The javelin puzzle (solved)

I have always been attracted by the javelin. I find it the most elegant of throws. One of the most succesfull posts of this blog is "the javelin controversy" where I tell the story of the (very) short-lived "spanish" style, which could have revolutionised the javelin discipline. 

World record holder, J. Zelezny

The javelin is the only throwing discipline where the women's implement is not equal (or at least very close) to half of the men's implement weight. With 600 gr and 800 gr the ratio is exactly 3/4 resulting to records which are very different for the two sexes. In a previous post I have addressed this problem, in particular investigating the possibility to bring the records closer thanks to an even lighter javelin for women. But let me give some background before presenting the conclusions of that study. The main ingredient of my approach is a simple mathematical expression that gives the dependence of the length L of the throw on the mass m of the implement. (This approximate formula was derived in a publication of mine in New Studies in Athletics,  29:1 (2014) p. 75-81).


L=a/(m+f)
The quantity f entering the expression above quantifies the inertia of the thrower's arm in the particular throwing style under consideration. To put it simply, the quantity f is different for each of the four different throws. From the expression above one sees immediately that when the mass of the implement becomes very large, the length of the throw goes to zero. On the other hand when the mass of the implement goes to zero, the length of the throw does not increase beyond a certain value. And this is true even when one neglects all aerodynamical effects: there is a limit to the speed at which one can move one's arm. 

World record holder B. Spotakova

If one has a reliable estimate of the value of f one can predict the possible performances with lighter, or heavier, implements. In the case of javelin throw, as explained in the aforementioned post, I obtained a value of f=0.5 kg for javelin throw. Another estimate based on the performances of K. Walcott in his junior years, when he threw both with a 700 gr and a 800 gr javelin, yielded a value of a few hundred grams, an indication that the half-kilogram value is not unreasonable. In what follows I will present all my estimates based on this value.

World champion J. Yego

The conclusion of the article on lighter implements was that having the women throw with a 400 gr javelin (i.e. half the weight of that of men's) will not suffice in order to align their performances to those of men. The women's world record would still be situated below 90 m. And of course this is a very crude estimate which does not take into account the aerodynamical problems arising from the use of such a light implement. Having realised this, I decided to consider an alternative: instead of reducing the weight of the women's javelin, how about increasing the weight of that of men's? What would be the equivalent of a 98 m throw with the 800 gr javelin, if the latter would have a mass of 1.2 kg? Applying the formula we find that the world record would be a mere 75 m. Thus the comparison between men's and women's records would be perfectly in line with that of the other three throws. 

Olympic champion K. Walcott

Of course, this is something unthinkable today, since it would add 50 % to the weight of the implement male throwers are accustomed to. But had the discipline started with, say, 1 kg javelins, for which the formula predicts a record of 82 m, it would have been, perhaps marginally, possible to introduce a 500 gr javelin for women for which the predicted record is situated at 80 m.  

World champion M. Manjani

So a men's heavier javelin would be the solution for a parity between man's and women's records. On the other hand with a world record at 75 m most throwers would have to content themselves with throws in the 60-70 m range, (and the best decathletes barely throwing beyond 50 m). Well, although I am happy for having found the proper way to establish parity between men and women in javelin throw, I would never seriously recommend such a solution (technical problems aside). Throws of barely 60 m are underwhelming compared to the 90 m throws we are currently enjoying. (In fact, these "short" throws are making women's javelin throw less spectacular compared to men's). 

Olympic and World champion A. Thorkildsen

If I were to recommend something, that would be to go to the opposite direction. When I wrote my article on the spanish style, I was feeling that that style should have been the one adopted. After all, we know today that the most efficient throwing style is the rotational one. And we should supplement that style with Held-type gliding javelins or at least Nemeth-rough-tail ones. Then the world record would be around 130 m, if not more, and we would be enjoying spectacular flights. But, of course, one can only dream. 

