The punishment of Russia continues

The decision to reinstate the Authorised Neutral Athlete (ANA) programme is out and I must say that I am disappointed. But let us start at the beginning.

In November 2015, the Russian Athletics federation was suspended by World Athletics (in fact, it was still the IAAF at that time) due to suspicions of state-sponsored doping. As a consequence Russian athletes could not participate in the Rio, 2016, Olympics (with the exception of long jumper D. Klishina who lives permanently in the US). The ban of Russia was extended several times since then. Things got worse in 2018, when D. Lysenko (2017 world silver medalist and 2018 indoor world champion) was suspended due to a whereabouts violation. Lysenko provided documents stating that he had missed his second test due to being hospitalised, but it turned out that the documents were forged and he had obtained them through the help of officials of the Russian Athletics federation. As a result the president of the federation had to step down and it was only though the intervention of the russian sports minister that the federation was not permanently expelled. 

With the election, in November 2020, of a new president fo the federation, P. Ivanov, there was a definite climate change. The head of the task-force that oversees the reinstatement of Russia, R. Andersen, was quite optimistic as to the return of russian athletes to international competitions. However, due the fact that Ivanov is a government official, he had to step down in favour of the vice-president who is none other but the 2000, Sydney, olympic champion I. Privalova.

In 2019 WADA banned Russia from all sports for four years. Russia appealed the decision and finally the Court of Arbitration for Sport had decided to cut the sanction to two years. This means that Russia will not be allowed to compete in this year's Tokyo Olympics. Neither in next year's World's. As expected the USADA's reaction was to call the CAS ruling a devastating decision. Always an anti-russian zealot T. Tygart (the very same who cooked up a ridiculous excuse, a "filing failure", allowing C. Coleman to avoid a sanction for a whereabouts violation) accused WADA and the IOPC of having "manipulated and mishandled this sordid Russian state-doping affair" and having put "politics over principle". One would not have expected anything less from an individual like Tygart.

A few days ago World Athletic announced the reinstatement of the ANA program allowing 10 athletes (among those who have been granted ANA status) to participate in the athletics competition during the Tokyo Olympics. And when we are talking about 10 athletes this means in total and not per competition. This applies not only to the Olympics but also to all World Athletics Series events, and the European under-23 championships. I find this preposterous. 

In the 2017 World Championships there were 19 ANA athletes present (12 men and 7 women). In the 2018 Europeans there were 29 (17 men and 12 women). The number stayed the same, 29, in the 2019 World's but with 13 men and 16 women. (They won 6 medals in each of these competitions: 1+5+0, 1+3+2 and 2+3+1). And now what WA is proposing is to cut this number to just 10. And it is nowhere made clear whether the U23 athletes will be selected among the same pool of 10. This is a punishment that even Tygart could find sufficient. (He wouldn't!. For him the only good russian is a non-participating russian).

And I am sparing you the details concerning all the restrictions. The emblem used in the competitions cannot be the russian flag: only the emblem of the russian olympic committee (for the OG) or that of the RusAF (for the championships) may be used. The russian anthem cannot be played and is replaced by a musical score proposed by the Russian Olympic Committee. The name "Russia" cannot be used on the athlete's uniform unless the words "neutral athlete" also appear in a position and size that is no less prominent than the former. Even the usual acronym of Russia, RUS, is to be replaced by ROC (Russian Olympic Committee).

But what I find revolting is the amendment of the ANA reinstatement decision by the WA council. What was initially proposed was that

Council may revoke the provisions relating to Authorised Neutral Athletes at any time if the Taskforce advises that satisfactory progress is not being made against the milestones and KPIs set out in the Reinstatement Plan.

And then the council added that the ANA authorisation may be revoked also

If any of the ten athletes designated to compete as ANAs in the Olympic Games etc. commits an anti-doping rule violation.

So, WA introduces a kind of collective responsibility which, at least to myself, has a reek, bringing back memories of dictatorship (and of tales of nazi-occupied Greece).

The European Indoors: at long last a championship

Two years ago I wrote a prequel to my report on the European Indoors, celebrating the victories of M. Trajkovic and N. Visser in the 60 m hurdles. Two years later, the two hurdlers met with very different fates in the championships. But, read on.

The most important thing about these championships was that they took place. After a year without any championship, with just some token competitions, even this "public-free" event was really heart-warming. Not all the champions of the old continent were present. The hope that the Olympic Games will take place this summer has pushed many athletes to give these championships a miss. But, still, the competition was of very high level and the results are there to prove it. 

