Lane Assignments - 200m

[George P.]

However, the positioning in terms of seeing rivals leads to the outside lane being disadvantageous for many sprinters (although a few may gain by being 'isolated'; some comments on this were made in some prior threads as regards X-man's 19.63 from lane 8).

...

As for how the factor changes across lanes, I think that there is a decreasing advantage as you move from 1 to 8. This likely implies that the 'keeping in view' factor gets relatively more important in the outer lanes.

These seem like very good points. The first, in particular, I have always understood to be important to many sprinters.

[paulthefan]

Presumably the same should now be held true for the 4x1 relay.

the 4x1 is the race where we should see the most pronounced outer-lane advantage. Seems we should seldom if ever see a 4x1 team medal let alone win from this lane.. but somehow I suspect that the data do not support this theory. ... Id like to know why.

[Mennisco]

As for how the factor changes across lanes, I think that there is a decreasing advantage as you move from 1 to 8. This likely implies that the 'keeping in view' factor gets relatively more important in the outer lanes.

I'll bet that going from 1-4 is far more advantageous than going from 4-8, the "keeping in view" element can be eliminated, I mean from a physics perspective. Just a hunch.

[Justin Clouder]

the 4x1 is the race where we should see the most pronounced outer-lane advantage. Seems we should seldom if ever see a 4x1 team medal let alone win from this lane.. but somehow I suspect that the data do not support this theory. ... Id like to know why.

Most fast 4x1s are in champs where the faster teams get the middle lanes and there is a much larger gap between the better and less good 4x1 teams than is the case in individual events. My theory!

Justin