Women are good runners, fair jumpers but so-so throwers

The comparison of men and women performances in athletics is a long-standing question. The standard approach is to compare the current world records and get it done with. However, as I have argued in an article, co-authored with Y. Charon and published in New Studies in Athletics, this is a bad choice. The world record can be due to an exceptional combination of talent and circumstances. It might also be due to lower standards as far as control of the competition is concerned (wind-speed limit measurement, application of anti-doping controls, etc.). And the same applies to the olympic record and to any major championships record (to say nothing of the fact that, as far as middle distances are concerned, the races of major championships may be tactical ones and thus not representative of the real values of the athletes). 

A simple solution would have been to neglect the top-most performances and compare, say, the records of the all-time 50th or 100th performer. In the figure below I show the evolution of the performance in long jump with the rank of the athlete for men and women. Already from this graphic we can see that a problem does exist. The women's performances decrease faster than those of men. (The possible explanation for this is that, despite a century of women's involvement in athletics, the recruitment of women athletes, in particular at high level, is still trailing behind that of men).

This becomes even clearer when one computes the ratio of performances as shown in the next graphic. In the article mentioned above we had proposed solutions to the problem. One was to fit the ratio points by a simple mathematical expression (the best fit is shown by the light, continuous curve). An even simpler solution is to use the data from the 100th performer onwards and extrapolate linearly towards 0. This is shown by the light, dashed, line in the graphic. Once this is done, one can use the value obtained at the intersection point as the reference value for the ratio. This is clearly an arbitrary choice but one which has the advantage to be systematic and easily implemented. 

Once the methodology is fixed I can now proceed to a comparison of men and women performances over a wide range of events. The results are summarised in the table below.

Event	Ratio
100 m	0.91
400 m	0.89
1500 m	0.88
5000 m	0.88
Marathon	0.89
High Jump	0.85
Long Jump	0.83

We remark that concerning track events the ratio is close to 0.9 while for jumps the value is closer to 0.85. Thus women are good at running but less so at jumping. 

M. Ahouré, the 2018 world champion over 60 m

This is in accordance with physio-anatomical studies which show that where woman are closer to men is in the case of lower-body force. Jumps put in contribution not only the legs but the trunk muscles as well and this results to a larger difference between men and women.

I. Spanovic, 2018 long jump world champion

At this point one can wonder what is the situation concerning throws. First, due to the fact that implements of different weights are used for the two sexes, it does not make much sense to proceed to explicit comparisons. The choice of the implement weights, with a factor of roughly 2 between men and women (excluding the javelin, for which a special article will be written sometime), appears to be optimal, essentially due to the fact that the world records for shot, discus and hammer are comparable. This appears to be corroborated by the fact that some studies resulted to a factor of almost 2 between the upper-body force of men and women. However I believe this factor of 2 to be coincidental and in any case these observations do not give a handle for the comparison of men and women performances. So the way I decided to proceed to a comparison was by estimating what would be the performances of women were they to throw with men's implements. (We would have reached the same conclusions by estimating what would be the performances of men were they to throw with women's implements). I will limit the study to the discus and the shot, since hammer throw is a rather recent discipline and it has not yet reached the necessary maturity. (This is in fact the reason that triple jump and pole vault were excluded from the jump comparison).

M. Abakumova who had, to my eyes, the best style in javelin throw

First, using the data from the 100th up to the 500th performer and extrapolating linearly towards 0, I obtain a reference performance. These turn out to be 21.99 m and 20.07 m for men's and women's shot put respectively. For discus throw we have 68.08 m and 67.30 m respectively. Next starting from the women's performance, obtained with implements of weights 4 kg for the shot and 1 kg for the discus, I use the method presented in a previous post. Namely I use the expression

$$ L = a/(m + f)

where m is the mass of the implement and f a term related to the arm inertia, with values 6 kg for shot put and 1.5 kg for discus throw. Knowing the length L of the throw one can compute the value of a, and using the latter, obtain the length of the throw for a different value of the implement mass m. I find thus that if women were to throw with the men's implement their reference performance would have been 15 m for the shot put and 48 m for discus throw. From these values we obtain a ratio of 0.69 for shot put and 0.71 for discus throw.

