On Saturday, Jamaica's Nesta Carter ran a wind legal 9.78 for 100m. That makes Jamaica, a country with a population about the same as Brooklyn, NY, by far the most dominant sprint country in the world. They now have 3 of the 4 fastest men in history in Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell, and Nesta Carter all running at the same time. That make's the Miami Heat's lineup of LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Ch [...]

What's the limit in the 100m dash? 12.75 meters per second? Is a .78 10m split possible? What information is best to predict performance? I think the Bob Hayes split set the tone long before Rome and Berlin, since it happened and the context was clear that he was limited. Great performances in bad conditions (dirt, little training, special diets, sports medicine....) clue us to what can be done w [...]

I was channel surfing last evening and came upon a program called ”Road to the Draft” on the NFL channel. The commentators were talking about and showing video clips of the Pro days (AKA – Meat Auction) at USC and University of Texas. They showed five players running the forty yard dash and two pulled hamstrings. What is wrong with this picture? How many of these guys went to draft preparati [...]

The new decade is almost here. 2009 was a good one for track and field in general as well as ELITETRACK. The continued dominance of Usain Bolt, Berlin World Championships, no major drug busts, and some of the best sprint performances from both the men and women that have ever been seen. We had some great discussions on the forum as well. In the second annual "Best of ELITETRACK" edition I'd lik [...]

Thanks to all members (and Usain Bolt's performances at the World Championships) for making August the biggest month on record for ELITETRACK. Every metric for monitoring the use and popularity of the site surpassed previous all-time highs from earlier in 2009. I wished I could have been a bigger contributor in the great discussions during this time but business related duties kept me away for th [...]

To continue on my recent obsession of short blogs about Usain Bolt I wanted to throw out another thought....how long can the guy be the best sprinter in the world? Right now he's arguably 10-15 years ahead of his competitors. Even if his performance falls off substantially in the next 8 years, everything we have to go on right now would indicate he would still be the best sprinter in the world... [...]

Yesterday, Usain made easy work of a class field at the Zurich Weltklasse meet. He ran a 9.81 and if not for his own stratospheric standards the time would be amazing. This speaks to the fact that the guy has pretty much changed short sprinting as we know it. His dominance is so great in fact that both he and others are speaking of adding new events to his resume. The long jump and the 400m are th [...]

Last week in Berlin, Usain obliterated his already ridiculous world records. His margin of victory was so great over otherwise fantastic sprinters that it got me to thinking that he might be so good at the 100m and 200m that he could maybe get the world record in EVERY SINGLE SPRINT EVENT without even doing specific training for them. Here's a quick review of the possibility. Indoor 50m- The curr [...]

What can you say? Obvious the time was unreal, but in many ways even more impressive was the margin of victory 0.62 seconds! I think the fact that all of his records have come in WC/OG is also very impressive. No questionable wind, against the best. I am not given to superlatives, but this guy is truly amazing. If he can maintain motivation and stay healthy the shy is the limit. It was interesting [...]

What can I possibly say or write that would do this justice. Some things to consider:Has any athlete ever been this much better than all his peers?Is it good for the sport to have someone who is so far ahead of his competitors (essentially ensuring that they have zero chance to win)?Do the outlandish performances potentially encourage more athletes to use performance enhancing drugs in hopes of be [...]