The final of men's 60 m

The two sprint events saw the crowning of L. Jacobs and A. Del Ponte. Jacobs is not an unknown: he has a 100 m PB of 10.03 from 2019 (and also a wind-aided 8.48 m in long jump) but the way he dominated the race, winning in 6.47 s, was spectacular. 

The final of women's 60 m

A. Del Ponte is, essentially, last year's revelation, when she started winning Diamond League events. In the 60 m final she was really impressive, winning with 7.03 s and a huge margin. J. Samuel was third in 7.22 after having qualified for the final with just the last qualifying time, which confirms the fact that the final is always a different race. 

Husillos winning the 400 m

O. Husillos obtained his redemption (after the excessive disqualification in the 2018 World indoors) by winning his first major title in the 400 m with 46.22 fending off the dutch athletes. The Netherlands took their vengeance in the women's event dominated, as expected, by F. Bol in 50.63. I was expecting a better race from L. Klaver, who faded over the last metres of the race (had she repeated the 51.63 of the relay first leg she would have obtained the bronze medal). 

In a final with three british and two polish athletes K. Hodgkinson won the women's 800 m with 2:03.88. (Earlier in the season she had established the U20 world record with 1:59.03). 

Dobek racing the hurdles

The men's race saw the victory of a non-specialist, P. Dobek, with 1:46.81, while ex-world champion P.A. Bosse foundered in the last place. Dobek is a 400 m hurdles specialist, finalist in both World and European championships, with a quite respectable 48.40 s PB. Is he starting a new career? We'll know more this summer.

Jacob Ingerbrigtsen is unbeatable

There was no surprise in the men's 1500 and 3000 m. J. Ingebrigtsen won both races with exemplary ease. His times: 3:37.56 and 7:48.20. He was initially disqualified in the 1500 m: a ridiculous decision since he was clearly pushed off the track. Fortunately he was reinstated after protest. He is undoubtedly the best european middle-distance runner. The women's 1500 m was won by the, relatively unknown, belgian runner E. Vanderelst, in a tactical race of 4:18.46. Silver medallist H. Archer was initially disqualified and reinstated upon protest. The women's 3000 m on the other hand was a very fast race where 7 of the finalists registered personal bests, the winner being A.E. Markovc with 8:46.63.

The finish of women's 1500 m

And this brings us to the hurdles events, I opened this report with. N. Visser is maturing into a superb hurdler. She won the final in a world leading performance of 7.77 s. The interesting thing is that she was surrounded on the podium by two sisters, C. Sember and T. Porter. The reigning european 100 m hurdles champion E. Herman exited in the semis.

Visser surrounded by Sember and Porter

The same fate awaited the 2019 60 m hurdles european champion M. Trajkovic who could not progress beyond the semi-final. His time of 7.78 was very far from his PB of 7.51, but even the later would have been just enough for bronze in a race won by W. Belocian in 7.42 s.

The Netherlands won, quite expectedly, the two 4x400 relays, the men's race with 3:06.06 (alas the belgian team is no more what it used to be) and the women's race with 3:27.15, anchored by F. Bol.

Tamberi congratulating Nedasekau

In the men's high jump I was rooting for G. Tamberi all along and when he passed 2.35 m I thought he had won the event. But then M. Nedasekau produced the perfect jump in 2.37 m and carried the victory. Be that as it may, I am particularly happy that Tamberi's come back is solidifying, and I hope that this time he will not miss the Olympics. The women's event was won by Y. Mahuchikh with 2.00 m (who then had the bar raised to 2.07 m). Once more Y. Levchenko was unlucky and had to content herself with a fourth place. Had she won bronze, Ukraine would have swept the medals. 

The women's pole vault was won by A. Moser who improved her PB to 4.75 m just when it counted most. Pre-event favourites H. Bradshaw and I. Zhuk shared the bronze medal with 4.65 m, behind T. Sutej who passed 4.70 m. In the absence of K. Stefanidi and N. Kyriakopoulou, Greece was represented by E.K. Polak who had an excellent championship, finishing just outside the medals on count-back with 4.65m. Since last year, there is nobody who can beat Duplantis in the men's pole vault. He won the event in just three jumps, then improved the championships record with 6.05 m and raised the bar to a would-be world record of 6.19 m where he had one solid attempt. The silver medal went to Lavillenie, but the one we are accustomed to. This time it was the younger bother, Valentin, who with a PB of 5.80 m obtained his first major competition medal. I noticed also a newcomer, E. Sasma, from Turkey. He is born in 1999, just like Duplantis and his PB of 5.72 m looks promising. I'll keep an eye on him.

