The S-shaped record evolution

This post is inspired by a work on mine in collaboration with my university colleague Y. Charon, a work we published in New Studies in Athletics a few years back: Comparing the best athletic performances of the two sexes, B. Grammaticos, Y. Charon, New Stud. Athl. 29:4 (2014) 37. The main aim of the article was to introduce a proper method for the comparison of he performances of men and women and the first question one had to answer was "what is the reference performance to be used in the comparison?". It became soon clear that the current world record was far from optimal as reference due to various factors (a combination of exceptional circumstances and/or talent, lower standards in the application of doping control etc.). Among the various analyses presented in that article was one based on the work of Dupuy who claimed that the women’s/men’s world record ratio follows an S-shape curve over time. In his article Dupuy insists on the fact that the S-shaped curve is typical for what he calls the "gender world record ratio" and it is the result of the late authorisation of women to participate in these disciplines at major events. He then goes on to present a simple economic (!) model in order to explain the mechanism. 

In our article, while suspecting the premises of Dupuy, Y. Charon and myself refrained from criticising it overtly, since it was peripheral to the theme of our article. Still I was feeling that something was wrong already with the basic assumption and when I was thinking about what became the main topic of the present article I decided to go back to examine that article with a fresh eye. Reading the introduction of Dupuy one encounters a reference to previous studies that have shown that the evolution of world records in athletics are better fitted with S-shaped curves. Dupuy brushes away this fact by maintaining that the origin of this is biological (!) while the S-shape in the "gender world record ratio" has an economic explanation. He then proceeds to show an example of supposedly S-shaped evolution. 

Unless what he means by "S-shaped" is not what all scientists mean by S-shaped, his curves are not S-shaped at all. All of them present a dip after the initial plateau. The explanation for this is elementary. What is happening is that both men and women world records follow an S-shaped progression. Simply for the men's record the rapid progression occurs earlier than the one for the women's record. If one takes the ratio of two S-shaped curves shifted in time one obtains a, more or less pronounced, dip after the initial plateau. This is what Dupuy is observing. So, the data of Dupuy himself support the thesis  that the world record progression follows an S-shaped curve. 

After this very long introduction I come now to the main theme of this article, namely the S-shaped world record evolution. (In the article by Charon and myself we argue that the same pattern is present when one considers some more representative performance, like that of the 50th or 100th performer of the year, but since data at this depth are totally absent for the long periods we consider, we must make do with the only extant data, i.e. world records). What is the origin of the S shape? It is not at all "biological", as Dupuy claims, but rather "sociological". When a discipline is not official it attracts only a very small number of athletes, the others prefer to devote their efforts to disciplines where they can reap the fruits thereof. Once the discipline becomes official (or, already when it is on the verge of becoming it) more and more talented athletes are adopting it leading to a rapid progress. With maturation of the discipline comes a gradual saturation of performances and the progress becomes incremental.

 In order to illustrate my point I chose two women's disciplines which were introduced rather recently and for which records before the official introduction date did exist: triple jump and pole vault. Here is the evolution of the triple jump:

The S-shape in this case shows a pronounced saturation which is due to the fact that the record has not evolved since 1995. In the case of pole vault the situation is similar:

Again the world record did not evolve over the last 10 years but this span is much smaller than that of the triple jump. And anyhow the pronounced saturation is present only in the case of the world record. As I showed in my post on triple jump, the in-depth progression is not arrested although one can detect some saturation tendencies. The same holds true in the case of pole vault.
  
The idea of this article came form some recent bad news. The Olympic champion and former pole vault world record holder Don Bragg passed away on February 16th. In the short article which appeared in the IAAF site there was also a mention of his sister Diane who held the unofficial world record in women's pole vault with 2.59 m, established in 1952. The IAAF site erroneously mentions that this record survived for 17 years. However the record was only equalled in 1969 and was not broken until 1978. I wrote about Diane Bragg in my article on women's pole vault but I did not, at the time, relate the record evolution with the S-shape prediction. 

Is women's triple jump stagnating?

The title of this post is a direct application of the Betteridge law of headlines. In case you are wondering, the "law" states that "any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no". As I will explain in what follows women's triple jump is definitely not stagnating.

Flying Ibargüen

But how did I come to ask the question in the first place? It started with C. Ibargüen's nomination as athlete of the year 2018. Ibargüen is the best triple jumper of the last decade. (Some may argue that Y. Rojas is the triple jumper of the next decade. While this may turn out to be true, I am a stickler for style and I cannot stand Rojas' style. What is Pedroso doing? He had a great style himself. How can he tolerate such a ugly style in his trainee?). Ibargüen has won everything: olympic titles, world, continental, you name it. The one thing missing is the world record. A look at the all-time best list puts Ibargüen at 5th place. 

