Advantages of oversized tracks?

[lagsun]

With a number of last chance meets being held at oversized indoors tracks (i.e. UW and ND), are there any studies detailing the advantages of these tracks over 200m ones?

[TrackMaster1]

There are NO studies detailing advantages to 300 meter tracks over 200 meter banked tracks. There are numerous studies that reveal 200 meter banked tracks are equivalent to oversized 300 meter flat tracks. Tracks like "the fastest track in the world at the university of Arkansas with its 60 degree banks are much faster than flat 300 meter tracks. The NCAA considers the tracks equivalent. The data shows no statistically significant difference between the 2 types of tracks.

http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/fi...on+Summary.pdf

[user4]

For the 200 and 400m races the banked track is simply not a fair race. Such tracks give advantage to the outside higher lanes. Kind of like letting some competitors run down hill.

[Powell]

Exactly. And the problem could be alleviated by moving the finish line to the middle of the straight, but somehow nobody's willing to do that.

[NotDutra5]

That must have been one hell of a research project getting the answer to the original post. Took nearly 11 years to complete.

[jazzcyclist]

Tracks like "the fastest track in the world at the university of Arkansas with its 60 degree banks are much faster than flat 300 meter tracks.

That track does not have 60-degree banking. It's probably less than half that.

[jazzcyclist]

I would not forget that in order to run "downhill" on these banked tracks, that you must run 'uphill' first.

You actually run downhill, uphill and downhill again.

[jazzcyclist]

Well, as long as we're splitting hairs, I should point out that lane one is flat and lane two isn't normally used in sections-against-the-clock competitions, especially in championship meets. However, I think we can all agree that there's a net elevation drop in lanes 2 through 6.

[gh]

Lane one is "flat" in the sense that at the left-hand margin, it's the same elevation above the floor all the way round. All others have an up-down (or down-up) of varying degrees.

[Atticus]

I would not forget that in order to run "downhill" on these banked tracks, that you must run 'uphill' first.

Yeah but - once you're up and running, the up part is much less detrimental than was the advantage of initially going downhill, overcoming inertia.
Thought experiment - Run 100m with the first 90m downhill and then the last 10m an incline to get you back to the same elevation as the start. Your momentum will keep you going just fine at the end, but that first 90m downhill REALLY improves your time.

[cubehead]

Just make tracks big circles. No more up and down.

[26mi235]

The advantage of the 200 indoors from Lane 6 is that you get to run downhill. The gradient is great enough that you could not use the mark for a road race (too much downhill gradient to qualify, and I think that hold for the 400m race as well).

[ATK]

What are the conversion tables based on? Reggie Lewis is not as banked as the Armory or Arkansas. Yet Spire, the Dempsey and Notre Dame are all different sized oversized tracks.

[26mi235]

They used data on performances on the various tracks (Flat200 (mainly 200m, but also smaller); 200m Banked; Over 200m. They determined that, as a first approximation, the banked and oversized tracks had similar advantages. They developed factors for each distance. The actual advantage of banked track are bigger for sprints and OT for longer distances, but I suspect that these adjustments will come later.

The problem that they had in developing factors was that not a lot of 'all-out' peak efforts were made on the Flat tracks. By giving advantages that changed and many more qualification marks are made on these tracks now and a much better set of data are being generated for use in making more refined and accurate conversion factors.

[dukehjsteve]

All these supposedly sophisticated conversion factors are built on a foundation of sand !