Effective heights & distances

[parkerrclay]

I was researching some info in the IAAF's New Studies in Athletics archive (below link) One measurement that I think is very cool is effective height or distance - this figure shows the maximum distance/height, the athlete would have made had he/she cleared the bar perfect or hit the line perfect. Here are a few interesting results from the 1997 World Champs
PV
1. Bubka 6.50 !!
2. Tarasov 6.23
3. Starkey 6.12

HJ
1. Soto 2.50 !!
2. Forsyth 2.42
3. Hoen 2.39

TJ
1. Quesada 18.08
2. Edwards 17.91
3. kapsutin 17.86

LJ
1. Dilworth 8.68 (woulda won!)
2. Pedroso 8.67
3. Wadler 8.58

Has anyone ever looked at these or have any opinions??






http://194.213.2.7/wps/portal/iaaf/kcxm ... es#7_C_2D3

[imaginative]

With so many extremely good potential results, there likely is a systematic
error. (Hypothetically, for the high jump/pole vault that the maximum height of
center-of-mass was used---which is not the same thing as the maximum clearable
height.)

[lonewolf]

I don't understand the premise of this coulda, shoulda, woulda.

. Some of these athletes have exceeded the postulated maximum potentials shown here. Edwards and Walder immediately obvious.

I can see how you could add the estimated distance the athlete took off before the foul line in LJ and TJ but seems to me, if you don't clear the heigth in the PV and HJ, you don't clear the heigth.

But I am ready and willing to be enlightened.

[jhc68]

I'll float this idea again because I like it so much: The next great advance in international competition should be fully electronic measurements of horizontal jumps. Jumpers should take off from a standard sized board and going beyond the board is still a scratch, but the jump should be measured from the point of take-off instead of the end of the board... thus, every fair jump would be "effectively" measured. No more lamenting about how a jumper might have won if only he/she had hit the board more accurately.

[lonewolf]

Visionarys have been advocating measuring from point of takeoff for over sixty years from my personal experience, before the electronic technology existed.
. The " Broad Jump" WR at the time was 8.13m , 26-8.25" held by one J. C. Owens. My coach, who was later an Olympic team coach, predicted that if some version of nearly "foul proof" jumping was adopted, some one would some day jump 29 feet. He wasn't far off, on his estimate, just 45 years early.

We experimented jumping from a 24" board dusted with chalk/power. Our average distances increased considerably, our maximum only slightly, if at all. I was a low 24' jumper from a legal board and was consistently around 25' from the wide board but never exceeded my PB 25'6" from a legal board. But it sure was fun to come down the runway an let 'er rip.

My electrical engineer official friends tell me the technology now exists to lay an electronic shield over the entire take off area and pit and instantly measure to the millimeter the distance from last disturbance to first landing .
They just have to work out one or two little bugs. Flying sand thrown backward from the landing point is also measured. Also, there is the problem of placing the shield at pit level so an errant hand that does not actually touch the pit but drags through the shield is ignored.

[imaginative]

I'll float this idea again because I like it so much: The next great advance in international competition should be fully electronic measurements of horizontal jumps. Jumpers should take off from a standard sized board and going beyond the board is still a scratch, but the jump should be measured from the point of take-off instead of the end of the board... thus, every fair jump would be "effectively" measured. No more lamenting about how a jumper might have won if only he/she had hit the board more accurately.

I also used to like that idea, and would in particular like to have seen Lewis
jump under those rules. Nowadays, I fear that the event would change too
much---in effect, the difficulty of judging speed and distance during the
run-up is removed, as is the corresponding weighing of risk vs. rewards.