Sprints - Height does matter!

Longer legs cost more however, and are more likely to have muscle tears/injury.

This argument has been made before, and if it were true we'd see nearly every sprinter well over 6 feet. The opposite is true, most sprinters are under 6 feet.

So why doesn't some 6'10 guy come along and beat Bolt?

Height alone isn't a winning recipe. It's a small pool of candidates, and other factors weigh heavier.

To see the height factor more clearly:

However, if you have a supreme specimen such as no-one will deny Gay or Bolt to be, and you produce a 2x taller clone out of them, understand what happens:

2x taller

2x wider

2x deeper

=8x heavier (no typo)

=8x more strength

=8x more power

=4x more air drag

=faster than the original. Not by a factor of 2 perhaps, but by quite a bit.

So if twice as tall helps the perfectly proportioned runner, by 5-10% wouldn't? Only problem: less choice in athletes to develop (most are well less talented than Bolt), AND: if they are not too lazy to sweat, most will be in ball sports.

Bolt is the tallest sub-10 runner we've seen right? Coincidence, or part of his success?

I think a measly 5'10" twin brother of Bolt would have trouble breaking 9.90.

geneticist wrote:

Longer legs cost more however, and are more likely to have muscle tears/injury.

This argument has been made before, and if it were true we'd see nearly every sprinter well over 6 feet. The opposite is true, most sprinters are under 6 feet.

So why doesn't some 6'10 guy come along and beat Bolt?

Carrying it to its logical extreme, how long would you expect a person so tall that he had a 100m stride length to run 100m?

I would assume the reason we don't see ridiculously athletic 6'10 men winning sprint competitions is because they're already earning millions of dollars playing basketball.

Again... Why did slower turnover win the race?

Yes but the only reason Bolt wins is because of his massive power to get the turnover needed at that height. Something that IS NOT NATURAL and can only be done with pharma. Once he gets on he gets the Power to make that turnover and shave off a ton of time more than the shorter guys that's how he goes from 10.0s to 9.6s in one year. Bolt is still a 10.3/19.9+ 6'5 guy clean. He can be beat and I believe the days of his dominance are coming to an end

blackcard wrote:

Yes but the only reason Bolt wins is because of his massive power to get the turnover needed at that height. Something that IS NOT NATURAL and can only be done with pharma. Once he gets on he gets the Power to make that turnover and shave off a ton of time more than the shorter guys that's how he goes from 10.0s to 9.6s in one year. Bolt is still a 10.3/19.9+ 6'5 guy clean. He can be beat and I believe the days of his dominance are coming to an end

Well, unlike Bolt, Tyson Gay has been proven to be on pharma. He could have been back then for all we know and his turnover rate in this race was obviously much higher than Bolts.

Anyway, I'm not trying to argue about who is doping or who isn't. I'm simply asking why slower turnover won the race.

Why can't anyone give a direct answer to such a simple question? Is admitting that height does matter so hard?

Tall sprinters suffer from higher inertia of their legs during acceleration. The optimal physical build of a short distance sprinter is a moderate height and rather shorter legs with short, massive thighs, and long, thin calves.

The average height of today's 100 m sprinters is about 181 cm.

400 m sprinters are the tallest runners overall, usually with averages around 186-187 cm, because they benefit from absolute anaerobic power that increases with increasing body dimensions. Since their speed is lower, the inertia of long legs is not such an issue.

Skater wrote:

Height alone isn't a winning recipe. It's a small pool of candidates, and other factors weigh heavier.

To see the height factor more clearly:

However, if you have a supreme specimen such as no-one will deny Gay or Bolt to be, and you produce a 2x taller clone out of them, understand what happens:

2x taller

2x wider

2x deeper

=8x heavier (no typo)

=8x more strength

Wrong! Strength is a function of muscle cross-sectional area. Thus strength grows quadratically with size whereas weight grows cubically. That's also why ants have skinny little legs and elephants have big fat legs.

Whaaat? wrote:

Again... Why did slower turnover win the race?

This thread is an example of the failure of our educational system.

Whaaat? wrote:

Again... Why did slower turnover win the race?

Every human being is a bundle of unique design tradeoffs. Bolt's just happen to be even "uniquer" than most.

I do suspect that sprinters would be a bit taller (though not 6'5") if fewer sprinters were lost to football.

