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August, 2008 // Posts published in August, 2008
Olympic Oscars
It’s been one week since the Olympics, and a slow week here at The Science of Sport (as I try to catch up on time lost to the Games, mostly!). For today, though, to begin a Post-Olympic wrap, I thought I’d do a “Best of” (and worst of) list from Beijing. So here are the […]
Post-Olympic prospects
Well, I must apologize for the complete absence of posting or replying to any of your comments on our Olympic coverage over the last 4 days – I’m going to blame our absence on a “post-Olympic hangover”, which saw us drop from 2 posts a day to none in 4! The comments and feedback we’ve […]
Beijing 2008: Men’s Marathon report
The Men’s Marathon in Beijing was, to be blunt, brutal. In temperatures at least 10 degrees higher than we typically see in the Major Marathon Series, the Kenyans and Ethiopians decided that they were going to run it like a paced race anyway. In an incredible display of front running, the Africans shattered the Olympic […]
Beijing 2008: Discovering Usain Bolt
Well, halfway into the athletics programme of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, and the name on everyone’s lips is Usain Bolt. The man with the most appropriate name in track and field (a close second is Philip Spies, who was a South African javelin thrower…”spies” is the Afrikaans word for javelin) has electrified the Beijing […]
Beijing 2008: Men’s 10 000m report
You have to go back a long, long way to find the last time that the men’s 10,000m Olympic gold was won by an athlete NOT from Ethiopia. Barcelona, 1992, to be precise, where Khalid Skah of Morocco beat Richard Chelimo in a controversial race. Ever since, the 10,000m race has been an Ethiopian playground. […]
Beijing 2008: Men 100m race analysis
Well, yesterday evening we posted on the incredible performance of Usain Bolt, who took the Olympic 100m title in 9.69 seconds, breaking his own world record by 0.03 seconds, despite the fact that he started celebrating about 20m from the finish! It was a spectacular performance, which you can read about here. The splits and […]
Beijing 2008: Women’s marathon splits
Constantina Diţă-Tomescu has won the Beijing Olympic Marathon. In a real race of attrition, that saw many of the pre-race favourites drop out or off the pace BEFORE HALFWAY, it was the Romanian who had the ability on the day. She hit the front at 20km, pushed the pace on, and gradually grew a lead that […]
Beijing 2008: Men 100m report
For RACE ANALYSIS, including split times, and average speeds for Usain Bolt’s world record, see the related posts at the bottom (or in the sidebar to the right). Usain Bolt delivered. Nobody else stood a chance. It was quite simply the most devastating display of 100m sprinting I have ever seen. The “race” that everyone […]
Beijing 2008: Men’s 100 m Fly
1/100th of a second. Such are the margins in the Olympic Games. And such was the difference between Michael Phelps winning his seventh gold, and claiming a silver in the 100m Butterfly. In one of the most incredible swimming races you’ll ever see, Phelps was behind for 99.95 m of a 100m race, and managed, […]