Kravets exiting the pit after her world record jump

Foremost in the list is the world record holder, olympic and world champion I. Kravets. With 15.50 m, she established her record in 1995 and it still stands after a quarter century. Kravets was an accomplished long jumper (olympic and world-indoor silver medalist) with a personal best of 7.37 m. F. Mbango Etone was the olympic champion of 2004 and 2008. The latter victory with a PB of 15.39 m, came as a surprise since Mbango was absent from competition since 2005. She was a so-so long jumper with a PB of 6.55 m, although she holds a continental title in the discipline, along with the two titles in triple jump. (The latter was obtained in May 2008 with a 14.76 m jump. This and two competitions at 14.93 m and 14.95 m in July should have prepared us psychologically for her victorious leap in Beijing). T. Lebedeva appears at the third place with a 15.34 m record. She was an excellent long jumper with a PB of 7.33 m. She was olympic champion in long jump in 2004, obtaining a bronze medal in triple jump at the same games (I cannot think of anybody else coming even close to this accomplishment). She did even better at the 2007 World's with a gold and silver respectively (but she had won gold in triple jump in the 2001 and 2003 World Championships). 

Lebedeva, Mbango and Devetzi at the 2008 Olympics

C. Devetzi appears at 4th place with her 15.32 m record, obtained at the 2004 Olympics qualifiers (had she repeated her jump in the final she would have been olympic champion). She was a good long jumper as well with a PB of 6.83 m. Devetzi is a very special case in the sense that she has never obtained a gold medal at a major competition (unless we count her 2005 victory at the World Athletic Final). She lost gold at the 2006 European's at the very last jump (Lebedeva won). The same scenario was repeated in the 2008 World Indoor's where Y. Savigne passed Devetzi at her sixth attempt. So while Devetzi is the best greek female triple jumper she is the only one, among the top four, never to have won gold. 

Vasdeki and Tsiamita at the 1999 World Championships

O. Vasdeki (PBs 14.67 m and 6.60 m) won the 1998 World Cup and went on to win the European's of the same year as well. She obtained a bronze medal at the 1999 World's, in a competition won by compatriot P. Tsiamita (PBs 15.07 m and 6.93 m). More recently P. Papachristou (PBS 14.73 m and 6.60 m), after a long career with several bronze medals, won the 2018 European Championships.

Papachristou at the 2018 European Championships

So, Ibargüen appears at the 5th place of the all-time best lists (closely followed by the Cuban-Sudanese-British jumper Y. Aldama, who has a PB of 15.29 from 2003). Ibargüen jumped 15.31 in 2014, O. Rypakova 15.25 m in 2010 and going still further back we have Mbango's record from 2008 and Y. Savigne's 15.28 from 2007. No much progress has been registered at the top, with the world record standing for more than 23 years. So, one can justifiably wonder whether the women's triple jump is stagnating. Now if one compares with the situation in men's triple jump a different picture is emerging. While the world record, 18.29 m by J. Edwards, goes back to 1995 and the same World Championships as the women's one, three out of the next four top jumpers have made their best marks recently: C. Taylor 18.21 m in 2015, P.P. Pichardo 18.08 m in 2015 (and 17.95 in 2018r), T. Tamgho 18.04 in 2013 and only L. Harrison's 18.09 m dates back to the 1996 Olympics. Does this mean that the men's triple jump is progressing faster than the women's discipline?

In a publication, co-authored with Y. Charon, which appeared in New Studies in Athletics,  (Comparing the best athletic performances of the two sexes, B. Grammaticos, Y. Charon, New Stud. Athl. 29:4, 2014, p. 37-48), we argued that one cannot appraise the progress of a discipline by looking at the evolution of the world record and/or the performances of a handful of top performers. The behaviour of the performances of, say, the 50th, 100th or 500th performer can be quite different from that of the world record. The women's triple jump is a case in point. In the graphic below I show the evolution of the 50th all-time performer in triple jump. While the world record is the same since 1995, the discipline is progressing at depth. 

Evolution of the performance of 50th female triple jumper

Just for comparison I display graphically the same information for the men's discipline. The scale of the vertical axis is properly adjusted so as to be directly comparable to that of the women's graphic. What we observe in the men's case is a very small progression, compatible with the fact that the discipline exists for more than a century while the women's one was introduced in the late 80s.

Evolution of the performance of 50th male triple jumper

Does a near-zero progression of the record of the 50th performer necessarily mean that a discipline is stagnating? I don't think so. The progress of a discipline cannot be captured at the level of the 50th performer alone. One needs data on the 500th or 1000th performer in order to appraise the in-depth progression. Unfortunately such data are rarely available and one has to make do with statistics that do not extend beyond the 50th performer. In the case of women's triple jump, given the short life-span on the discipline (a mere 30 year), even the evolution of the 50th performer's record was enough in order to show the constant progression. Looking closely at the graphic above one can see signals of saturation, especially over the past 5-10 years. Far from indicating stagnation this behaviour shows that the women's triple jump is reaching maturation, becoming a well-established discipline, on-par with the men's one. 

