An interesting article by P. Kyprianou (decathlon coach extraordinaire)

As you certainly know I am following closely the site Décapassion and I stumbled upon a reference to a (somewhat old) article by Petros Kyprianou. For those for whom the name does not ring a bell, Kyprianou (a Cypriot) is the current Director of Track & Field and Cross Country at the University of Illinois. Previously he was head coach of the University of Georgia. He is a specialist of combined events and he has coached many of the Estonian athletes who live and train in the US (Uibo, Erm, Tilga etc).

The article in question had appeared in Decathlon2000 and after reading it I looked for other articles of the same author. And I found a more recent one entitled Developing the Decathlon Technical Model. Kyprianou is a great technician and one things is for sure: he knows the decathlon. In his article he starts with a very interesting comparison. Suppose one aims at a 8000 points performance. Were these points to be uniformly distributed among the events one would have ended up with the following set of performances

However, when one analyses the average scores in each event among ten random decathletes who scored 8000 points the performances are quite different.

Kyprianou concludes that the decathlon is mainly a speed/power event and that sprints/hurdles/jumps appear to offer the best opportunities for point accumulation. And while great performances would be clearly helpful, excessive 1500m training could turn out to negatively interfere with the performance in other areas.

He goes on to formulate his theory of commonality. Instead of teaching all the different techniques in a restricted amount of time it is preferable to try to identify skills and features that the decathlon events hold in common.

I will not attempt to summarise (or plagiarise) Kyprianou's article. Suffices it to say that in just a few pages he not only presents his theory of decathlon coaching but he also outlines a training program that would be useful to everyone who is beginning to coach athletes for combined events. 

But I cannot resist, before concluding this post, to point out this small gem:

"It is ineffective to separate any biomotor development from the technical model. Everything you perform in track and field has a way to be performed. That is called technique".

The World Athletics 2024 finalists

This year World Athletics introduced the three distinct categories for the athlete of the year title, track, field and road (they called it "out of stadium" so as to be able to include cross country) right from the outset (last year they surprised everybody by naming winners in the three categories at the last moment). The finalists list has appeared and there are 2+2 athletes from each group selected. 

Here is the list (I present them in the order track-field-road) for women

Julien Alfred
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone
Yaroslava Mahuchikh
Nafissatou Thiam
Ruth Chepngetich
Sifan Hassan

and men

Jakob Ingebrigtsen
Letsile Tebogo
Mondo Duplantis
Miltiadis Tentoglou
Brian Pintado 
Tamirat Tola

(Just in case you, like myself, had to ask the question "who is Pintado" the answer is that he is an ecuadorian race-walker who won the Olympic title over 20 km). 

Seeing the list one is tempted to make predictions. The case of men's choice is rather easy. I don't think that Pintado and Tola have a real chance. Ingebrigtsen had a good year but the fact that he was defeated over the 1500 and the mile diminishes his chances. Tebogo would have been the undisputable favourite if he had won the 100 m or, at least, if he had led Botswana to victory in the 4x400 m relay. This leaves us Duplantis and Tentoglou. Duplantis was athlete of the year 2022 and was crowned European athlete for 2024. So, I cross my fingers for Tentoglou (and, as you can imagine, I voted for him once the fans' votes were open). But if Duplantis gets the title I will find this perfectly natural.

In the case of women I am much less at ease with predictions. I don't think that either Chepngetich or Hassan can win the title. And Alfred's defeat in the 200 m may prove enough to remove her from the serious contenders. Mahuchikh just won the European title for the athlete of 2024 and this should diminish her chances for the world crown. (But given that lord Sebastian is a great supporter of Ukraine, one cannot be sure). This would leave Thiam and McLaughlin. Thiam secured a third olympic heptathlon title while McLaughlin won the 400 m hurdles title with a great world record. The latter was athlete of the year in 2022, so perhaps this time Thiam will be the one to be crowned. As my regular readers know, I am a great admirer of McLaughlin but this time I voted for Thiam. Of course, it would be perfectly OK if McLaughlin got the title for a second time.

World Athletics published the list of finalists for the Rising Star title. Here they are

Mattia Furlani
Jaydon Hibbert
Niels Laros
Sembo Almayew
Angelina Topic
Ziyi Yan 

Furlani is second in my list of rising stars but since I had placed Wanyonyi (who joined the list of "grown ups" for World Athletics) in first place it is as if Furlani were first. He is my favourite for the title. Laros has just obtained the European title (and so his chances are minimal). As for Hibbert, who figured in my last year's list, I feel that he did not live up to expectations.