So, from 0.90 for running events, the ratio of women to men performances goes to 0.85 for jumps and all the way down to 0.70 for throws. This confirms what one would have intuitively expected, i.e. that women are not as good in throws as they are in the remaining track and field events. It would have been great to have direct confirmation of this by actual performances of women throwers using men's implements. Unfortunately this is something that is completely lacking (apart from Spotakova's throw, I referred to in the post mentioned in the previous paragraph). Till more data emerge we'll have to do with estimates and extrapolations, like the ones presented in this article. Still the image is clear, as summarised in the title of the post.

The incredible effrontery of the USADA

On November 22nd, the council of the WA (IAAF) announced that the reinstatement process of the Russian Athletics Federation (RusAF) was suspended. The "Russia taskforce" made their recommendation due to the existence on unresolved charges brought by the Athletics Integrity Unit. 
They asked the WA council to mandate the members of the Taskforce and of the Doping Review Board to review the ‘Authorised Neutral Athlete’ (ANA) mechanism and make recommendations as to whether that mechanism can and should continue to be used, and (if so) in what form. (Moreover any ANA applications received in the interim should be held in abeyance pending such review).
And, to cap it all, the sanctions contemplated could go as far as asking the WA Congress to consider the expulsion of RusAF from membership of World Athletics.

The chair of the Taskforce, R. Andersen, stated that

“There are charges laid by the AIU which we need to respect, and the AIU needs to receive feedback from RusAF by 12 December. When we have the answers from the AIU on what has been going on and what the process will be, then we will convene and look at the whole structure and we will come up with recommendations to the council”.

The WA president, S. Coe, commented

“This is a process that has served us well. It is neither symbolic nor have we done it to benchmark ourselves against anything else other than we felt was absolutely the right decision for our sport. It may not make us universally popular, but it is really important that we continue with the process we began in November 2015. The recommendation that was given to us today, and unanimously accepted by the council, was in the spirit of that process. We will take this through to wherever we need to take it to protect the athletes and the sport”.

Up to here all is well. Most probably in the immortal words of Shakespeare "something is rotten in the state of Denmark", meaning that there is indeed a doping problem in the Russian Athletics Federation involving members of the hierarchy up to and including the presidency. And, although the process Sir Sebastian is referring to is harsh, it is not quite unfair.

But then things went downhill. The CEO of USADA, T. Tygart made a revolting statement. I give it in its totality below so that you can appreciate the hypocrisy.

“Russia continues to flaunt the world’s anti-doping rules, kick clean athletes in the gut and poke WADA in the eye and get away with it time and time again.
WADA must stand up to this fraudulent and bullying behaviour as the rules and Olympic values demand. The response proposed by the CRC is inadequate especially given the deceit perpetuated by the Russian sport system which is controlled by the government.
History has taught us the response to Russian doping used in Rio 2016 and PyeongChang 2018 – in which a secretly-managed process permitting Russians to compete – did not work. The world’s athletes saw through this charade and it apparently only emboldened Russia to simply destroy evidence and to tamper with more samples to make it impossible to confirm whether any clean Russian athletes actually exist.
WADA must get tougher and impose the full restriction on Russian athlete participation in the Olympics that the rules allow. Only such a resolute response has a chance of getting Russia’s attention, changing behaviour, and protecting today’s clean athletes who will compete in Tokyo, as well as future generations of athletes in Russia who deserve better than a cynical, weak response to the world’s repeated calls for Russia to clean up its act. It is sad when a country’s athletes suffer for the fraud of the governmental and sport system they represent. However, the failure to stand up to Russia’s five-year flaunting of the rules would cause even more harm to athletes in and outside of Russia. 
The time for the toughest penalty available is now”.

The upholder of the law T. Tygart

To put it in a nutshell, what Tygart is asking is that all russian athletes, even the ones  who have never been implicated in doping controversies, be banned for the Tokyo, 2020, Olympics. 