Duplantis flying over the bar

Women's long jump was a gripping event, W. Bekh-Romanchuk prevailing upon world champion M. Mihambo on her very last jump, 6.92 to 6.88 m. K. Sagnia was third with 6.75 m. L. Iapicchino, in her first major championship, did not disappoint, with 6.59 m and a fifth place in the final (after having jumped 6.70 m in the qualifiers). And, of course, I regret the absence of the I. Spanovic, who was injured a few days before the Europeans. 

Tentoglou's winning jump

M. Tentoglou won, as expected, the men's long jump with a world-leading 8.35 m, (that was the only greek medal) but it was not an easy victory since T. Montler had four jumps over 8 m,  with a PB of 8.31m. A minor disappointment for the greek fans in women's triple jump was the fact that V. Papachristou, world leader with 14.60 m and who qualified with great ease with 14.39 m, could manage only 14.31 m in the final, finishing fifth. The event was won with 14.53 m by P. Mamona (who was outdoors european champion in 2016), in a final where the silver and bronze medalists, A. Peleteiro and N. Eckhardt, were just one centimetre behind. The first jump did suffice for P.P. Pichardo in order to win the men's triple jump with 17.30 m, but A. Copello had to wait till his last effort before securing the silver medal with 17.04 m. I was following the presentation on a french channel and H.F. Zango (indoor triple jump world record holder with 18.07 m), who was invited to comment the event, was convinced that Copello could jump over 17 m . It turned out that he was right.

The women's shot put was won by the pre-event favourite A. Dongmo with 19.43 m, in an event where all three medalists threw beyond 19 m. The men's event was won by T. Stanek who beat the local favourite M. Haratyk 21.62 to 21.47 m. It is remarkable that all eight finalists were spinners.

N. Thiam and N. Vidts celebrating

The women's pentathlon was won by none other than N. Thiam. She was in good shape although her high jump, with 1.89 m, was clearly below par. Her total was a world-leading 4904 points, but had she jumped 1.98 m (which she can do and has done on occasions) she would have broken the world record. The second place went to N. Vidts who registered three PB and came very, very close to in the remaining two events, obtaining a final score of 4791. I. Dadic lost the bronze medal to X. Krizsan, essentially due to her below-par shot put. N. Broersen (indoor pentathlon 2014 world champion) fouled-out in the long jump, but still presented herself to the 800 m. M. Vicente could not finish her first combined event in a major championship (she is just 20 years old) also fouling-out in the long jump. It is a pity because both Broersen and Vicente had already marked more than 4500 points in the pentathlon and could have played an important role in the event. While I don't like at all the women's heptathlon, I do like the pentathlon a lot. It is an event contested in a single day and thus, to my eyes, half a decathlon. And the field events are the same as those of the first day of the decathlon.

Look at the rage of Mayer as he is racing the hurdles

The men's heptathlon could have been a suspenseful event. S. Ehammer won the first two events and one could see that K. Mayer was feeling the pressure (all the more so, since his long jump was not as good as expected). Mayer was relieved when he threw a massive 16.32 in his third attempt in shot put and even more so when he high-jumped 2.04 m, finishing the first day ahead of Ehammer. He padded his advance by beating Ehammer in the hurdles. And then it was over: Ehammer, who is not a pole vault specialist fouled-out at his initial height of 4.50 m. (He could have started at 4.40 m but for an athlete who has already jumped 5 m, 4.50 m was a very conservative initial height). Mayer managed to scare us a little missing his first try at 5 m but then he reached 5.20 without incident, bowing out after two misses in 5.30 m. The 1000 m was a pure formality which saw Mayer winning with 6392 points (less than 100 points from his European record) with J. Ureña (the 2019 champion) second with 6158 points. Had Ehammer jumped a modest 4.60 m in the pole vault and ran roughly at Mayer's pace in the 1000 m, he would have managed to obtain a medal, perhaps even the silver one.

Yes, it was very nice to have a championship after a year without any major event. But a stadium with empty seats, without the special atmosphere created by the fans present in the stands, is a sad thing. Let us cross our fingers and hope that starting from this summer the situation will go back to normal.