I had simply overlooked Almayew for my list and I only recently came to know about Yan. (By the way, World Athletics refers to her in the finalists list as Yan Ziyi, which is the chinese way to give the surname before the name. In fact, in the athlete's profile they are indicating Yan as her surname. However, as for all the other finalists the western-style convention name-surname is used, one is misled into thinking that Ziyi is her surname. One would have hoped that an organisation like WA would have some consistency. But, alas, Lord Sebastian is otherwise occupied). Yan is a superb javelin thrower, very fast and strong, but I don't think that she can grab the title. (If Vilagos and Tzengko manage to realise fully their potential and Yan matures into a top thrower, my fears about female javelin throw, could turn out to be unjustified). The favourite, to my eyes, is Topic. She was my last year's choice and although I decided to put Manuel at first position this year I pointed out that Topic is always my preferred athlete.

I had finished the article and I was ready to publish it when, all of a sudden, I realised that I was not thinking clearly: already last year World Athletics had nominated three "year's best" athletes, one per speciality. So my striving for a prediction of the absolute year's best was unnecessary. With three "best" my prediction for women is easy: McLaughlin, Thiam and Hassan. The situation for men is more complicated. I would select Tebogo over Ingebrigtsen, Tentoglou over Duplantis and Tola over Pintado but I may be 33 % or 67 % or even 100 % wrong. In fact this year WA may go for a race-walker (there has never been one nominated athlete of the year), confirm once more the supremacy of Duplantis (I guess that last year's split into three categories was introduced in order to avoid the Duplantis-Lyles dilemma) and reward Ingebrigtsen, who has been, somehow overlooked the previous years. We'll know in December.

Finally, judging from what happened last year, we may not have access to the finalists for the photograph of the year contest and will have to content ourselves with just the winner. 

PS It turned out I was wrong concerning the finalists for the photograph of the year. Three photos were posted on the WA website and there was a promise that all 11 shortlisted ones will appear later this month. Given that there is only one photo worth mentioning among the finalists (the one with Hassan and Assefa) and that I am afraid that WA will select the photo of Lyles, I am not publishing my choice here but keep it for the article where I will comment on the winners.

The 6.51 m pole vault, another AI stupidity

As you certainly know I am a fan of P.J. Vazel and I am following his twitter (X) stream. Thus I stumbled upon a post where it was question of a 6.5 m jump and artificial intelligence(!). I was intrigued and I followed the link to an (excellent) article by J. Cassirame and collaborators. In the introduction of the article one reads that there have been speculations on the limit of the men's pole vault performances based on AI analyses. A direct reference to the latest one was given, but it linked to an article of Le Monde, unfortunately behind a paywall. But the author of these speculations was explicitly named, Ather Gattami, apparently an expert in AI, and thus I could track down the original publications. 

I found several articles in swedish (but Google can provide quite adequate translations) with one entitled "AI track – Mondo's dream height is 6.51". Duplantis himself has an ambitious career plan and has declared that:

"Jumping 6 meters and 30 centimetres is my next big goal. But why stop there when I can strive for even more? I believe in setting high goals and working hard to achieve them".

So, the swedish olympic committee has sponsored a study led by A. Gattami, which analysed results and data from Duplantis career and "using advanced AI technology identified new dream height for Duplantis at 6.51 meters". Before going further I invite you to savour the (false) precision. It's not 6.50 but 6.51 as if the predictions were accurate to the nearest centimetre.  Gattami explains that "AI can give us tools to push the boundaries in sports", and he concludes that "it is exciting to see how the technology can be used to maximise the athlete's potential and inspire new heights of performance". Would such a trivial statement necessitate AI in order to be formulated? I don't think so: human mediocrity could have sufficed.

Since AI pundits have started talking about almost unrealistic heights it was important to see what a serious scientific analysis could conclude. That's what Cassirame and collaborators set out to do. Already their article is entitled "Why pole vaulting at 6.50 meters seems possible but remains improbable", and not 6.51 m, clearly written by people who understand what is meant by precision. 

The authors are specialists of the biomechanics of pole vault and examine the feasibility of a 6.5 m jump from the point of view of mechanical energy conservation and the relation of the take-of speed to the performance. They estimate that for a take-off speed of 10.3 m/s an elevation of 6.50 m is possible. However this is a naïve estimate assuming just a point mass situated at the centre of mass of the athlete neglecting his corporeal details. On the other hand the athletes are using their arms bending the pole and elevating their centre of mass and so improve the performance predicted by the simple mechanical calculation. I find the figure of Cassirame et al, given below really fascinating. There is a clear (anti-)correlation between take-off speed and energy gained through the work furnished by the arms. 

If you are really interested I urge you to track the article and read it carefully. The conclusion of Cassirame et al, based on purely physical arguments is that while a 6.5 jump by Duplantis is in principle possible, one cannot fully trust the predictions, since Duplantis is an outlier with respect to the general population of vaulters, in terms of take-off speed. 

