What will Usain Bolt's 100m time be in France next week?

[tm71]

of course he will smash the WR, are u kidding me ? that seems to be the only appropriate answer for this board ! LOL. !!!
seriously does it matter if is it 9.75 or 9.85 or whatever. i think every athlete's number priority four weeks from berlin (when the paris race will run) is to stay healthy and work on a peak that will come in mid to late august...

[The Atheist]

of course he will smash the WR, are u kidding me ? that seems to be the only appropriate answer for this board ! LOL. !!!
seriously does it matter if is it 9.75 or 9.85 or whatever. i think every athlete's number priority four weeks from berlin (when the paris race will run) is to stay healthy and work on a peak that will come in mid to late august...

Well, yeah, which is why if he runs a 9.70-basic, with all that taken into account, it's all the more impressive. Cuz it means that a month later when he's actually peaking and actually truly going eyeballs out and everything that he'll go like 9.5x-basic at worst.

So it definitely matters what he runs here, it says a lot about what he will be able to do in Berlin if he stays healthy. I mean, unless he shuts down way before the tape or something where you can't be sure how fast he could've gone if he went all out.

[track_expert]

of course he will smash the WR, are u kidding me ? that seems to be the only appropriate answer for this board ! LOL. !!!
seriously does it matter if is it 9.75 or 9.85 or whatever. i think every athlete's number priority four weeks from berlin (when the paris race will run) is to stay healthy and work on a peak that will come in mid to late august...

Well, yeah, which is why if he runs a 9.70-basic, with all that taken into account, it's all the more impressive. Cuz it means that a month later when he's actually peaking and actually truly going eyeballs out and everything that he'll go like 9.5x-basic at worst.

So it definitely matters what he runs here, it says a lot about what he will be able to do in Berlin if he stays healthy. I mean, unless he shuts down way before the tape or something where you can't be sure how fast he could've gone if he went all out.

The Paris track aint fast, im not expecting anything shocking but still good results. They better take care of that Berlin track cause no 9.5 will be happening if its the way it is, i can guarantee that...

The Beijing track was on par with Atlanta, the 2 fastest tracks in the world.

[justblaze1011]

Bolt is fast no matter what track he runs on. Lets not give the track surface all the credit for what the ATHLETES DO.

[track_expert]

Bolt is fast no matter what track he runs on. Lets not give the track surface all the credit for what the ATHLETES DO.

Very well agreed he's fast no matter the track, just pointing out that to reach supramaximal speeds and establish a entire new level of 100m times, it cant be done on a slow track (ex. berlin). Berlin will need resurfacing and im not so sure it will get that.

[RamGoat]

9.75

[rainy.here]

Re: Basic times?

I dont understand the point of finding basic times...

Don't forget that neither the atmospheric pressure nor humidity are measured or taken into account. Anyway, it allows the measurebators to measurebate!

[The Atheist]

Bolt is fast no matter what track he runs on. Lets not give the track surface all the credit for what the ATHLETES DO.

Very well agreed he's fast no matter the track, just pointing out that to reach supramaximal speeds and establish a entire new level of 100m times, it cant be done on a slow track (ex. berlin). Berlin will need resurfacing and im not so sure it will get that.

Well... I mean however much slower the track is on avg, that's how much time it slows them down by.

So if the same group of people run on avg .04 slower than on some faster track, then you would just have to run .04 faster in terms of effort to get an equal time from the track that is .04 faster on average.

It's the same idea as with headwind/tailwind.

Can a human being run a 19.30 into a 0.9m/s headwind? Yes (we saw it happen with our own eyes)

Is it a little harder to do it with the headwind, than if there was a tailwind? Yes, of course, just like it is also harder to do it on a slower track. There are many factors that can increase or lower a race time, and wind is one of them.

Like, if Usain Bolt would have had a 2m/s tailwind for example, instead of a 0.9m/s headwind, he would've run a 19.11 in that 200m race. And if the track had been at 600m altitude on top of all that, which is the altitude of the Lausanne track, which is still not a high enough altitude to get an "A" marking but still high enough to help the time by a few hundredths of a second, the time drops all the way to 19.06 if he has a 2.0m/s tailwind at 600m elevation for that 19.30 Beijing headwind run.

So what I'm saying is, you can still run obscenely fast time, like 19.30 in the 200 for example, even when not all the conditions are optimal, it's just you have to run THAT much harder. In Bolt's case, with optimal wind and altitude conditions he is going more than 2 tenths of a second faster than 19.30 in that Olympic final. THAT is why he was able to still pull off a 19.30 in the 200 even with no altitude and a headwind instead of a tailwind. Because he really was running obscenely fast, which more than made up for the some of the less than optimal conditions.

