmas. My problem is with the systematic an unabashed lies for years and years by athletes like Flo Jo and Jones in order to make money even after their careers were over.

Our sport is broken! If we could wave a wand and get rid of all the cheats, nobody would want to watch the fastest women in the world run 11.05 and the men run 9.97 anymore. The sport of track and field wants to see records, and the only way that will continue to happen is if our sport's athletes(in the sprints)continue to find new drugs.

I love our sport and have been coaching High School for 16 years. I enjoy the challenge of coaching athletes that are clean and actually get better based on learning how to better train and take care of their bodies. I believe in large part, that our high schoolers are almost all clean and that is the only reason the sport remains worth participating in for me.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I have to respond to the people whose memories are that the wind during that race were not extreme. I was there, too, and everyone around me had the same reaction: wind gauge malfunction. It was a hurricane. But you don't need to rely on memory to determine it was a wind-aided performance:

There was also a second quarterfinal with a 0.0 reading. What are the odds of that? One in a gabillion? The third quarterfinal had a 5.x wind reading.

Also:

Every one of the 11 athletes who advanced from the two "0.0 wind" heats ran slower in the semis, when the gauge registered a POSITIVE (but legal) wind reading. By an average of 0.2 seconds.

6 of the top 10 US times of the year came from those two "0.0 wind" QUARTERFINAL heats?

There is absolutely no way to explain all this without concluding a large wind assist in those two heats.

Some numbers geek did a full analysis in Track Technique. He estimates a 5.x mps wind.

http://people.brunel.ac.uk/~spstnpl/Publications/FlojoWR

(Linthorne).pdf

%*# wrote:

So was FloJo a lifelong eplieptic? Funny we never heard anything about that when she was competing.

Funnier still how some people will seize on any excuse to continue perpetuate a myth. So now because the network didnt have one of those sappy John Tesh "human interest" stories on Flojo and epilepsy, well golly that coroner must have lied. Of course.

Actually, if you watch the video, the Judge behind the line is holding a White Flag, which is blowing like a HEADWIND prior to the start, so I can believe the performance.

Space Ghost wrote:I was there, too, and everyone around me had the same reaction: wind gauge malfunction.

I was there too, SG. Yes the wind was gusting but mainly from the north and the race was run W to E. I always believed a zero gauge reading could very well be possible since it was a cross wind. I never doubted the wind reading. Now the drug charges are another topic.

alldownhill,

I remember the wind coming right down the homestretch, but am willing to concede that 20 year old memories can be faulty.

But two 0.0 readings in a row? Isn't it far more likely that a malfunction yields two 0.0 readings than a swirling crosswind registers EXACTLY zero twice in a row?

Why did EVERYONE run slower in the semis, when they had a small positive wind? And not just a little slower, but a LOT slower.

Why was the US list dominated by those two 0.0 heats?

Anyone here remember their high school physics? Wind drag force is proportional to cross sectional area x velocity relative to the wind. At the start of the sprint the runner is in a crouched position, with low area, so headwinds are not very detrimental there. From the middle to end of the sprint the runner is upright with high area - a headwind really kills you but conversely a tailwind really helps (compared to running through still air). Suppose in FloJo's WR race there was a headwind at the beginning followed by a tailwind at the end, such that the average windspeed was 0.0 (the meter reports an average, as described above, and the flag shows a headwind at the start). By the rules, in this scenario the run is not wind-aided. But I would argue that in truth it is, in that the wind helps more than it hinders. The performance could also have been drug aided but I am not speaking to that point.

As far as I can tell the paper by Linthorne ignores the fact that the meter reads an average, and that wind speed could easily have changed direction and magnitude during the race. As a result he is too quick to conclude wind meter malfunction/shenanigans. Regarding the likelihood of two 0.0's in a row, I would be careful about that intuition. There is nothing special about the number 0.0 that makes it an unlikely reading (this is like thinking that the lottery# 1111111 is "special"). If the gauge had read +1.0 in two consecutive heats I doubt anyone would be concerned. Furthermore two readings of 0.0 does not mean the average wind speed was *exactly* zero twice in a row. It means that the average was somewhere between -0.05 and +0.05 for each reading.

The front page links this thread as Super Hot right now.

But the last post was nearly three years ago.

How is this Super Hot?

This is correct

You are correct in your observation.

It was gusting that day ,in many different directions , tough to get a good read.

When we first saw Flo on the track and knowing her body structure from over the years , jaws dropped. As rumored on the track that day she and her training camp had been "training" in the Canary Islands. She was not alone in this quest with other team mates and coach all participating.

Ollan and Alvin where in their last throws as the USATF leadership mafia ( thats another story )

Seoul needed TV stars, she was a perfect match.

All said she never did test positive.

Wind of approximately 5m/sec. Times of all the other runners in those heats (quarters, actually, I think) were all 'too fast' by about 0.20 seconds or more. One of the worst mistakes that IAAF has made, although some there seem determined to make a run at that dubious distinction.

Exactly, she was a drug cheat and had major wind assistance and everybody who has looked into it the least bit knows it. The drug cheating is the bigger part, though. There's a reason why no women's world record from 800m down (OK, the 400IH) has budged in the last 20+ years.

I saw that race and there was something very funny about what happened there. florence seemed upset after the race and after she found out it was the WR. She seemed to feud with her coach bob Kersee after this and had a very distant relationship with him at the Olympics when she won 3 golds. She retired right after.

Many suggested that after Indianapolis, she figured out that those weren't B12 shots she was getting. But, she never said anything to the public. Since she died of a mysterious ailment in the years following, we may never know.

Interestingly, it was the second female athlete of Keresee's on the 1988 US Olympic team that died a mysteriously young death. Since then Kersee has not been as high profile. Maybe his conscience finally got to him.

f***! wrote:

lol yea here legs just implodes...I think Flo-jo could have been good without PEDs-probably about 10.9/21.8

Florence had a long career and was above average. no one noticed her though. Only in 1988 did she change appearance dramatically.

Toro, I agree with you.

A few weeks ago this was brought up and wejo claimed that the "Whats Hot" addition to the front page was purely computer created and he had no input.

I don't buy that anymore. He seems to want to restart the discussion or something.

Bobby Kersee wrote:

Interestingly, it was the second female athlete of Keresee's on the 1988 US Olympic team that died a mysteriously young death.

Who would that be?

Kim Gallagher bronze in the 800m against 2 east Europeans.

The cause of death of Kim Gallagher was a stroke, her husband, John Corcoran, said. She learned she had colon cancer after the 1988 Olympics and stomach cancer in 1995. In remission from colon cancer, she resumed running and last competed in the 1992 United States Olympic trials.

She was 38

Flo Jo made a remarkeable physical transormation from 1984 to 1988. I rode an elevator with her at the 88 trials and she really wasn't that muscular. Just very cut for a female. As opposed to the earlier days. It wasn't liked she exploded in 4 years into some muscular freak.

I don't believe that transformation was all due too a new rigorous weight training regimine. And smarter nutrition.

But I don't know enough to say that it wasn't. Seriously she was peaked and very cut but standing next to her I bet she weighed less than 140 pounds.

I don't believe that 10.49 race was not wind aided mainly due to the fast times of everyone else. The wind gauge read Zero. But that is up to the officials and if they screwed up, so be it.

She definitely would still have run the second fastest 100 that would stand to this day. Like was said, she exploded 50 meters in the race.