Most Impressive Sequence?

[bekeselassie]

Squack's "Most Impressive WR" thread gave me another idea. This one might lend itself more readily to the field events. SHHHHH. Don't tell my Ethiopian friends and countrymen!

Tell me your most intriguing series or sequence in a single track meet. For example, in Tokyo '91, Carl Lewis jumped over 29' three times (I think :? ). We thought this was finally the night the record goes down, and it was!

By Powell.

Took a WR to finally end Lewis' streak. Powell had the record, but King Carl put together the most amazing sequence of jumps ever in a track meet.

[Powell]

How about Sedykh's WR series in Stuttgart? He closed the competition with 3 consecutive throws of 86.74, 86.68 and 86.62.

[bekeselassie]

How about Sedykh's WR series in Stuttgart? He closed the competition with 3 consecutive throws of 86.74, 86.68 and 86.62.

Looks like his next throw would have only been a 86.56. 8)

[dj]

Another was Mac Wilkins (DT) at San Jose '76:
69.80 WR, 70.24 WR, 70.86 WR, 66.98, 68.00, 66.58

But the topper is Karl-Hans Riehm (HT) at Rehlingen '75:
76.70 WR, 77.56 WR, 77.10, 78.50 WR, 77.16, 77.28

The WR at the start of the day was Aleksey Spridonov's 76.66 in '74. So Riehm had all six throws beyond the WR.

[Powell]

Alessandro Andrei also had a great series when setting his WR in SP in 1987. I don't have the data at hand; maybe someone else can post the details.

There haven't been quite as many great series in horizontal jumps. One that I remember was Tatyana Lebedeva's series in the 2004 WIC. Sha passed in rounds 3 and 5, and otherwise jumped 15.16, 15.25, 15.15 and 15.36. The WR before the competition was 15.16.

[richh]

DJ probably caught the 2 best ones, though Pwoell's note re Sedykh was interesting - that day Sedykh's 6-throw series averaged 85.78 [that's 281'5" from memory - so that conversion may be wrong] - which 2 other throwers in history have exceeded - 20 years later

As impressive is when a vertical jumper has a sequence of improvements in a big competition. Ulrike Meyfarth is probably the tops in this area. Picked for 6th place in the '72 OG by "Leichtathletik" magazine, the 16 year old was one of 7 jumpers to clear 1.85 in the OG final, equalling her pb. She then PRed at 1.88 and guaranteed a medal when only WR holder Gusenbauer and Blagoeva cleared that height. She then won the gold medal with a 1.90 clearance. On her first jump at 1.92, she cleared to equal the WR and her 4th pr jump of the day.

Another in that mould was Claus Schiprowski. He had a PR in '68 of 5.13 when he got on the plane to a training camp in Flagstaff, where he improved to 5.18/17'0". On to the OG where he cleared 5.20 for a PR. Taking every height, as it was uncharted territory, he made 5.25/17'2 3/4, 5.30/17'4 3/4 and 5.35/17'6 3/4. There were 5 vaulters left, and two of them [Papanikolau - the first man to clear 18', and Pennel - the first over 17'] missed the next height of 17'8 1/2", though Pennel was unlucky as his 3rd attempt saw him go over, but the pole went under the bar onto the pit [the rule was changed the following year - Pennel also had 2 jumps interrupted by officials]. Schiprowski cleared 5.40/17'8 1/2" for the silver medal behind Seagren - both Seagren and bronze medalist Nordwig rattled the bar on their clearances - Schiprowski cleared by 2-3 inches, and finished the evening with 4 PRs.

[Powell]

As impressive is when a vertical jumper has a sequence of improvements in a big competition. Ulrike Meyfarth is probably the tops in this area.

Don't forget Rudolf Povarnitsyn. I don't know the exact series, but he took his PB from 2.26 to 2.40 in one competition.

Another one of note was Fanny Blankers-Koen setting 3 WR's in one HJ competition.