So, in Paris, let's say the track surface is suboptimal for sprinters. Let's say it is a tenth of a second slower on average than a faster track like the Beijing track. Well, okay, that still doesn't mean he can't go fast, it's just a tenth of a second on one factor. What if he gets a decent tailwind of 1.5 to 2 meters per second, that right there nearly makes up for the track, since 1.5m/s of tailwind is worth .07 of aiding benefit compared to 0-wind, and 2.0m/s is worth a wopping .09 of benefit compared to 0-wind. So if he gets a track that is slowing his time down by a tenth of a second but lucks out on the tailwind and gets a tailwind that's helping him by .08 seconds faster than if it was 0-wind, then now he's really only losing .02 seconds running on that slower track compared to if he ran on a faster track but had 0 tailwind. Which is almost no difference.

So you have to remember that the track surface is merely one of a number of factors to be thinking about. So merely sprinting on a track that has a less than optimal surface, doesn't necessarily mean the race time is going to be hurt all that much if some of the other factors turn out favorably (warm sunny weather, nice tailwind, etc)

Not to even mention reaction times. Bolt's reaction times last season were ranging from between around 0.16 and 0.22, usually at around 0.18 or so. Which isn't so great. That's simply time being wasted, and consistently too, he almost never gets a really good reaction time. They did say he once snapped off a 0.12 reaction time earlier on in his career several seasons ago (I dunno which race) on trackshark someone said, so I don't think it's that he is literally physically incapable of reacting in more quickly than 0.16 or anything, but I'm just saying, on avg he is reacting around 0.18, so, if he ever snaps off a 0.12 again in a big race, that's going to automatically shave an extra .06 off whatever he would've run in that same race if he would've had his usual yawn-worthy 0.18 reaction time instead. Just yet another thing to keep in mind.

[Daisy]

Bolt's reaction times last season were ranging from between around 0.16 and 0.22, usually at around 0.18 or so. Which isn't so great. That's simply time being wasted, and consistently too,

Maybe that's as good as it gets, especially if he is consistent.

They did say he once snapped off a 0.12 reaction time earlier on in his career several seasons ago (I dunno which race) on trackshark someone said, so I don't think it's that he is literally physically incapable of reacting in more quickly than 0.16 or anything

Why not assume that one outlier was a flier?

[rainy.here]

Atheist, while I love numbers at least as much as the next guy (Math Degree, Math Teacher), as has already been mentioned, you are treating these wind/altitude adjustments as being accurate when that is not the case. We don't know the error, because the "calculator" is based, basically, on observation of a whole bunch of races. We don't even know what we don't know! Not only that, it is trying to predict something that inherently is unpredictable. It is a good estimation tool, but nothing more. This is not a criticism of the calculator itself, nor of the author of said calculator. I am impressed by the work. It is a criticism of how the calculator is being used and interpreted.

Also, you mention trying harder or requiring more effort a couple times in your previous post, but that won't help. It will probably make them slower to 'try harder'. BTW, track_expert clearly knows about sprinting. He doesn't need these things explained to him.

[The Atheist]

Atheist, while I love numbers at least as much as the next guy (Math Degree, Math Teacher), as has already been mentioned, you are treating these wind/altitude adjustments as being accurate when that is not the case. We don't know the error, because the "calculator" is based, basically, on observation of a whole bunch of races. We don't even know what we don't know! Not only that, it is trying to predict something that inherently is unpredictable. It is a good estimation tool, but nothing more. This is not a criticism of the calculator itself, nor of the author of said calculator. I am impressed by the work. It is a criticism of how the calculator is being used and interpreted.

Also, you mention trying harder or requiring more effort a couple times in your previous post, but that won't help. It will probably make them slower to 'try harder'. BTW, track_expert clearly knows about sprinting. He doesn't need these things explained to him.

As for me overestimating the accuracy of wind/altitude calculators:

