Would Dixon have won a medal in 76 if he had done hill bounding?

No. Sometimes other people are just fitter. That's what happened there.

a pain in the weltschmerz wrote:

I think Dixon was doing Lydiard training but instead of a hill bounding phase he ran a lot of hills for strength. His form started to fall apart in the last 100m of the 76 5000 final.

Watching Vasala and Snell maintaining form in previous Olympics might be because of the specific power that comes from bounding. Vassal was apparently doing some bounding up to 2 weeks before the Olympics.

First of all, he lost because Lasse Viren is the dirtiest man in the history of distance running, he brought the atomic age to running, every one that followed had to take something in order to win.

I would be suspicious of Vasala as well.

Hildebrand shouldn't have gotten bronze, it is running, one should be of their feet when crossing the line. Ali Felix was robbed of gold as well.

My father who saw him up close reckoned that Dixon never did enough speed work in 1976, by this I mean Lydiard wind sprints, or 150m sprints etc in the final two weeks. Both Walker and you say Dixon (Arch Jelly helped coach him) never did the Lydiard hill phase, but I know that Walker did do hill sprints and long hill burns in Auckland. He did need to work on his sprint form in 1976.

Interesting to think about the training effect of the bounding. Lorraine Moller writes that she regrets not maintaining the bounding past her early training years because of the development of the ankle reflex which Lydiard thought was critical to speed.

Dixon was a shuffler, no amount of bounding was going to get him bouncing along.

I heard that when he lived in Christchurch, for his Sunday run he would start at the bottom of Columbo Street and run up Dyres Pass Road, past the Takehe (for movie buffs it is the Gothic building in the Peter Jackson movie The Frighteners where Michael J Fox has dinner with a widowed woman and the ghost her deceased husband) to the top (the sign of the Kiwi) a rise from sea level straight up 350m. He then ran across the top of the Port Hills (Banks Peninsula) and down into Sumner and then back again. Sometimes he did three hours or more. He could comfortably run 10 miles in 50-52 mins without much effort but again his problem was his sprint/kick.

a pain in the weltschmerz wrote:

Interesting to think about the training effect of the bounding. Lorraine Moller writes that she regrets not maintaining the bounding past her early training years because of the development of the ankle reflex which Lydiard thought was critical to speed.

There maybe some truth to this, ankle strength and flex has been studied in Kenyans and many have singled it out as a key advantage they have.

Dixon's top speed was very good. Maybe his ability to accelerate quickly wasn't as good? Snell got to top speed in about 3 steps in the 64 1500 final.

Richard Tayler had great acceleration too from bounding.

Who knows? Not everyone can do the bounding. Viren couldn't and probably not Quax who had glass shins.

Kiwi training, presented by Dick Quax's stache:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewWEgQnQlc4

Here is the race:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB5DxltIkTI

I could ask him but the question is too embarrassingly stupid.

Utopian wrote:

Kiwi training, presented by Dick Quax's stache:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewWEgQnQlc4

Thanks for the link, Quax's mustache was iconic. There is actually a few golden nuggets in Quax's training program and what Walker was saying as well.

There is a funny story that Walker told about when he flew to Texas to see Snell and he went through his old training diaries and found lots of blank spaces and Walker asked him "what did you do on these days etc." Snell responded with "Arthur wanted me to go for a long run that day and I couldn't be bothered." Walker did reckon though that looking at his speed sessions and time trials for his shorter work, that the world never really saw him at top speed over 800m.

I am sorry for asking such a stupid question. Please accept my apology.

Hey, that stache was so iconic it single-handedly seduced one of the hottest female runners of all time ;)Thanks for the Snell/Walker anecdote. Snell was all-in with Arthur but definitely did the details according to his own predilection.

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

[quote]Utopian wrote:

Kiwi training, presented by Dick Quax's stache:

Thanks for the link, Quax's mustache was iconic. There is actually a few golden nuggets in Quax's training program and what Walker was saying as well.

There is a funny story that Walker told about when he flew to Texas to see Snell and he went through his old training diaries and found lots of blank spaces and Walker asked him "what did you do on these days etc." Snell responded with "Arthur wanted me to go for a long run that day and I couldn't be bothered." Walker did reckon though that looking at his speed sessions and time trials for his shorter work, that the world never really saw him at top speed over 800m.

Trudat wrote:

Hey, that stache was so iconic it single-handedly seduced one of the hottest female runners of all time ;)

Explain.

Is it possible that Quax could have won had we made his move on the homestretch rather than blowing it out on the curve, or do we just figure Viren had too much, uh, sanguinity to lose?

gahuga wrote:

Trudat wrote:

Hey, that stache was so iconic it single-handedly seduced one of the hottest female runners of all time ;)

Explain.

Mary Decker in her prime.

Is it possible that Quax could have won had we made his move on the homestretch rather than blowing it out on the curve, or do we just figure Viren had too much, uh, sanguinity to lose?

Yeah Quax really shot his wad in that move, you can tell by how he looks back nervously at the end of the curve, but it was either that or try to get past four guys in the final 100. He really should have shadowed Viren more closely through the bell.

Viren really had the reindeer milk working well all through that last lap.

Trudat wrote:

gahuga wrote:

Explain.

Mary Decker in her prime.

Is it possible that Quax could have won had we made his move on the homestretch rather than blowing it out on the curve, or do we just figure Viren had too much, uh, sanguinity to lose?

Yeah Quax really shot his wad in that move, you can tell by how he looks back nervously at the end of the curve, but it was either that or try to get past four guys in the final 100. He really should have shadowed Viren more closely through the bell.

Viren really had the reindeer milk working well all through that last lap.

It was flowing through his blood that day.

Quax should've moved to Hollywood in the 1980s and been a TV detective.

Quax's tactics might have been focused on Dixon who was the favorite. I think Dixon's 800 best was 4-5 seconds better than Viren and having been the 1500 bronze from 72, most expected him to blow away the field in the last half lap.

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

Trudat wrote:

Mary Decker in her prime.

Yeah Quax really shot his wad in that move, you can tell by how he looks back nervously at the end of the curve, but it was either that or try to get past four guys in the final 100. He really should have shadowed Viren more closely through the bell.

Viren really had the reindeer milk working well all through that last lap.

It was flowing through his blood that day.

Quax should've moved to Hollywood in the 1980s and been a TV detective.

Viren was just the best on that day, His tactics and guts helped him win arguably the greatest 5000m Olympic final of all time. There is zero evidence to suggest that he was doping any more than his competitors were.

Panorama wrote:

Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:

It was flowing through his blood that day.

Quax should've moved to Hollywood in the 1980s and been a TV detective.

Viren was just the best on that day, His tactics and guts helped him win arguably the greatest 5000m Olympic final of all time. There is zero evidence to suggest that he was doping any more than his competitors were.

OMG in a Fran Drescher voice. On a thread started on here about four months ago a link to Frank Shorter at a TED conference at the University of Chicago was posted in which he claimed that in 1968/1969 a Finnish runner was extremely anemic about three weeks before a big race so they (Finnish medical officials) decided to experiment by giving the runner a blood transfusion, three weeks later he broke the world record in the steeplechase. Shorter said something like "well that worked so well I don't think that I'll ever do that again." Shorter and numerous others find the Finnish results of the 1970s as uncredible. Whereas, Walker, Dixon and Quax are pretty open about it, they had no idea how you do it and they would not have access to the medical equipment needed in New Zealand in the 1970s. Blood doping on masse (non-Finnish) was in two eras, 1978-1986 and 2000-2008.