But even if one accepts the feasibility of such a jump, the second question is whether it is realistic given the career of Duplantis. Given that he is 25 years old and that one can reasonably expect his career to peak before 30, he has just a few more years during which he can improve the world record. Given his actual rhythm, it is not unreasonable to expect an improvement of the current record by 6-8 cm. So while Duplantis' goal of a 6.30 m appears well-thought and achievable, the sensationalistic 6.50 m prediction of AI shamans is pure poppycock.

The rising stars of 2024

Usually, I start my selection of the year's best athletes with the senior ones. But I had noticed in the previous years that ,when it came to the choice of the rising stars, I hadn't been paying sufficient attention and I struggled to establish my list. So, as I did last year, I decided to keep an eye open for the young and upcoming athletes and as a result I am again presenting a post focusing exclusively on the new talents. 

While the rising stars are, in principle, athletes still in their teens, I am always ready to make an exception for somebody who is just 20 years old. This is the case for E. Wanyonyi who was second last year behind L. Tebogo. He is my number one for this year. He has won the 800 m in the Olympics and shares, with W. Kipketer, the second place in the all-time list of the distance, with a 1:41.11 performance, at just 0.2 s from the world record. 

I hesitated a little bit for the remaining places but in the end it's M. Furlani who figures in second place. He had en excellent year winning silver in the Europeans (with a 8.38 m long jump world U20 record) and bronze in the Olympics.

B. Mehary finished 6th in the 5000 m final in the Paris Olympics but, during the Kenyan Trials, had broken the 10000 m world U20 record with 26:37.93 (he is now fifteenth in the all-time list for the distance) but, finishing 4th in the longer distance, he could not make the national team.

Q. Wilson would have been among the first three were it not for his catastrophic performance in the Olympic 4x400 m relay. He came in Paris, at just 16 years of age, with a 44.20 s personal best in the 400 m (world U18 best performance) but ran a 47.27 s first relay leg, and Norwood had to surpass himself in order to get the US into the final. Thanks to the US team winning the final, Wilson became the youngest athletics Olympic gold medalist in history.

I will complement my list of rising stars with cypriot hammer thrower I. Kesidis. He won the World U20 2024 title throwing 82.80 m, more than 7 metres beyond the silver medalist.

For the women's list my preference goes to L.G. Manuel (one cannot guess from her name that she is an athlete from Czechia, but her father is from Angola, and this explains that). I noticed her at the Rome, 2024, Europeans where she qualified easily for the 400 m final in which, with 50.52 s, she finished fourth behind Kaczmarek, Adeleke and Klaver. She reached the semi-final in the Olympics and then went to Lima for the world U20 championships winning gold (just as she had done in the 2023 U20 Europeans).

Topic competes  also in the long jump (albeit with less success)

A. Topic was my 2023 female rising star. This year she is in second position but she is always my preferred athlete. In 2924 she was unlucky, injuring herself during the warm-up of the high-jump in the Paris Olympics. Still she competed in the qualifiers and managed to make the final, but had to withdraw. With the bronze medal being adjudicated at just 1.95 m, Topic, who had jumped 1.98 m a few weeks before the Olympics, had serious chances for a place on the podium. Less than one month after her injury in Paris, Topic participated in the World U20 Championships and won the gold medal.

Ph. Gill won the british national 800 m title with 1:57.86 at just 17 years of age. She has now the European U18 record for the distance. She did not participate in the Europeans due to school exams but went to the Olympics, where she reached the semi-final. It would have been interesting to see Gill running together with S. Moraa in the World U20 Championships, but the former did not pursue her season after the Olympics. Sarah Moraa (a cousin of world champion over the same 800 m distance Mary Moraa) did win the U20 title and thus figures by right in my 2024 rising star list.

I will complete the list of female rising stars with M. Eisa who, after finishing 7th in the 5000 m at the Olympics, went on to win gold over the same distance in World U20 Championships (just as she had done two years before). 

A. Vilagos won the European Rising Star title. She was my choice as number one rising star already in 2022. She is an athlete I am always following closely.

Before concluding this article it is interesting to mention a new award that aims at honouring the best performing male and female U23 athletes at the Diamond League Final. It is called the Jesse Owens Rising Star Award and has the support of the Jesse Owens Foundation. (J. Owens was just 23 years old when he won four gold medals at the Berlin, 1936, Olympics). The first recipients of the Jesse Owens award are L. Tebogo and D. Welteji. Tebogo was the olympic champion over 200 m while Welteji was fourth in the 1500 m final. She has also three Diamond League victories (two over 1500 m and one in the 3000 m) but in the Diamond League final she could only finish second behind the great F. Kipyegon.