Friendship Games and the Olympics

I have said it time and again: if the Olympics were to disappear tomorrow I would not shed a tear. I am convinced that the mere existence of the IOC is hampering the development of sports. We have reached a point where the National Olympic Committees are dictating policies to the governments and this hinders evolution. If your sport is not recognised by the IOC, well, good luck: it is bound to remain practically unknown, without funds, a mere pariah. In the meantime the IOC is promoting to olympic glory only those disciplines that are guaranteed to bring sponsors and attract tv time. 

But things are getting worse. The all-powerful IOC is becoming more and more political. They have now the power to sanction countries for matters that have nothing to do with sport. And they are doing it in a hypocritical way, letting the international sports federations do the dirty job. So Russian track and field athletes will be absent from Paris, since Lord Sebastian has decided to punish Russia for the war in Ukraine.

But what is the (un?)official position of the IOC on this matter? What is great is that we heard it from the horse's mouth, IOC president, T. Bach himself. The situation is really funny. On March 22, two Russian pranksters had a video call with Bach with one of them pretending to be the chairman of the African Union Commission. During the discussion Bach said that the IOC had set up a review panel aiming at ensuring that Russian athletes who support their government will not take part in the Olympics. He went on to add that, "We have also asked the Ukrainian side to provide us with their knowledge of the behaviour of such (Russian) athletes or officials".

Bach also criticised openly the Games of the Future which were held in Kazan at the end of February. The Games are a multi-event competition of phygital sports. (See this page for more details on "phygital"). He commented on the presence of Kamila Valieva (the Russian figure skater who serves a ban for a doping violation during the 2022 Beijing Olympics) alongside V. Putin at the opening ceremony of the Games. (If you would like to read an account of the Valieva case you can read this article on the Guardian. It is funny that half of the article is devoted to the statements of the chief of USADA, T. Tygart, who is, once more, presenting his anti-russian diatribe: “As we know, Russia has hijacked the Games since 2014 where it was caught red-handed running a state-sponsored doping scheme that robbed clean athletes around the world”). But more importantly, Bach, tricked into thinking that he was speaking to an African official, opposed openly the Friendship Games. They are planned for September, to be held in Moscow and Ekaterinburg, organised by U. Kremlev, the International Boxing Association president. (It goes without saying that once the Games were announced, the IBA was booted out of the Olympic family). 

If you wish to learn more about the Friendship games I suggest that you read the very detailed article on the Insidethegames site. We learn among others that Kremlev plans to award money prizes of 40000, 25000 and 17000 $ to the three medalists. (Did that initiative spur Sir Sebastian into announcing a 50000 $ prize for the gold medalists in Athletics during the Olympic Games, an action that won him a reprimand from T. Bach?). Some 70 nations from around the world are expected to participate in the Friendship Games (that were launched by the Soviet Union in 1984 following their boycott of the Los Angeles Olympic Games).  When the Friendship Games were announced, Bach reacted saying that “The Russian government accuses us of not maintaining political neutrality. At the same time, this same government is trying to organise a completely politicised sporting event". He urged the "African official" to do something about the Friendship Games saying: "These games are presented by Russia as games of the President of Russia. If you could use your authority to do something for the African states, we would be very, very grateful to you. You must be aware that by taking part in these Friendship Games you are taking sides. The Friendship Games must not endanger the Olympic Games".

He added that "we are categorically opposed to these games. Last year, before the last BRICS Games (you can read the Wikipedia article if you wish to learn more about the BRICS games) in South Africa, we made sure that they had no resonance in the world of sport". And he finished by saying that he is counting on the support of his European counterparts, in particular the vice-President of the European Commission, M. Schinas, who is responsible for sport. 

So, as expected, the next prank of the Russian duo was a video call with Bach and Schinas in April, always with a "representative of the African Union". Bach urged the "African official" to contact the (African) National Olympic Committees, but also the governments, asking him to persuade the African nations not to take part in the Friendship Games. The video call ended with a prayer by the "African" to some imaginary, invented gods, with Bach and Schinas participating, supposedly invoking the deities in order to make the "right decision".

