Marvin Bracy NATIONAL RECORD

Yeah, that was a false start, definitely below .100

Either that or it was PERFECT, and everybody else was slow.

But I've got to admit, his start did look like a reaction to the gun, rather than the product of timing the gun.

But whatever. Greene had a false start in his WR 6.39 60m, and it wasn't called back.

Regardless of the start, Bracey looked good. His physiognomy sort of reminds me of Yohan Blake.

Smokeahontas wrote:

Industree wrote:

If you freeze-frame the video, he absolutely nails the start (smoke, then he moves). Amazing start, but with Olympic blocks it might have been called back.

Yup there's smoke... I wonder why all the guys in the blocks aren't looking at the gun to see when it smokes so they can start the race. Maybe because you start by sound? It was a false start, no question.

How much difference is there going to be between seeing the smoke and hearing the sound when the starter is ~20 feet away?

Like the poster above I froze the video and in the very next frame after smoke appears he is moving. On my video player frames are shown .003 so he got away with a false start. TFN shouldn't ratify this as a national record. That said he could certainly go on this season to run a national record but this one can not be confirmed.

Concerned Citizen wrote:

Smokeahontas wrote:

Yup there's smoke... I wonder why all the guys in the blocks aren't looking at the gun to see when it smokes so they can start the race. Maybe because you start by sound? It was a false start, no question.

How much difference is there going to be between seeing the smoke and hearing the sound when the starter is ~20 feet away?

About .018 seconds, so yes quite significant.

slowing down the video the guy who places 3rd comes out of the blocks last. pretty good speed that one

My Name Is Judge wrote:

And if my best 300m time was for the 400m it would be a world record by several seconds.

Yes but your analogy is off. 55 - 60 is about = 300 - 330

And that's not what he said. He said if he maintained. You just want to stop timing.

You fail on all counts.

Slow as shit over 300 - <= 43.18. And piss poor at wit

This kid can run.

"On my video player frames are shown .003"

Sorry, but there is no way that the source material being viewed on your player was captured at 333 fps, so even if your player is technically capable of that frame rate, that capability will not be evidenced by this source.

Common HD recording tops out at around 60 fps. High-speed cameras, which this wasn't captured with, can go incredibly higher.

If it was captured at 60 fps, and if the material you are viewing is running at 60 fps, then the best frame interval your player can reveal is about .017 seconds--IF your player is configured to discriminate this timing.

Because a false start is 0.100, that would still be a false start. In fact, anything down to 10 fps would reveal a false start, IF it is assumed that the smoke propagates along the length of the barrel at the same speed as does sound (roughly).

I believe that the smoke actually propagates faster than the speed of sound, in which case the assumption is sound.

Here is an article on how smoke does not propagate faster than the speed of sound.

Where is the link?

I know that if there were a bullet in that barrel, it would be going faster than the speed of sound, so it seemed reasonable to me to believe that the smoke did also, as the speed of the smoke even with a bullet is limited by the need to accelerate the mass of the bullet, and even it is going supersonic.

Yes, I KNOW that a starter pistol cannot contain a bullet.

A false-start used to be anything below .120 seconds for instance when Ben Johnson ran his then-WR 6.41

In which race, incidentally, the field was called back for a false start mistakenly charged to Johnson, when his RT was actually .127

It is very likely that he would have gone faster than 6.41 without the false start--how much faster, nobody knows.

Want to see something funny? At around 3:54 in this video, with the narrator talking about how good Johnson's start was, they show him driving out of the blocks.

It must be the result of some technical artifact, but he just disappears! It's like trying to see a grasshopper jump--first it's there, then the next instant it is gone!

Hilarious video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJj-EA_RgI4

Actually that's much like it was in real life...I remember being in the adjacent lanes in that same facility, looking over, and seeing him disappear.

FF ahead to around 4:25 and you will see his FS, then the 6.41 after that.

Johnson's sprinting style is hilarious, it is unbelievable that he went so fast.

An interesting fact!

