[quote author="Jeremy Richmond" date="1222257329"]
Well if the professor thinks so then I may have to stop plugging Gatlin. Perhaps he was only good at one other thing, generation of force with the leg almost fully extended at impact. Who is this Mann man? Best make himself available for us to ask him questions.
Dr. Ralph Mann, Silver medal in 72 Olympics in 400m Hurdles and the USATF biomechanist for the sprint events. He’s not published his data (at least not in peer-reviewed journals) for about 20 years but it is available.
Gatlin’s major flaw was that he made contact too far in front of his COM.
Shame there is no biomechanical data and lack of pictures on Flo-Jo.
Mann has plenty. On an interesting note, he told me that she was an elite technical model before she was the 10.58 100m queen that we know her today. He said in 88 (when she ran like she had a rocket on her back) her mechanics didn’t significantly change but her power output did.[/quote]
My sense of humour might not be apparent in this method of communication but I do know of Ralph Mann and have a great deal of respect for him and the many other researchers of athletics. The bit about contact too far in front of COM troubles me a bit though. Traditionally, sprinters may not have exploited the area in front of COM for propulsion but given that some of the force produced in this zone may be wasted, the sprinter may still benefit. For sure that Gatlin did not have the technical skill that Flo-Jo had in the same region, it would be great to compare sprinters of the modern era to those of the not so distant past especially their force production ahead of the COM.
And Flo-Jo was brilliant. I find it hard to believe that the reported but not recorded wind reading in the Olympic final just happened to blow in her lane exclusively. She was miles ahead of her compatriots. The fact that her mechanics did not change significantly relative to her power output leads me to think that she may have found the right compromise in internal fuel expenditure with a smooth acceleration and/or she may have found the natural frequency of the different springs (musculotendinous complexes) of her propulsive limbs.
Further, since we are originally discussing the 10-m correlate to 100-m performance with a good deal of humour, I have seen a report from the Swedish Olympic committee where it reported the ground contact time of an Australian sprinter, which when compared to that of one of the Olypmpic champions studied showed similar patterns of ground contact time up until the 10-m mark. After this mark, the Australian sprinters contact time did not continue to shorten as considerably which can be seen to a limited extent in my article as well when comparing a current European sprinter.