Doo wrote:

geneticist wrote:

Longer legs cost more however, and are more likely to have muscle tears/injury.

This argument has been made before, and if it were true we'd see nearly every sprinter well over 6 feet. The opposite is true, most sprinters are under 6 feet.

So why doesn't some 6'10 guy come along and beat Bolt?

Carrying it to its logical extreme, how long would you expect a person so tall that he had a 100m stride length to run 100m?

I would assume the reason we don't see ridiculously athletic 6'10 men winning sprint competitions is because they're already earning millions of dollars playing basketball.

lol

Whaaat? wrote:

Again... Why did slower turnover win the race?

Nothing to do with winning, but longer pendulums take longer to cycle, i.e. they swing with a lower frequency.

The poster below forgot that the 2x sized sprinter would also be fighting 8x the inertia in his legs as he reaccelerated his legs forward and backwards. Also, this theoretical person would not be 8x as powerful. Strength is related to muscle cross sectional area, not length, so they would only be 4x as strong. However, their legs would move over roughly the square root of 2 times the 1x sized person. This means their work would be about 4*root2, or 5.65. Even if their turnover was the same (but it wouldn't be of course), their power could be approximated at 5.65x. In sprinting, power is roughly proportional to top end speed.So why isn't the shortest sprinter the fastest? Because as you shorten your stride length, you have to increase turnover to go the same speed now. Now you have that v^2 component that you are fighting. There will be some point in the middle where humans are the fastest. As your ability to produce power quickly increases (you have more fast twitch %, higher muscle recruitment, faster CNS etc), the closer to the tall end of the spectrum this will shift, because now you have the power to overcome the disadvantages of longer, heavier legs.Bolt has no choice but to take slower strides. His only hope to be competitive is to keep his longer legs from being a disadvantage. Clearly he and his coaching know this, which is why you see his form look the way it is. Look how short he makes his levers on the return to minimize energy required. Look how high his knee drive is to be able to use his glutes/hamstrings/quad to power his leg back down. If he didn't take the time to let his leg move through these positions, he would be significantly slower. Keep in mind this is well studied in other fields, such as entomology. IE, there are no longer 8 foot wide dragonflies. Why? Because our oxygen saturation levels are lower, so they aren't capable of carrying oxygen to the exponentially larger muscles required in our current environment, so they evolved back down to a smaller size. With insects, it is more extreme of a change because of their exoskeleton, but that is a different discussion...So why is Bolt faster? Well, you could believe drugs helping to increase power, you could believe that it is his differences in form allowing him to remove to maximize his power, you could believe he is a freak of nature (higher muscle recruitment, more fast twitch, faster cns, etc), or you could believe some combination of those things. The fact is that he is faster and without more facts (knowledge for sure if he is doping, muscle sample, "watching" his nerves fire...), we can't get at the real answer.

Still waiting, folks.

Doo wrote:

I would assume the reason we don't see ridiculously athletic 6'10 men winning sprint competitions is because they're already earning millions of dollars playing basketball.

The problem with that theory is that point guards are much faster running the floor than forwards and centers.

Whaaat? wrote:

Countless threads accusing Bolt of doping. That's all good but in an attempt to bolster their arguments, the accusers love to state that his height does not matter. Well, sorry to enlighten you, but it does... especially when we are talking about an idividual that is 6'5". When you tower over the average sprinter and have a decent turnover rate, it matters quite a bit.

View the video and understand the indisputable. Look at Gay's insane footspeed vs Bolt's, then tell me this. Why did slower turnover win the race and break the WR?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By1JQFxfLMM

Slowmo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDDpk61XXB4

stride length won, not height.

Justin91 wrote:

Doo wrote:

I would assume the reason we don't see ridiculously athletic 6'10 men winning sprint competitions is because they're already earning millions of dollars playing basketball.

The problem with that theory is that point guards are much faster running the floor than forwards and centers.

Except for L. James

geneticist wrote:

So why doesn't some 6'10 guy come along and beat Bolt?

The same reason why Bolt took so long to come along. How many 6'10 guys do you even know of? Manute Bol is 7'7 and Yao Ming - 7'6. If the tallest even the NBA has to offer is only a few inches above Bolt, what are the chances? Then you have to factor in that said person has an interest in the sport and start at an early age, etc.

answer to your question wrote:

stride length won, not height.

No relation between the two, huh? Bring on the midgets with insance stride length then... Usain better watch out!