Liu Xiang of China in the 110 HH Finals at the Worlds utilized the classic finishing lean of Harry Jerome. The finishing lean at the finish of a sprint is so important. Take a look at the photo finish of this race at the IAAF site.
Harry Jerome was a great Canadian sprinter in the 1960's. He competed in 3 Olympic games and held multiple WRs in the sprints.
link it please!
too bad xiang did not come to the harry jerome track classic like most of team china did
It's much easier to lean in the sprint hurdles
(look at COlin Jackson's famous lean)
In the hurdles, you are accelerating after teh final hurdle, so you can get your chest farther down.
In the 100m, trying for a big lean is just not a good idea. You have already reached top speed and are decelerating.
You can hurt yourself, or you can fall (which would also hurt)
Too often people start trying to lean too early, and screw it up anyway, or wind up losing speed in teh process.
Wow. Brown also leans in for 6th ahead of the Jamaican(13.47 to 13.47), even though it looks as if he was behind.
It was the evening of July 15, 1960. My race had been run in the afternoon. I was sitting in my sweats on the grass infield watching the final of the 100 meters at the Canadian Olympic Trials.
The world record was 10.1 but Armin Hary had a 10 flat pending from a race run about three weeks before.
The gun went off. One runner flew down the track far ahead of the others. The stop watches around me clicked. No one said anything. After a time it was announced that the winning time was 10.0 tying the pending world record.
It was not until much later that we learned that many of the coaches and runners around me had timed 19 year old Harry Jerome in 9.9 seconds!