The 2019 European Indoors

I was a little apprehensive before the start of this year's continental indoors which were held in the United Kingdom, just like last year's World's and its slew of disqualifications. I was afraid that having this global competition in the same country could result in the same disqualification frenzy. According to the sportscasters last year's massacre was due to the excessive slope of the Birmingham track which tended to push the athletes outside their lane. Fortunately the track in Glasgow had much gentle slopes and the disqualifications were what one would statistically expect for a major championship. 

This year's Championships were particularly successful for Greece: a fifth place in the medal-based classification. All greek medals were obtained in jumps but there were also some non-medal finalists in track as well as throws.  

The men's 60 m was won by J. Volko in 6.60 s. What was quite unusual, in particular for this super-short sprint, was that the winner was the slowest among the finalists to start. The women's race was won by E. Swoboda in 7.09 s. Hailed for a few years now as the next talent in sprint, Swoboda has at last confirmed the predictions. And in case you were wondering, she was also the slowest among the finalists to start. D. Schippers obtained the silver medal, while world bronze medalist M. Kambundji could not do better than 5th.

Last year's disqualified world champion O. Husillos was both luckier and unluckier this year. On the positive side, he secured a medal. On the negative side, he obtained only silver. It was impossible to beat K. Warholm, who decided to try his hand far from the hurdles and, with 45.05 s, equalled the european record. This promises great duels this summer over the 400 m hurdles. 

The women's race was won by L. Sprunger in 51.61 s, but the one who was really impressive was C. Bolingo-Mbongo who lost the title for 0.01 s. A minor disappointment was the last place of J. Swiety, the 2018 outdoors european champion. 

A. de Arriba won a tactical 800m in 1:46.83. I was expecting something better from A. Kramer who was silver medalist at last year's Europeans: he reached the final quite easily only to finish last in it. S. Oskan-Clarke won the women's 800 m with 2:02.58 with R. Lamotte obtaining her third european silver over the distance (the other two outdoors). S. Büchel, one of the pre-race favourites (double european indoor champion), was out in the semis.

J. Ingebrigtsen might have lost the title over 1500 m, beaten by Lewandowski in 3:42.85, but he was really impressive. He qualified for the two finals running two races in the same afternoon and improving the european U23 record over 3000 m with 7:51.20 and winning the 1500 m in 3:42.00. 

He then went on to win the final over that distance in a race where he was never menaced. His brother Henrik was third but the other brother, Filip, was less lucky, as he was disqualified in the 1500 m for stepping outside the track. 

What J. Ingebrigtsen could not manage, L. Muir did and with flying colours. Her domination over both the 1500 m and the 3000 m was total. She won the first with 4:05.92. S. Ennaoui,  who is at last confirming her potential, was second. 

In the 3000 m the commentators were expecting a duel between Muir and Klosterhalfen (coached by none other than A. Salazar) but it did not materialise. When Muir decided to accelerate, all Klosterhalfen could do was to secure her second place. Muir's 8:30.61 was a championships record for the 3000 m.

I have already published a post on the 60 m hurdles both men's and women's. Just so that you have a complete set of photos in this article I include the podium of the men's race with Trajkovic flanked by the two french hurdlers (Martinot-Lagarde and Manga).

And also a photo taken shortly after the arrival of the women's race. Notice that Visser is radiant, knowing that she has won, while Roleder is anxiously waiting the results just to make sure of her position.

Tamberi is back. After his 2016 accident (when he was the world leader, less than two months before the Olympics) he is again the top european high jumper. His 2.32 was 6 cm more than K. Baniotis 2.26 (but which sufficed for a silver medal). 

M. Lasitskene confirmed her position as the leader of women's high jump, winning easily with 2.01. Y. Levchenko (2017 world vice-champion) was second with 1.99. A minor surprise was the elimination with 1.89 of E. Vallortigara, who had jumped 2.02 last year (but given her inconsistent performing the surprise is only a minor one). 

Men's pole vault was a polish business with P. Wojciechowski first with 5.90, and P. Lisek, second with 5.85. E. Karalis just missed a medal with 5.65, when M. Svard-Jakobsson  (8th up to that point) passed 5.75 on his third attempt. K. Filippidis disappointed the greek fans by no-heighting at 5.45! The women's pole vault was another unpleasant surprise: for the first time in three years E. Stefanidi came home without a medal. In fact she risked a no-height at her initial 4.65 negotiated only at the third attempt. Fortunately for Greece N. Kyriakopoulou's 4.65 sufficed for a bronze medal. A. Sidorova dominated the event, winning with 4.85, with H. Bradshaw second with 4.75. The funny thing in that Bradshaw had risked elimination at the qualifiers missing two attempts at 4.60 and entering the final as 8th with 4.50. I was really disappointed by the elimination of A. Bengtsson who could not jump beyond 4.40, after having established a personal best of 4.81 in February.