Who is talking? The president of the USA doping agency, the very same who cooked up a ridiculous excuse, a "filing failure", allowing C. Coleman to participate in the World Championships and win two gold medals. The guy who is happy watching double doping offender J. Gatlin continue to haunt the stadia. 

Of course Tygart's statement did provoke strong reactions. I was very happy seeing that World and Olympic champion K. Stefanidi was among the first to react. She pointed out that the US anti-doping agency cannot talk about clean athletes when there have been so many US doping cases. I her own words

“Well...to be fair with all the steroid-infused meat and the way missed tests are counted in this side of the world I’ve got to admit USADA doesn’t have the best reputation either. Focus on cleaning up your own house first”.

(The reference to "steroid-infused meat" alludes to the explanation used by some american athletes in order to get away with doping offences, i.e. that the presence of anabolics in their urine and/or blood is due to the intake of such "tainted" meat).

Triple World Champion M. Lasitskene asked Tygart to "watch his language". She commented on the scurrilous statement of Tygart that "it [is] impossible to confirm whether any clean Russian athletes actually exist" that he should ask Gatlin, Coleman and all US athletes who profit for “therapeutic use exemptions” concerning the use of prohibited substances. And nobody can accuse Lasitskene of being partial. Just a few months ago she critiqued roundly the Russian Federation for their lack of action which could lead to the RusAF reinstatement, and the fact that the interests of the athletes were somehow ignored. "Without athletes, the existence of a federation is meaningless" she pointed out.

WADA will deliver its verdict regarding the status of RUSADA and Russia’s participation in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo on December 9. Thus Tygart's statement is nothing but candid. If Russia is expelled from the Olympics the US can expect to win 20 % more medals. Hence the insolence of the USADA chief. Has there ever been question about sanctioning the USATF for the doping offences of their athletes? Not only this but it is the USADA themselves who invent cover-up stories, as in the case of Coleman.

It is written in the Scripture "let him who is without sin cast the first stone". Definitely Mr. Tygart does not qualify.

PS The verdict of WADA was announced on December 9th. Russia has been handed a four (!) year ban from international competitions. This covers the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and the Qatar 2022 football World Cup. In the words of WADA the decision was the "strongest possible". It goes without saying that for zealots like Tygart the punishment was not painful enough. In his own words "Escaping Russia completely is another devastating blow to the clean athletes, the credibility of the sport and the rule of law". Which clean athletes is he talking about?

The 9+ m jump, or how King Carl was robbed

This is the sad story of how Carl Lewis lost a superb world record due to the incompetence of the judges.

The faithful readers of my blog have certainly noticed that I do not like Carl Lewis. However you have to give it to him: he has been a great jumper with a superb technique. It was really a pleasure to watch him jump and there has been a moment when he was capable to do incredible things. To be sure, he was already as obnoxious as we came to realise later but this does not diminish in the least his value as jumper.

Before telling the story let us see what do the rules say concerning fouls in horizontal jumps.

Rule 185 of the current (2018-2019) WA (ex-IAAF) book of rules states that 

An athlete fails if:
he while taking off, touches the ground (including any part of the plasticine board) beyond the take-off line with any part of his body, whether running up without jumping or in the act of jumping.

And let us add the proviso of Rule 146 b
In a Field Event, if an athlete makes an immediate oral protest against having a trial judged as a failure, the Referee of the event may, if he is in any doubt, order that the trial be measured and the result recorded, in order to preserve the rights of all concerned.
But when considering whether to order the measurement of a trial which is the subject of an immediate oral protest the Referee should:
(a) not do so in cases where there was a clear breach of the Rules, for example in the long jump a clear mark made in the plasticine by the athlete in question;
(b) always do so (and immediately so as to not delay the competition) in cases where there is any doubt.

The good operation of this Rule means that the Judge with the spike or prism should always mark the point of landing even when they see a red flag. Apart from the possibility that the athlete may make an immediate oral protest, it is also possible that the Judge with the flags may have incorrectly or accidentally raised the wrong one.

