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elite athletes // Posts tagged as "elite athletes"
Chicago Marathon 2010 preview: Close finishes
This week begins the countdown to the 33rd Chicago Marathon, which is now just over five days away. Even with Ryan Hall’s late withdraw from the field, it promises to be a competitive bunch with several athletes well capable of going under 2:06 with a few capable of sub-2:05. But the real story is that […]
David Rudisha – 1:41.09 World Record!
Breaking news, not much to say yet, and sadly, I didn’t even see this race, but David Rudisha has delivered on his exceptional promise and broken the 800m world record in Berlin today! His time of 1:41.09 took the narrowest 0.02s margin off legend Wilson Kipketer’s previous best, set back in 1997. The splits from […]
Does human growth hormone improve performance?
When our resident maven Jim Ferstle sent us the story about the how human growth hormone (hGH) can produce a 0.4 second improvement in 100 m sprinting, our ears pricked up and we were listening. It got us searching for the article immediately, only to find that the current issue of Annals of Internal Medicine […]
The mental edge: Thoughts and opinions
It’s been far too long between posts for me – I do apologize, but as Jonathan said in yesterday’s post, things have been rather frantic for both of us. And seem likely to continue, but (fortunately, I guess), I’m recovering from jet-lag and a round-the-world trip which has me waking up at 4am, so I […]
New York 2009: Race analysis and splits
If you’ve come here for live splits, I’m afraid I have been beaten by technology this time around. Between the feed from Universal Sports breaking up on me every 2 seconds, and the hotel wireless access in Boston, I did not manage to even watch the race, let alone document the splits. Even now, 8 […]
Chicago 2009 In-race splits
Below is a table with the kilometer splits (those we got) from today’s Chicago marathon, which saw Sammy Wanjiru win his fourth major marathon – Fukuoka, Beijing, London and now Chicago. His time? 2:05:41, one second inside the course record, so mission accomplished, at least from that point of view. The world record eluded him, […]
Pacing strategy and limits to performance
Well, I have arrived in Chicago after a great couple of days in Washington, and now the build-up to the Chicago 2009 Marathon can begin! A little later today, Jonathan and I will be meeting with some of the Marathon organizers to discuss race-day logistics and to figure out how (if at all) we can […]
Usain Bolt: 19.19s – you must be kidding
I must confess, I didn’t think the world record would fall. I was pretty sure he’d win, by far, but I felt a 19.4 would be enough, and that another record was just out of reach. Bolt didn’t – he ran 19.19s, winning by 0.62 seconds, and with it, won his 5th gold medal in a 5th […]
Caster Semenya: Male or female?
Thank you for visiting The Science of Sport. You’ve come to the right place for insight and analysis of sports news, starting with the controversy around Caster Semenya. Read on for the very first article I wrote on the story, on Wed 19 August, when the story broke. Obviously a lot has happened since, and […]