No, I realize they are not accurate to .01 or anything, but I do think they are probably accuracte to within around .03 or so, maybe a tiny worse but probably not much further off than that for the 100m, and then double that for the 200m. So obv if one guy runs the same time with a 0.5m/s headwind as another guy does in 0.0 wind, I'm not going to make any fuss out of that really, since the wind gauge alone could already be off by enough on both races where the accuracy variance is larger than the estimated effect in the first place, not to mention the accuracy of the calculator itself on top of the accuracy of the wind gauge. But on the other hand, if one guy runs a 9.80 into a 2m/s headwind, and another guy runs a 9.80 with a 5m/s tailwind, obviously the 9.80 into the headwind was a much more impressive result than the 9.80 with the huge tailwind. I mean, even if between the wind gauge accuracy and calculator accuracy you are off by about .08 seconds of calculation or something, I mean, we are dealing with more than 3 tenths of a second of difference between those two results in terms of wind speed effect, so even a huge inaccuracy combo of a wind gauge being inaccurate for say .05 seconds worth of wind reading accuracy and another .03 seconds worth of calculator for a combo of .08 worth of inaccuracy from the true effect of the wind you still are seeing a good 0.3 seconds worth of wind effect +/- a tenth, depending on which way the inaccuracies were inaccurate. So it is still obviously important to take the wind into account when it's such a significant difference that even big inaccuracies are still trumped bigtime by the size of the wind effect difference overall.



And as for the second thing of "more effort" or "try harder" I think that was just a syntax error on my part. What I did NOT mean was that they literally tried even harder than 100%, no, what I meant was that, it would take that much more leg force to run the same exact time on the same track by the same person on the same day if its into the wind than if its against the wind. So say the best the guy can possible run on that day is a 10.00-basic. Well, if the guy has a 7m/s tailwind, he would theoretically be able to run a 10.00-basic jogging the last 20 meters or so, because, in 0-wind, all out 100% to the tape he's going 10.00, so a 7m/s tailwind will aid him by about 3 tenths of a second or so, so if he runs equally hard with this huge tailwind as he did in 0-wind, he's on pace for around a 9.70, not a 10.00, due to the big huge 7m/s tailwind. So either he can run a 9.70 if he runs identically to in the 0-wind scenario, or run "less hard" bad terminology but you know what I mean if he wants to match the 10.00. Sigh, you know what I am saying. I wasn't implying that athletes can just magically run 10% harder than all out and run that much faster and that they are just too lazy to ever do that. Lol, no, I'm not a moron, I know it's not like that. I was just saying that like, in terms of physics a 10.00 with 0 wind would take a lot less legforce to produce by that same exact guy on that same day on that same track if he had instead had a huge tailwind for the race instead of 0 wind, because the tailwind is aiding him a bunch, it's just physics. Is what I meant.

[Speedfirst]

Why is what has been witnessed and admitted by him seen as speculation. Do you need copies of his back specialist appointments or heart rate measurements from training sessions?

What do you(speedfirst) think the reason Bolt can run 9.69 while celebrating before crossing the line and then breaking the 200m WR into a headwind?

There has to be a reason, do you think he trains harder than the rest??? got better power to weight ratio??better running technique??a better ratio of fast twitch fibres??better body composition including height??

You guys are going off on a tangent, again I am addressing the height issue, folks have ranted about his height as to why he is faster than any short sprinter right now. I like to see the proof of that. Also this he won the genetic lottery, prove he is more superior in that area as well. I am not stating Bolt never had any issues with his health. But again I did preface by stating did Bolt never compete prior to 2008, not 100% or close to it? If you are suggesting he always competed prior to 2008 with some health issues, than prove that as well.

I don't know why Bolt had the year he had in 2008 and if you know, why don't you share that with this forum. Of course I could speculate why he did.

[Daisy]

Also this he won the genetic lottery, prove he is more superior in that area as well.

Well he's no Çolin Jackson when it comes to reaction time.

[Speedfirst]

Why is what has been witnessed and admitted by him seen as speculation. Do you need copies of his back specialist appointments or heart rate measurements from training sessions?

What do you(speedfirst) think the reason Bolt can run 9.69 while celebrating before crossing the line and then breaking the 200m WR into a headwind?

There has to be a reason, do you think he trains harder than the rest??? got better power to weight ratio??better running technique??a better ratio of fast twitch fibres??better body composition including height??

He has the top notch genetics combined with proper training, dont see why its so complicated to understand...

What's complicated? Genetics and training isn't complicated. but I'll ask you, you can say with certainty that you know why Bolt had the year he had in 2008? Again my point was the height issue and obviously this discussion has expanded into other areas. Do you think Bolt is the only athlete blessed with genetics and again you have no idea what his level of genetics are. Do you think Bolt is the only athlete who has what you call proper training? Do you think Bolt is the only athlete with some height?

[Mikewats]

Out of the reasons above i don't think Bolt trains harder than the rest of the sprinters, i don't think hes particularly got a higher ratio of fast twitch fibres than Gay or Powell, his race execution isn't better than powells, it is better than Gays. I don't think his power to weight ration is superior or anything freaky. What i do think is that hes naturally very lean and has a great body composition for sprinting and is very tall.