One thing is clear, the organisation of Friendship Games is a retaliation of Russia following the punitive measures that were taken against it. Will it endanger the Olympics, given the current geopolitical situation? I do not think so. Should other multisport organisations replace, someday, the Olympics? My opinion on this point is clear: I am not in favour of anything multisport. Many, if not most, federations, have already a wide panel of activities so, already an event focusing on the disciplines of a single federation verges on multisport. Only World Championships per discipline should be the apex of competitions. It is pointless to organise Olympic Games that exhaust local resources (usually for the construction of facilities with no future) and that serve only to filling the coffer of the IOC. 

Meanwhile, enjoying the pranks involving the president of the IOC and the vice-President of the European Commission are really telling about the gullibility of people who are deciding for us and it would have been funny were it not for the fact that vice-president Schinas is my compatriot and his salary is being paid by my taxes. 

A great photo

While visiting the Twitter (sorry, X) page of P.J. Vazel I stumbled upon a photo that I found amazing. That was just a re-twit by Vazel. It was originally published by Joe Hale, a sports photographer, who attributed the design and alignment work to Mikeisha Kelly, another photographer. Curiously the photo does not appear on Kelly's Twitter page. I really loved that photo and I decided that I had to share it with you.

But as always I am not happy when I see an interesting photo and there are no details as to who is on the photo. You may remember that, a few years ago, I published an article on the site SomosAtletismo (now long defunct), and I had to track down the name of the athlete in one of the photos (Carmen Ramos, a spanish heptathlete). Well, the same thing happened here. The one thing I knew was that the photo was from this year's Penn Relays. Moreover a cursory inspection of the photo shows that it is a women's event. So, what I had to do was find the results. I managed to find a start list (fortunately there was a single heat of women's high hurdles).

Notice that the order is not per lane numbers but follows some strange ID. Digging deeper I could recover the results.

And comparing them to the start list I had the confirmation that it was indeed what I was looking for. Only 8 athletes figure in the results. Jailya Ash, who was going to run in lane 8 was absent, and this is what one can see in the photo, where there is nobody in lane 8. 

I don't know about you, but I can best appreciate a photo when I know what it is about.

Making head and tails of the relays qualification

I was away over the week-end of the World Relays held in Nassau and I could not follow them live. So I had to content myself with the highlights and I must confess that I could not make head or tails of what was happening. Some teams were qualified for the Paris Olympics but it was not at all clear what were the criteria. I tried to find some information on the World Athletics site but, as I know from past experience, that was useless. When I tried to download the 2024 World Relays booklet, the first thing I obtained was the bid guide. (It's superbly made but not so useful unless you are a national federation vying for the organisation of the event). The second document I could find was the one with the logistics information. (Not so useful unless you are a participating team). Finally I could obtain what I was looking for: I found it in the home page of the relays in the documents section, under the title of "Facts and Figures". I like these booklets since they contain a wealth of data on past competitions, but in the present case it was not very helpful concerning the olympic qualification procedure. As to the qualification tracking tool, that was unfortunately about the qualification for the World Relays and not for the Olympics. At least I learned something: the first 32 teams in each of the 5 events (4x100 W&M 4x400 W&M and 4x400 X) were qualified for the World Relays. 

Then I had a look at the results, which are summarised in the animated picture above. The first thing one learns is that there are 14 teams qualified in Nassau with the last two spots to be filled based on the top lists. And there are two tiers for the qualification. The first 8 teams are labeled OQ1, while the additional 6 are OQ2. The things started becoming clear at this point. With 32 teams in all there were 4 heats for each event. The first 2 teams in each of these heats were automatically qualified for Paris. This left 24 teams, to which a second chance was offered. So they competed in 3 heats and, again, the first 2 obtained the qualification for the Olympics.  Thus the qualified teams rounded up to exactly 14 per discipline. It's a quite simple and fair system and I would have liked to have it explained in so many words on the home page of the World Relays. (When you follow the highlights you do not understand anything since the "second-chance" qualifying rounds are presented together with the finals, held for the OQ1 teams). So, after spending some time and managing to dissect the qualifying system, I thought that I would share it with you. 

And for those of you who are perplexed by the animated picture, I can confirm that it contains a blunder. The times for the OQ1 men's 4x400 teams are those of the corresponding women's teams. Here are the correct results:

BOT    2:59.73
RSA    2:59.76 
BEL    3:00.09 
JPN    3:00.98
GER    3:01.25 
ITA      3:01.68 
NGR    3:01.70 
GBR    3:02.10 

Fortunately it's only the graphic that is wrong. The times in the results' section are correct.

