Stop Gatlin

I have, on several occasions, expressed my feelings on Gatlin. He's a double doping offender and he should have been banned for life back in 2006. The fact that he is still running is a slap in the face of all honourable athletes. The most recent development in the Gatlin doping saga is the affair of his coach Dennis Mitchell (a well-known doping offender himself). 

How did it all start? The Daily Telegraph sent a reporter who posed as a movie producer to Gatlin’s Florida training camp. There he met Mitchell as well as the agent, R. Wagner (who, unless I am mistaken, is the husband of doping offender Kelli White). The reporter explained that he was making a film about running and that his protagonist necessitated some performance-enhancing drugs in order to improve his speed. According to the reporter, Mitchell and Wagner “offered to supply and administer to the actor testosterone and human-growth hormone” for a total fee of 250000 $. Moreover Wagner insinuated that all athletes are taking forbidden substances.

It goes without saying that when the news broke out both Mitchell and Wagner tried to minimise their role in this embroilment, saying that they were playing along with the supposed producer to “get the job". I cannot understand what is meant by "get the job". They were going to supply and administer forbidden substances. How can it get worse? According to the US law, it is illegal to possess and distribute anabolic steroids without a prescription and a felony to posses or deal human growth hormone.

Mitchell went on declaring that he "never suggested in any way that any of his current athletes used any banned substances, or that he was familiar with training any of his current athletes with those substances". 

Gatlin's agent, ex-world record holder R. Nehemiah, stated that his client was not present when forbidden substances were discussed by Mitchell and company. Gatlin himself declared "I am not using and have not used performance-enhancing drugs. I was shocked and surprised to learn that my coach would have anything to do with even the appearance of these current accusations. I fired him as soon as I found out about this. All legal options are on the table as I will not allow others to lie about me like this". Well, it's Gatlin who is lying to our face here, when he says he has "not used performance-enhancing drugs". He has! At least twice. He should have been banned for life years ago but managed to get away with a tap on the hand and he is since then haunting the sprint landscape.

According to the Telegraph, Mitchell claimed that athletes are able to get away with doping because the drugs they use cannot be detected by tests. He went on to explain that there are all kind of designer synthetic drugs which the tests cannot find.

I say, enough is enough. It is time for Gatlin to pack-up and leave. Do we have to keep reminding him, like the spectators did during the Rio, 2016, Olympics, that he is undesirable? Dopers may deserve a second chance but Gatlin has burned up his, more than ten years back. 

On bizarre page views

In November 2016 something happened to the blog. All of a sudden the monthly page views skyrocketed, going from roughly 500 to 5000. Moreover these views concerned the 2016 posts and not the older ones. This went on for a little bit over 6 months. Then, in June 2017, it stopped. June and July had around 700 views and August, slightly over 1000 (certainly due to the increased interest in Athletics due to the World Championships). September and October went back to sub-1000 views but then in November I was greeted with an unexpected view surge.

Over one week there have been more than 1000 page views and, quite surprisingly, most of them were concentrated on one post: The javelin controversy. It's an article, essentially, on the "spanish style" and it is to date the one that has been the most frequently viewed. 
The second most viewed article of mine is the first of a series of three on pole vault: Pole vault, before and after. Over the last year it had had systematically more views than the javelin one. Thus I was thinking that one day soon it would surpass it in popularity. And then came the incredible surge for the "javelin controversy" putting it ahead of pole vault by some 800 views.

I am at total loss when it comes to explaining the views of my blog posts. One thing is possible: both the javelin and pole vault article may owe their popularity to being linked to from well-frequented sites. For the javelin controversy there is a discussion in the Athletics Weekly forum on the Spanish Style Javelin Technique and somebody gave the link to my post. (By the way, I am amazed at some persons' statement that they do not believe that one could throw 80 or 90 m with the spanish style. How can people be so ignorant of the history of athletics?). The pole vault post is linked to in Pinsdaddy through the photos of my post (which, in fact, are not mine since I found them through Google), in an article called the "Evolution Of Pole Vaulting". I don't believe this link suffices in order to generate the views of my pole vault post. The latter's popularity is most probably due to the fact that pole vault exerts a kind on fascination on people and, thus, there are many people who seek information on this discipline, ending up in my blog. 

Be that as it may, this last unexpected surge in page views is once more messing up my blog stats. On the other hand I am writing this blog just for my pleasure, so, who cares about statistics.

A great article on women's pole vault

In a series of technical articles published in Athletics Weekly, sports scientists from Leeds Beckett University analysed several events that took place during the London, 2017, World Championships in Athletics. A full report will be published by the IAAF in 2018 but in the meantime one article, on women's pole vault, drew my attention. The fact that the event was won by a greek athlete (K. Stefanidi, nominated European athlete of the year for 2017) and that a greek scientist (Dr. A. Bissas) was heading Leeds the team did certainly play a role in myself being interested in the article. 

The study of the biomechanics team was based on 3-dimensional motion analysis from video obtained during the event. The run-up velocity, something regularly studied in the biomechanics of pole vault, was also obtained by the Leeds team, measuring the speed of the athlete in the interval between 5 and 10 m before the jump.  As expected (from empirical observations) S. Morris was the fastest with Stefanidi being OK but not outstanding.  

The analysis has also shown that Morris is the one taking off the furthest from the box (a full 4 m) while Stefanidi is edging closer, at just 3.2 m. This results to Stefanidi having the steeper take-off angle. (I do like a lot the sketch below).

It is in fact my personal feeeling that Katerina is not relying on her speed in order to jump high. Her approach is one based more on force and well executed technique. This explains also her consistency. Compared to R. Lavillenie, who is probably the fastest pole vaulter but also one somewhat unpredictable, with inexplicable misses and frequent no-heights, Katerina's technique looks decidedly safer. Also it allows her to opt for higher starting heights with fewer risks.

One other interesting feature of the Leeds study was the bar clearance height. Quite expectedly Stefanidi's clearance was the smallest one, a mere 21 cm, compared to Ryzih's 37 cm, but then one has to take into account the fact that Katerina was adding that to a bar at 4.91 m (Ryzih's clearance was for her 4.65 m jump). I do hope that in the detailed report the biomechanics team will explain how they did measure the clearance. Could it be a new way to appreciate the height of a jump as recommended by A. Juilland? I guess we'll have to wait till the report comes out.