Unfortunately I do not have the 1982 rules of the USA Track and Field federation. The ones in my possession, the 2019 ones, are the exact copy of the WA rules, as far as Rule 185 is concerned, while for Rule 146 the formulation is slightly different (but the gist is the same). Rule 146,7 states that 
If an immediate oral protest is made, in order to protect the rights of all concerned:
Regarding a decision of a Field Judge that a jump is foul or is invalid, the jump should be measured, if possible. 

However I traced down the current NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) TF rules and there I found this
Section 7, article 3
It shall be a foul jump if:
The takeoff foot (shoe) extends beyond the foul line.

The fateful 9+ m jump of C. Lewis

So, now, let us go back to July 1982 and the USOC (United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee) Sports Festival Competition in Indianapolis. Carl Lewis, just 21 years old, is in great shape. The previous year, not quite 20 years old, he had jumped a world leading 8.62 m in Sacramento (and a wind-aided 8.73 m in the same competition). In May 1982 he jumped 8.61 m in Westwood. When he comes to Indianapolis he is at the peak of his form. He starts the competition with two straight fouls, of which the first is already beyond 9 m. And then he is off to participate in the 4x100 m relay. He is back and fouls once more. And again he is off in order to participate in the medal ceremony of the relay. Since there are fewer than eight athletes he can take all six jumps. He adjusts his run-up and in the fourth jump (some say that he missed the fourth and this is his fifth) he lands well beyond 9 m. Everybody is cheering but then the judge raises a red flag. Lewis protests and asks to see the mark on the plasticine. There is no mark but the judge replies that he saw Lewis foot extend beyond the foul line by a good quarter inch. This is preposterous! While the USATF rules are clear the judge is apparently accustomed to the NCAA rules which allow the judge to decide on a foul even in the absence of any mark. But wait, the worse is yet to come. While Lewis is discussing with the judge, an over-eager assistant erases the mark on the sand pit. So, even if the judge had relented, it would have been impossible to measure the jump under protest. Lewis is simply robbed of a fantastic word record. He has one (or two) last jumps and he manages a world leading 8.76 m, with a perfectly legal wind of 1 m/s, but Beamon's record is intact.

How far did he jump in his non-measured jump? J. Grimes who finished 2nd in the competition, estimated the jump at probably 30 feet and two inches (9.19 m). Most witnesses agree on 30+ feet (9.14 m). So, it is safe to surmise that the jump was definitely one above 9 m.  

Lewis returned to Indianapolis in the following years. He jumped 8.79 m in 1983, 8.75 m in 1987 and 8.76 m in 1988. Only in Tokyo, during the 1991 World Championships did he jump further than the Indianapolis marks with a wind-legal 8.87 m (and a slightly wind-aided 8.91 m). He would never jump beyond 9 m. 
Was he really able to do so? I am convinced that he was and that he did so in Indianapolis. Why didn't he come closer to this mark in the following years? I believe that this is due to the fact that he kept always more than one iron in the fire. He was running 100 and 200 m and participating in the 4x100 m US team as late as 1993. When he decided to focus on the long jump for the 1996 Olympics, trying to equal Oerter's feat of four consecutive olympic golds, he was already past his prime. (He managed to win in Atlanta, with a so-so 8.50 m but that was his swan-song). 

 Carl Lewis' perfect technique

In my post on King Carl I voiced, in an unambiguous way, my poor opinion on him. I stand by these writings and would not change them by a iota. Still, as I said, you have to give it to him: Carl Lewis was the most graceful long jumper and he is the first human to jump beyond 9 metres. 

PS. I had finished the article and was waiting a few days in order to publish it when I came across a mention of a rule change for horizontal jumps to be introduced from November 2020. According to this the plasticine will not be used anymore in order to judge whether a jump is valid or not but the judge will appreciate whether the foot of the athlete went over the foul line. 
Where the people who proposed this completely brainless? 
They are replacing an objective datum (trace or no trace on the plasticine) with a purely subjective one. So, if the judge so wishes he/she can alter the outcome of a competition just by disqualifying selectively. And more jumpers will be robbed of their record just like poor C. Lewis. (I never imangined that I was going to write this last sentence).