After having won the European outdoors last year M. Tentoglou obtained the indoors title as well. His jump of 8.38 is a world leading one. And of course,  while preparing for this article I read about the extraterrestrial wind-aided 8.92 of J.M. Echevarría. This year's World's will be really interesting. (Just when we were thinking that men's long jump was stagnating). 

I. Spanovic has furnished another proof that she is a great champion, and to my eyes the best long jumper today. She started the competition with an excellent 6.90 but then N. Mironchyk jumped a somewhat unexpected 6.93 personal best. Mind you, she has an outdoors best of 7.08 and even a wind-aided 7.21 from 2012, but that was the year she failed a drugs test. There is also a very interesting story about Mironchyk's pony tail (and, in fact, a similar thing happened to Spanovic in 2017). 

Spanovic was unfazed and on her 5th jump landed at 6.99 clinching the gold medal and equaling the world leading performance (held by M. Mihambo who could not manage anything better than 6.83 and 4th place). 

Men's triple jump saw the relative surprise victory of N. Babayev with 17.29 (but he is an over 17 m jumper outdoors already from 2015). Veteran N. Evora (Olympic, World and European champion) was present as always and secured the second place with a 17.11 jump. In women's triple jump P. Papachristou took an early lead with 14.50 but had to settle for silver as A. Peleteiro went on to jump 14.56 and then 14.73. 

O. Saladukha, jumped thrice 14.47 for third place. The two portuguese jumpers P. Mamona and S. Costa both jumped 14.43 for 4th and 5th place respectively. An estonian athlete, M. Uudmäe participated in women's triple jump (but did not qualify with 13.40) I wondered if she was the daughter of the 1980 olympic champion Jaak Uudmäe, who won in Moscow with 17.35, but it turned out that this was not the case. Jaak Uudmäe has only a son Jaanus (17.06 in triple). 

Of last year's shot put winning polish duo one laughed in Glasgow and one weeped. M. Haratyk won the european title, with 21.65, but K. Bukowiecki (the 2017 champion) was eliminated in the qualifiers with just 20.18. The last remaining high-level glider, D. Storl, was as always present and won silver with 21.54. The women's event was a suspenseful one. C. Schwanitz, considered by many as the undisputed favourite, lead with 19.11 up to the 5th throw when S. Mavrodieva managed a 19.12 for the highest rung of the podium. (It's the second time Schwanitz loses a european title at the last throw). A Marton, one of the best women spinners is back from injury and with 19.00 obtained the bronze medal.

J. Ureña won the men's heptathlon and it was a well deserved victory. But Ureña being who he is (he fouled out in discus in the 2016 Europeans and no-heighted in pole vault in the 2018 ones) he courted disaster once more. He fouled twice in shot put but managed to get a valid throw (and, in fact, a personal best) at the third attempt. Last year's revelation, T. Duckworth, obtained a medal (silver) this time, essentially thanks to a personal best in the 1000 m. I. Shkurenyov confirmed once more the fact that he is a second-day athlete. Finishing 2nd in the hurdles, 1st in the pole vault and 2nd in the 1000 m he secured the bronze medal. 

The field of women's pentathlon was particularly dense despite the absence of N. Thiam.
I have the impression that C. Johnson-Thompson who won is better suited for this event rather than the heptathlon. But I must admit that this year she has made a substantial improvement in the shot put. I hadn't seen N. Emerson (silver medalist) before and I must say that at 20 years of age she is quite impressive. The surprise came from hurdler S. Ndama who won the bronze medal, pushing two of the favourites I. Dadic and L. Ikauniece out of the podium. Emerson and Ndama were not the only young talents present in this championships. H. Maudens (a good long jumper) finished at 8th place and M. Vicente (just 18 years old) finished 9th. I am not convinced that the combined events are the best choice for the latter, all the more so since she is a very good triple jumper, but one never knows.  Twenty year old A. Shukh was a minor disappointment. After a bad long jump she dropped out of the pentathlon. Still I am convinced that she has a great potential: she is a good thrower (excellent in javelin throw), good jumper and has a very decent 800 m. It suffices to work on speed and improve technically over the hurdles and she can be among the protagonists.

The flying belgians did it again in men's 4x400 m relay. This time the Borlée family was complemented by J. Watrin (excellent first relay). World champion Poland left empty-handed, the silver and bronze medals going to Italy and France. At least the women's polish relay team repeated their performance of two years ago securing the precious medal for their country.