Decathletes: average in everything, good in nothing. What insane hogwash!

People who know nothing about the decathlon often think that decathletes choose this discipline because they cannot excel in one particular event. One cannot be more wrong than this. A short race can be more spectacular and even field events can be easier, for the non-specialist, to understand, compared to an event stretched over two days, where the winner is decided through the addition of points. But, once one has made the effort to understand the workings of this unique discipline, there is no going back. One is hooked because there is nothing more captivating than the decathlon.

Before proceeding further I must point out that I am not talking about "combined events". The women's heptathlon is a watered down version which cannot hold a candle to the real thing. The only solution would be to drop this half-baked event and introduce the real, gruelling, event for women. We have been talking about parity, like, for ages. Let's stop considering women as the weaker sex and let them compete in the decathlon.

When decathlon was first introduced we had a real run of luck. It happened that the first olympic champion was one of the greatest (if not the greatest) decathletes ever. I am talking about Jim Thorpe, according to King Gustav of Sweden "the greatest athlete in the world". He dominated the competition head and shoulders. He won 4 of the 10 events and was among the first three in 9. He obtained a 4th place in the javelin, not having thrown the implement before the US trials (where he threw without a run-up, since he did not know better). He won the 1500 m, a feat not reproduced by the winner of olympic or world competitions till 2019, when N. Kaul secured the championship title by winning the 1500 m. After the Olympics, Thorpe broke the world record in the 110 m hurdles (alas, not homologated) and came that close to equalling the high jump world record. He was excellent in everything.

Thorpe throwing the javelin

It took long, long years before someone with vaguely comparable talent appeared in the decathlon. I think that only when Bob Mathias arrived in the Empire Stadium for the London, 1948, Olympics, we could really say that we had the successor of Thorpe. Mathias won his first olympic decathlon at an age of 17! Six months before the competition he did not even know the existence of the decathlon. He had three weeks to prepare for his first decathlon and had never competed in pole vault, long jump and javelin, let alone run a 1500 m. He won the regional AAU event and three weeks later he participated in the national AAU championship which served as the trials for the Olympics. He won there as well and by the time he won again in the 1952 Olympics he was unbeaten in the decathlon. In Helsinki he dominated the event in a way similar to that of Thorpe, winning by a 900 points margin and a world record to boot. (He wished to participate in the 1956 Olympics as well, having won his 11th decathlon in the military 1956 championships, but those darned amateurship rules made sure he was pushed out of athletics). 

Mathias in 1948

I don't imply that there have been no good decathletes in the 40 years that separated Thorpe from Mathias. If you wish to know more about that period  you can consult the various books of F. Zarnowski. But, better still, if you can read french go and buy the book of F. Gousset, « Des Hommes complets », who is telling the captivating story of the decathlon through the biographies of its champions. It is by reading Gousset's monograph that I discovered the unique feat of H. Osborn who, in the Paris, 1924, Olympics won both the high jump and the decathlon. 

I do not know if the near-mythical figure of Mathias was the reason for the flourishing of the decathlon. Be that as it may, the decathlon started attracting more and more attention in the 50s. In the beginning the high level decathletes were mainly specialists of some track or field event who could also excel in the decathlon, but pure decathletes started to appear. The winner of the 1956 Olympics is a perfect example of the first. M. Campbell was a high-hurdles specialist who did not manage to qualify in his event in the US trials and thus focused on the decathlon, winning the gold medal. While perusing the list of the participants of the 1956 olympic decathlon, one encounters the names of M. Lauer, who, in 1959, set a world record in the 110 m hurdles, or B. Richards who won the the pole vault in both the 1952 and the 1956 Olympics. (The tendency of the hurdles or pole vault specialists to dab at the decathlon continues even today. This is easy to understand, since the hurdles and the pole vault are the two more difficult technically events of the decathlon, and thus the two most difficult to master). Alongside the names of Lauer and of Richards one finds also a "pure" decathlete, like Vasili Kuznetsov. He was probably the first who was really preparing all ten events of the decathlon, and while he had to to content himself with two olympic bronze medals, in 1956 and 1960, he did improve the world record on two occasions. 