The brief career of somersault long jump

As I have previously written, whenever something revolutionary makes its appearance the international athletics federation (I use this title in order to include both the IAAF and WA) rush to forbid it. Fibreglass pole vault did slip through because fibreglass poles had been around for years before their quality allowed a change in technique that revolutionised the discipline. Once Dick Fosbury won the Olympics it was too late to ban the flop. And up to the 1968 Olympics he was not considered as the number one high jumper. (And the latter is true also for Debbie Brill, who invented her "bend" around the same time, without any influence from Fosbury). 

The story of the somersault long jump is a typical one where a good idea was immediately stifled by the athletic instances. Tom Ecker, a coach specialising in biomechanics, in his book "Track and Field Dynamics", discussed the problem faced by the long jumper who must reduce somewhat his forward speed in an effort to reduce forward rotation and assure his landing position. Ecker concluded that the jumper would not have to reduce his forward speed were he to perform a complete forward somersault taking advantage of the forward rotation created at take-off. 

This already has the advantage to avoid any speed reduction. But, according to Ecker, this is not the only advantage over conventional jumping styles. 

• The somersault long jumper's centre of mass is farther forward at take-off.

• The somersaulter takes off at a slightly higher angle, allowing his centre of mass to describe a higher, longer parabolic curve in the air.

• The somersault jumper encounters about half the air resistance as that of the conventional jumper.

• The somersauIter's feet can land much farther forward in the pit; forward rotation keeps the jumper from sitting back in the pit.

As is often the case once an idea is put forward it turns out that some people had already heard something similar years before. Ecker said that he had never heard of the somersault before 1970. However once the book was published he met another coach who said he had seen a somersault long jump performed in 1947. He also heard from a reader of the book who claimed to have seen such a jump in 1925.  Be that as it may, the ideas of Ecker appealed to several athletes who started experimenting with this technique. 

D. Nielsen was a pole vaulter (with a 5.33 m personal best from 1977) who in 1973 experimented with the somersault technique reaching almost 7 m despite being a mediocre long jumper. He demonstrated his technique in Sweden and from there the somersault reached Germany. B. Stierle, a long jumper with 7.59 m personal best (European indoor bronze medalist from 1968) experimented with the salto (as it was called in Germany) and in February 1974 in Böblingen jumped 7.42 m at the South German Championships generating great media attention. (B. Stierle never stopped jumping, but in the conventional style). We find his name among master medalists and best performers for ages from 60 to 75. And since he just turned 80, he may pursue his athletic career in this higher age group).

B. Jenner, the future olympic decathlon gold medalist experimented with the new technique but little is known about his performances, although there are claims that using the somersault technique he was jumping further than with the conventional one. (Truth be told, Jenner was not a great long jumper and it is quite possible that the somersault would bestow him some advantage).

T. Delamere jumping in the somersault style

When you look for info on the somersault long jump the first name you bump into is that of John Tuariki Delamere. Delamere was an athlete from New Zealand. He participated in the 1974 Commonwealth Games where he finished a disappointing 9th with 7.31 m. Returning to the the US, where he was studying, he decided to give the somersault a try. After some experimentation in the pole vault pit he started jumping in the sandpit (often landing on his butt) and after a few weeks' training he was ready to try his newly acquired technique in competition. His first jump in the Pacific-8 T&F championships was a foul but on the second he landed at the 8.40 m mark. Not having perfectly mastered the technique, he fell back and his jump was measured at a mere 7.79 m. This is the best long jump somersault performance to date. Delamere pursued his career in long jump (unfortunately with the conventional style) registering a (windy) 7.92 m personal best in 1982.

The era of the salto long jump in athletics lasted only a few months. At the request of the German Athletics Association, this technique was banned in 1974 at the Congress of the World Athletics Association in Rome without official justification. According to the US delegate P. Sober "Some members of the committee felt that the method is so different that it is not the event traditionally known as the long jump". Asked why no similar action was proposed when the flop high jump appeared, Sober said soberly, "There was nothing we could do about the flop because it was in wide practice before we could do anything about it". 

And so we will never know what was the real potential of the somersault technique. What a pity!