[bekeselassie]

Great stuff, guys! Keep it coming. Richh, you're ridiculous, man! (That's a good thing. )

Why buy books when I can just hang out with you guys? Learning a lot here.

[JohnG]

Edwards in 95 setting the WR twice with consecutive jumps.

[Powell]

How about track (as opposed to field) series? In the Seoul OG, Flo Jo ran the 4 rounds of the 100 in 10.88, 10.62, 10.70w and 10.54w and the last 3 rounds in the 200 in 21.76, 21.56 and 21.34.

[Jon]

There haven't been quite as many great series in horizontal jumps. One that I remember was Tatyana Lebedeva's series in the 2004 WIC. Sha passed in rounds 3 and 5, and otherwise jumped 15.16, 15.25, 15.15 and 15.36. The WR before the competition was 15.16.

Good one. She was about 10 yards away from me at the time and I remember being dumbstruck after every one of her jumps. To begin with I was sad to see Hansen's record go, but by the end of the competition I was blown away. The fact that she won the LJ that weekend (four rounds of competition in the space of three days) made it all the more amazing.

On the subject of TJ, Mbango's series in Athens was pretty impressive, especially as she had never shown such good form at any point during her career. Before that final, her PB was 15.05m and her SB was 14.85m. She went on to jump: X - 15.30 - 15.02 - 15.17 - 15.21 - 15.30 (Imperial: X - 50' 2½" - 49' 3½" - 49' 9¼" - 49' 11" - 50' 2½")

[Andrea_T]

When Galina Chistyakova set the LJ WR back in 1988 her series included 7.21, 7.21, = WR of 7.45 and the new WR of 7.52.

Drechsler has had numerous great series, including:

7.45 WR, 7.30, 7.29, 7.28 & 7.24 Dresden 86
7.39, 7.35, 7.28 & 7.27 Zurich 85
7.48, 7.37, 7.26 Neubrandenberg 88

Also of note are:
Koch's 21.90 (lane 1!) and 47.9 leg at the Canberra WCup in 85 on the one day, then the 47.60 WR 2 days later.

Drechsler's 7.22 LJ, 22.27 200sf and 21.95 200mF in the space of about 3 hrs in Seoul 88.
and Drechsler's 7.10 LJ (9th best all time indoors then) followed by her 22.27 200m WIR

Ofcourse, no one can beat Wang Junxia's series in 93 though....

[JohnG]

How about Joachim Cruz?

22/8/84 1:42.34
24/8 1:42.41
26/8 1:41.77

I know many people argue that the latter should have been the WR since Coe's 1:41.73 was recorded on a less reliable timing system (photo cell??) and it's argued should have been recorded as a 1:41.8.

[Guest]

Don't know his full list, but Dombrowski's Moscow LJ series mean was approx 8.32m (27'3 1/4'').

[eldrick]

How about Joachim Cruz?

22/8/84 1:42.34
24/8 1:42.41
26/8 1:41.77

I know many people argue that the latter should have been the WR since Coe's 1:41.73 was recorded on a less reliable timing system (photo cell??) and it's argued should have been recorded as a 1:41.8.

there was always something iffy about the declaration of coe's time

from what i remember reading/hearing at the time, it took many long minutes for the officials to come out with 1'41.73 & initially they wanted to give it as 1'41.8, but possibly the iaaf didn't accept hand-times by then, even for distance races, so coe woudn't have been credited with a new wr that day ?

i always felt cruz was robbed of no getting at least joint wr, but then again 2 things come to mind:

1) coe shoud never have wilted so badly in the stretch & possibly buried it in low-mid 1'41 territrory

2) how did cruz run so fast ? i know koskei pushed him, but cruz even in og winning form looked at best a low-mid 1'42 guy

i almost fell off of my recliner when i heard he ran 1'41.77 - he didn't "look" like he coud go so fast ?