But...but...but...Bolt is 6'5"!!!

I am prepared to consider that taller sprinters have more issue getting the first 5 or 10 strides in. Or even go from gun to 20-30 as quick as halflings that top out their speed by then.

However, the shortest Olympic distance is 100m. Top speed is reached, where, after 40m or so? 60m left to "cruise" at top speed, and try to fade as little as possible.

If you're taller and proportionately heavier (no needless overhead cargo on board), you'll have proportionately more power but relatively lower air drag. Air drag ramps up as % of total power expenditure, due to it being a 3rd power of speed. So it's no-where as vital as at top speed. Which means that smaller runners suffer more as pseed is increased.

Sprinters are upright, extremely inefficient in terms of air drag. See how the fastest bicycles are built.

Another example. You have 2 wooden cubes to drop from an air plane. One is 1 inch across, one is 1 yard across. Which oen will crash first? Both share the same density and surface structure. We all know mass doesn't matter in free fall...in a vacume. In air though, the big cube will fall faster, due to having a greater mass (strength) per square inch of frontal surface area.

boubatronic wrote:

Dude, I have to agree with SG here. As a planet, we have been taking sprinting very seriously now for over 30 years. Natural selection is key, the stats don't lie.

Here in Europe, a lot of the talent gets sucked up by soccer. Some of the best players are under 5" 8. Why? The ability to accelerate very quickly over 20 - 30 metres is lethal. I have NEVER in my life seen a 6 " 5 player with that sort of pace. It's a hindrance to speed being that tall, not a blessing.

For the 100m, Bolt was the fastest in elementary school by the age of 12. His cricket coach in high school shifted his focus to T&F shortly after he enrolled. This 6'5 guy was focused on the sprints from an early age and had time to learn how to use his height advantage. It's only a hindrance when you don't know what to do with it.

[quote] Sprintgeezer said:

Johnson went 9.79 in 1988 on a mushy track, without absolutely full fitness. He would have gone at least low-9.6x today. 9.79 was only the second step after 9.83, they were planning to lower the WR incrementally. There were other steps to come, like Bubka. There is a good chance that Johnson would be at 9.58 today also.

Now, why did you have to say that, "[johnson] would have gone at least low-9.6x today". You can not know that!!!! You're usually pretty tight in your analysis.... Don't go and lose credibility.

subfive wrote:

Now, why did you have to say that, "[johnson] would have gone at least low-9.6x today". You can not know that!!!! You're usually pretty tight in your analysis.... Don't go and lose credibility.

I don't see why that's hard to believe. I mean, we know Jim Ryun could have gone 3:24 in the 1500.

A key point you missed is that the average diameter of a wheel on your average car is far less than 20". Meaning 20" is bigger than the norm. Though I know you're exaggerating when you say 40", going that route means the car isn't functioning at an optimum level. So sufficiently small is the wrong term to use. They tend to try and fit the biggest wheel possible on the car without affecting it's overall ability to function as a sports car. Meaning 20" is good, but 21" might affect handling and acceleration. 19" is good, but now the engine has to work hard to maintain higher speeds. Sweet spot therefor is 20" for this particular car.

However if we're talking about better examples, the route you should have taken would have been to point out the actual size of the car itself. If your average sports car is 3' high and 9' long(just made that up) and has 20" wheels.....in order to compare with humans, you would have to have a sports car of an equal scale that was flat out bigger.....say 4' high and 11' long with say 24" wheels. Now since this car has bigger wheels, all things being equal, if it has sufficient power and is balanced properly it will likely be faster than the smaller cars while not literally moving it's parts as fast. A 20" wheel will HAVE to spin faster to go 150mph than a 24" wheel. So while the bigger sports car will need more power than the smaller one, if both cars have what each car NEEDS, the bigger one will win.

That's why Bolts height makes a difference. Not simply that he's taller, which isn't what I said. He actually has the power, strength, and overall agility to move his larger body. If he didn't, he wouldn't run as fast (See Obikwelu) There are plenty of recievers that are as tall as Randy Moss, but you won't find many who could do the things he does physically. At 5'10" I can out jump most guys taller than me, but if a guy is 6'3" and can jump just as high.....then what

If they're all on dope, then why is Bolt faster. If the dope is the same, why is the 6'5" guy running faster than the shorter guys. Never mind don't answer that..

I can tell you right now that with or without drugs, Yohan and Tyson weren't running 9.58 without a significant wind or without tearing a muscle. You assuming that these guys would have run 9.5x sooner or later is a sad attempt on your part to bring them to the level of Bolt. Because you would then have to acknowledge a reason other than doping why he's faster.

Go check the wind on Ben's time...He was practically at 9.84 in that race. He wasn't running 9.6 low anything. I would give him 9.7 low. Tyson Gays best race to date is his Berlin final which is at best as fast as Powell's 9.72.

In my opinion, the only athlete who had a chance to run as fast as Bolt or beat him at his best was Powell. He's the only one who possessed the ability to start and accelerate with Bolt or ahead of him and the only one . Powell has a flaw in his mechanics after 60m that doesn't allow him to maintain speed as well as Tyson, Yohan and Bolt. Otherwise he would have long since run mid to low 9.6.

You're posts are the thoughts of a rambling fool. You're all over the place and you can't keep up with your own foolishness....Bailey, Surin & Fredericks running 9.5-6 is really where you show just how much of a fool you are. If they were clean and could run 9.8x what makes you think that a clearly more talented Bolt couldn't run as fast clean? Are you saying 9.8 is the limit?

There are actually more than 2 options. Since i'm NOT lying and since i've been an actual victim of OTHERS doping, your two options are nothing but jokes to me. To be naive enough to think that no one has ever tried to say something is proof if your mindset.