50, 55, 60m records have always come with questions about a the possibility of a false start. For short races, so much emphasis is put on the start that it is hard to resist the temptation to anticipate versus react, especially if you are going for a record. Some starters are extremely consistent and some old sprinters (Drummond) would study the starter from previous meets and earlier heats and can nail a starter cold. You really can't do that anymore, but sometimes you get lucky. As a practical matter, Bracy did not false start even if he technically did. Btw, the 5 meters Bracey quickly put on the field was not all do his reaction, but his first 5 or so steps were super explosive. Also, most sprinters coming off of a state championship and all- star games football season are usually heavy and get off to slow start to their season; Bracy is going to get quicker once he loses a few pounds.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

Where is the link?

I know that if there were a bullet in that barrel, it would be going faster than the speed of sound, so it seemed reasonable to me to believe that the smoke did also, as the speed of the smoke even with a bullet is limited by the need to accelerate the mass of the bullet, and even it is going supersonic.

Yes, I KNOW that a starter pistol cannot contain a bullet.

Seriously? The relevant issue is whether the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound, not the speed of the smoke. If you had to wait until the smoke wafted over you to start... ha ha ha

Industree wrote:

Here is an article on how smoke does not propagate faster than the speed of sound.

It doesn't matter which one propagates faster. You will always see the smoke before you hear the sound. The closer you are to the gun the less of a distinction you can make. But since nobody in the blocks looks up at the starter it really doesn't matter.

If you don't believe me, go to a track meet and you can get a first person view of how the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound.

"LOCAL RUNNER NEARLY SETS RECORD"

Gainesville - Local runner Marvin Bracy thought that he had just set a national high school record. "Yeah, I thought I had it. When I saw the results I was really happy, because I had run a very fast time," said the crestfallen Boone High senior. And indeed it was fast - maybe even too fast.

Not only Bracy, but also officials at the meet thought he had the record. Indeed, the young Orlando-based sprinter would have had the record had it not been for the sharp eyes of some posters on the popular running website letsrun.com. After video of the incredible race was posted online, a thread was quickly started on the popular website's messageboard, where several posters were able to detect a false start by Bracy.

"I was excited about the record," said one letsrun poster, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, "but I saw the false start and I had to point it out."

As one official stated, "It's a good thing that the dedicated experts at letsrun were there to point this out. We have trained officials there to observer the starts, but sometimes there are things that you can only really see when you watch a video replay on the internet. If it hadn't been for these guys, we might have unfairly credited Bracy with the record."

The final words should go to Bracy himself, who was philosophical about the situation: "Yeah, it's too bad that I didn't get the record, but I don't hold a grudge against the guys at letsrun. They did the right thing. I wouldn't have wanted to hold the record unless it was 100% legit anyway. I'll just use this as motivation for next time."

Nicely done.

Here's a question for the sprinters out there.

So say he anticipated the start and gained what .10?

How much time does he lose by having the starter with the old school gun instead of the eletronic starter with the sound directly behind him?

I wonder what the net effect is.

At the high school level does the old school stating must cause slower times. I just have no idea how much slower.

I wasn't talking about one of the sprinters seeing the smoke, I was talking about the smoke that the other commenter sees on the video as a spectator.

Please, PLEASE don't make me describe the scenario in detail!

In other matters, when the FS rule was different, we would ALL try to anticipate the gun. In paleolithic sprinting EVERYBODY had a freebie.

When it changed to one freebie for the field, pretty much everybody thought about trying it...usually one person screwed up and was called for the FS.

Although I haven't done a meet for quite some time, even I study the starter as other races are being run. I believe it's technically illegal to practice starts in practice areas or in the infield when a race is being started, so that nobody can get accustomed to the starter...so sprinters do it mentally.

We stand there, responding mentally, and sometimes even flinching a bit, to the starter's command and to the pistol shot.

Finally, I agree with the poster who said that no matter if it was a FS or not, that was a nice run by Bracey.

When the starter is that close, the effect is negligible--maybe .01 or .02 if the starter is 25 feet away.

Here is the video that that pic of the smoke is from. They slowed it down at the start to show it wasn't a FS.