Johnson and Yang at the end of the 1500 m

I have, on purpose, omitted, from the paragraph above, the two sacred monsters of the decathlon, Rafer Johnson and C.K. Yang. Their battle for the olympic title in the Rome, 1960, Olympics, is one of the most captivating moments in athletics. Both competed in the 1956 and 1960 Olympics, Johnson winning silver and gold while Yang obtained silver in Rome. (He was 8th in Melbourne and 5th in the Tokyo, 1964, Games). Up to 1956 Johnson was not a pure decathlete. In fact he was qualified for the long jump for Melbourne but he was injured and preferred not compete in that event. After the Olympics he concentrated on the decathlon taking back his world record from Kuznetsov, the first time in Moscow during the legendary USA-USSR athletics meeting. C.K. Yang was the prototypical runner-jumper (but also an excellent javelin thrower). Participating in the Asian Games not only did he win the decathlon (in 1954 and 1958) but he also won silver in the 110 m hurdles and bronze in the 400 m hurdles! He was an accomplished pole-vaulter and even held the world record, just for one week in 1963, with 4.96 m. (Later, he did jump 5 metres). He broke the decathlon world record, the same year, being the first man to tally over 9000 points with the 1952 tables or over 8000 points with the current, 1985, ones. Yang is the only athlete I know of who did attempt a world record (in pole vault) during a decathlon. (But, of course, the only athlete who broke a world record during a combined event is R. Legendre: while competing for the pentathlon in the Paris, 1924, Olympics he jumped 7.76 m in the long jump). Yang did participate in the 1964, Tokyo, Olympics, but could not do better than 5th, due in part to his catastrophic high jump. (Do not try to find anything reliable on C.K. Yang in the World Athletics page. Neither his pole vault world record nor his Rome silver medal are mentioned. What a shame). 

Yang pole-vaulting

In the 60s things started to change for the decathlon. The event became dominated by true specialists. Decathletes learned how to hurdle and to pole vault, and thus specialists of these two events lost their advantage. This does not mean that specialist of some event do not try a decathlon from time to time. The lure are the decathlon world records for each event. The catch is that for the world record in some event to be homologated, the athlete must obtain a total of more than 7000 points in the ten events. Thus the pole vault decathlon record went from P. Collet with 5.61, to T. Vigneron with 5.62 to J. Galfione with 5.75 and finally to T. Lobinger with 5.76 m. R. Lavillenie did have a go at that but he could only jump 5.47 m and anyhow his total was just 6676 points. However the only pole vault specialist who was also an accomplished decathlete was Tim Bright, with records of 5.82 m and 8340 points respectively. He did participate in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics in the decathlon, finishing 12th and 7th, and in the 1991 World Championships in the pole vault finishing 6th. In 1992, he finished 12th in the pole vault olympic competition. 

T. Bright in the 1984 Olympics

To my eyes the best decathlete among the specialists of other events would have been L. Doucouré, the 2005 110 m hurdles world champion. He obtained a total of 7794 points in 2001 when he was just 18 years old. Had he specialised in the decathlon towards the end of his career, he would easily had been a 8500+ decathlete.

L. Doucouré at the London Olympics. Next to him is S. Sands

The emergence of decathlon specialists had as a consequence that the decathletes could no more be competitive against the specialists of the various events. The only exception is A. Eaton's season devoted to the 400 m hurdles. Although he did not manage to reach his out-of-this-world objective of a time between 47 and 48 seconds, he did much better than the pessimistic forecast of K. Akabusi who thought that Eaton would "be lucky to break 50 s in his first year". Eaton obtained a superb 48.69 s in 2014 and, what is even more impressive, won the Diamond League race in Oslo, becoming the first ever decathlete to win an individual Diamond League event. Apparently the 400 m hurdles, the "mankiller" event, is particularly attractive to the decathletes. John Mulkeen is giving in his blog a long list of top decathletes who have competed in the 400 m hurdles. And as I mentioned in the paragraph on C.K. Yang, he obtained a bronze medal over that distance in the Asian Games of 1958. A. Järvinen, the decathlon silver medallist in Amsterdam, 1928, and Los Angeles, 1932, did even better with a silver medal in the European Championships of 1934 in the low hurdles.

And it is not finished. In a recent interview, N. Kaul, the 2019 decathlon world champion, explained that he did some low hurdles training and that he had the intention to run some 400 m hurdles in the future. And of course we should not forget that one of the best 400 m hurdles specialists, K. Warholm, started his athletics career in combined events, winning the world U18 title in the octathlon and obtaining a silver medal in the decathlon of the U20 Europeans. He has clearly a 8000+ potential.