What do you think would happen if you had proof that Bolt was on drugs and you brought it to the same authorities that you claim would protect him? Think about that and try to understand why I think so little of your efforts here. Do you honestly think you're the only person who's anti-drug or is being affected? The difference between me and you is that I know that posting who I think, and even who I know are on drugs HERE means absolutely nothing. It would accomplish absolutely NOTHING.

Nothing you're doing here is turning anyones thoughts off the idea and fact that many of these athletes do drugs. You're just dumb enough to think that daily and weekly accusations will bring more attention to it. You're like the scorned girlfriend who keeps trying to convince everyone her boyfriend is a cheater when everyone knows he's a cheater.

Yet she never leaves him....

Truth of the matter is that it IS harder to move a longer object through the same range of motion as a shorter one. That's why a taller person needs to be stronger than a shorter person overall. The thing that people don't understand however is that the longer object doesn't need to literally move AS fast as the shorter one to cover the same distance. If the longer object moved as fast as the shorter object, it would be no contest. Some people keep assuming that Bolt is moving his limbs as fast as the shorter guys when he's NOT.

Deacon--

Implicit in your post is that it is BOLT who you KNOW is doping. Why is this the case? Because I said that it is only Bolt who is untouchable, and you used the example of Bolt as the person whom the powers-that-be would protect, knowing that he was the only one who was suggested as untouchable.

If you KNOW that Bolt is doping, and you don't report it, either you have a vested interest in him not being caught, or you're an a-hole, or you're just totally ambivalent.

Since you are posting here, on this topic, you cannot be ambivalent, so you either have a vested interest, or are an a-hole.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I consider that you are a decent guy, who has a vested interest.

What the nature of that interest is, I don't know. Coach? Athletic staff? Training staff? Friend? Family? Club member? Administrator? Jamaican citizen? Some combination of the above?

Which is it?

For the record, I have never personally been wronged by a doper as far as I know. All those guys were faster than me anyway, even clean. If there are masters guys in front of me in the rankings who are doping, it doesn't matter to me, because I don't care at all about what place I hold in those rankings.

There is no doubt that Bolts "ace in the hole" is his superior height. Obviously he needs speed just not the same amount as a 5-8 sprinter. His superior stride with speed is on another level than anyone else. Now add his speed endurance.

Simply common sense.

Skater wrote:

Another example. You have 2 wooden cubes to drop from an air plane. One is 1 inch across, one is 1 yard across. Which oen will crash first? Both share the same density and surface structure. We all know mass doesn't matter in free fall...in a vacume. In air though, the big cube will fall faster, due to having a greater mass (strength) per square inch of frontal surface area.

*facepalm* I think you are a little confused. Air resistance, not mass, is what doesn't affect the velocity of the falling objects in a vacuum. Freefall is NEVER affected by the mass of an object. Mass is 100% irrelevant in your analogy. Increased air resistance, which is related to surface area, is what causes objects to fall at different rates. Without air resistance (AKA in a vacuum) all objects fall at the same rate. So in reality, the big cube would fall more SLOWLY due its greater air resistance.

dumb*ss

Are you really that stupid? Seriously, is it possible that anyone is stupid enough to think that such a simplistic "analysis" is anything but laughable?

Seriously?

This is no apology for Bolt but height is not irrelevant or a disadvantage in all cases as you suppose. For example, you mention 6'10" men but why don't you consider that 5'3" men are also not breaking records? Do you think if an THE SAME ATHLETE was doubled in all aspects such as Bolt with all his abilities was now 13', retaining the same height weight ration, which Bolt would finish a 100M faster, the 6'5" or 13' Bolt?

Part of the problem way-above average taller humans is that they have other issue e.g related to joints e.t.c and that is true for all sports. If everything were equal, a larger version of the human race in all aspects (height, weight e.t.c.) would beat the current race as far a physics is concerned. It is also true that if the human race was half the size it is in all aspects, we could not do 100M in 10 secs! Therefore, it makes sense to me that certain tall people with reasonable weight proportionality who also have the sprinting talent are going to run well. Additionally, because we have historically thought one way or done things one way doesn't mean we are right (or wrong) but if we are not talking about a law of nature, then these hypotheses are subject to change until they become law. Case and point, if most people think you need to be short and stout to be a sprinter, then that is what teachers, parents, push their athletic children toward. I am also sure every athletic looking 6'7" guy cannot get enough of "did you play basketball". If you had showed me a picture of Christophe Lemaitre based on my 20-year-ago view of sprinters, I would have said he has no business doing sprinting.

So you think a 5-6 Usain Bolt is running just as fast?

Don't know if it has been mentioned here before, but I remember his advantage not coming only from the height and stride lenght but from something like a certain ankle stiffness, so to speak.

Think it was in some video analysis that for sure is on youtube.

Of course, there is no measure for that (if this theory is right). The height and the numbers of strides clearly CAN be measured. So, as pointed out in your argument, it has to be some other quality.

You right.. He\'s 6\'5\" PLUS JUICE he become 13..LOL

Soon or late he will be with Assafa.and others....LOL

Haitian wrote:

There is no doubt that Bolts "ace in the hole" is his superior height. Obviously he needs speed just not the same amount as a 5-8 sprinter. His superior stride with speed is on another level than anyone else. Now add his speed endurance.

Simply common sense.

Really? So, if he does not have as much speed as a 5-8 sprinter he will still be able to run faster than them?

Well, yes, I suppose I would have to agree...as long as he has superior leg speed velocity.

IT IS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE THE MORONIC NONSENSE ONE CAN FIND ON THESE BOARDS!!!!

listen to what he says at the end. sounds a lot like usain bolt. "i don't need drugs to run fast. anyone who knows me knows i am fast. i was fast as a young kid"

Drugs or no drugs he runs fast in spite of his size, not because of it.