Warholm participating in the decathlon

So, how about the statement of the title. Is is true that the decathletes are average in everything and good in nothing? Well, I do not think that one can be further from the truth than this. The top decathletes are excellent in everything. And the fact that their event lasts two days is making their efforts even more laudable. Ah, if only World Athletics were a little bit more audacious and introduced a women's decathlon...

Theories of scoring: the energetic cost approach

In my modelling courses, I always ask the question: "what is the physical equivalent of money?" Eschewing all Marxist overtones, one can safely answer that the physical quantity which is the best candidate is free energy, i.e. the amount of energy that can be converted into work. Extrapolating the situation in a sport setting, we can decide that the reward of a performance, in terms of points attributed, must be closely related to the work necessary in order to produce the performance. It is thus of capital importance to know the energetic cost of the various disciplines.

In athletics the energetic cost of running is essentially proportional to the velocity, except for the sprints where a small contribution, proportional to the square of the velocity, does exist. For jumps and throws the energetic cost is proportional to the length of the jump (horizontal or vertical) or of the throw. The current WA scoring tables are of the form

for track events, where p are the points and v the velocity. The meaning of v₀ is clear: it is the velocity corresponding to precisely 0 points. The interesting quantity is the exponent c. For the decathlon track events the value of c is 1.81-1.92. When one plots the points as a function of the velocity one obtains a quasi-linear dependence (the dashed line materialising the best linear fit). 

For field events the corresponding expression is

where L₀ is the performance corresponding to 0 points. The exponent c for jumps is 1.35-1.42 and for throws 1.05-1.10. Plotting the points versus the length for long jump one obtains the figure below. 

While there is a definite positive curvature (due to the requirement of the tables to be "progressive") the departure from a straight line fit is not enormous. The linear dependence is much more pronounced for throws as can be assessed  from the figure corresponding to the discus throw.

Summarising the situation we can conclude that the number of points for scoring in athletics are linearly related to the energetic cost of the performance. However there is always a cut-off, i.e. zero points do not correspond to zero performance. In my previous post I showed that it is possible to introduce a scoring system which remedies this while staying very close to the official scoring for all but the smallest performances. It can be done in this case as well but then the proportionality between the performance and the points is somewhat skewed: low quality work gets just some pittance as reward.  

Enforcing a strict proportionality in the case of athletics is pointless, given the linear relation of the energetic cost with velocity and length. Thus I opted for deviating a little from athletics. In what follows I will apply the energetic cost approach to two aquatic disciplines, namely swimming and finswimming. 

As I explained in my post on the Rise and Fall of athletic performances, the energetic cost of swimming (and surface finswimming as well) grows like the velocity to a power 2.6. (This is, of course, the dominant term, a more accurate representation necessitating a more complicated relation. However in order to keep the arguments as simple as possible in what follows, only this dominant term will be considered).  The figure below shows the energetic cost of swimming, represented by v^2.6 for the various age groups from junior to master. 

As already pointed out in my previous post the dependence follows the universal curve. This strengthens the argument in favour of using the energetic cost in order to build a scoring table for aquatic disciplines. This is precisely what I did for finswimming. Introducing the  dependence 

between points and velocity I constructed a scoring table for finswimming. By clicking here you can access the interactive website of the performance scoring. Given that the table points for finswimming are proportional to the energetic cost one expects that a plot of points as a function of age will follow the universal curve. This turns out to be the case as one can assess from the dashed lines below obtained from the french finswimming records.

However upon closer inspection one remarks something weird. In the case of the US swimming records the extrapolation of the masters' records to velocity zero leads to an age of circa 115. This is in perfect agreement with the findings in a previous post of mine on Age Factors and their little secret. In the case of the french finswimming records zero velocity is reached at age 85. One may wonder at this point if this is due to the level of french finswimming. Thus I decided to plot the energetic cost for the masters' world records.

As expected the records of the masters age groups do lie on a straight line. However again the extrapolation of that line shows a zero velocity reached at around 85. So, the results for France were not exceptional. 

How can this be explained, in particular given that the rise and fall curve does follow the universal one with a slope ratio very close to 5. The explanation is to be sought in the discipline maturity. Classical swimming is an old, well-established discipline, like athletics. There exist large populations of practitioners in all age groups. Finswimming is a more recent sport and the number of finswimmers, while constantly growing, is still rather small. When the discipline reaches maturity, one would expect a behaviour similar to the one of classical swimming. This is what is represented by the light dotted lines in the figure with the french records. Way to go, finswimming.