The Race that Shocked the World

A one hour documentary over the most famous Olympic 100 meter finale. More famous due to its use of performance enhancing substances rather than the performance itself. THnkas tot BBC sport an enjoyable hour on the sofa.

Prefontaine - the Movie

Sometimes you find a little gem on YouTube.

In this case the full length film 'Prefontaine' with Jared Leto as Steve Prefontaine which is still available on DVD as well (for example on Amazon). This raises the question. Is the video on YouTube legal? Don't know but what I do know is that it is posted on the channel of Jared Leto himself.

The problem with this kind of movies is two fold;

1. Are the running scenes convincing?
2. How accurate is the storyline in the historical context or was the focus 'bringing a nice story?'

As for the first: most scenes on the track are convincing and Jared Leto paid close attention to for example Steves specific way of crossing the finish line, pushing down the wire. The most historic race (Munich 1972) is a clever combination of staged scenes and the original footage of the TV broadcast.

Compared to the documentary posted Yesterday I think they succeeded in creating two hours worth of entertainment staying close to the facts. OK, Steve Prefontaine was entertainment enough by himself. So enjoy.

Steve Prefontaine, a one hours video on this iconic athlete

Steve Prefontaine. One of the great distance runners who died to young to be even bigger. That's in short his credentials. Others are 'Nike', Olympics 1972 Munich, American Record Holder. On youtube this one hour video with originale footage and interviews with the athletes of his time and his coach, te legendary Bill Bowerman. Among the names als Frank Shorter from the book "Running for Peak Performance" and Jeff Galloway from "Galloway's Book on Running ". If he would have lived, he probably would have become one of the household names in the jogging boom that started just around this time and that gave Shorter en Galloway the platform.

Enjoy the video.
 

Find the books discussed on Amazon.com or on Amazon.co.uk

Olympic Channel on Youtube

On Youtube the IOC launched 'the officail channel'.

At this moment the channel contains almost 300 video's of olympic highlights from previous games.

These include of course numerous athletic highlights such as

• the two golden medals of Michal Johnson's 200m and 400m in 1996 and;
• Lasse Viren winning the 5.000m and 10.000m in 1972;
• the marathon in Moskou of 1980 were the Dutch Gerard Nijboer finished second behind Cierpinski form the DDR. From 'western' perspective this was somewhat controversial as Nijboer was hindered at the 35k refreshing point. He also missed the water at the 30k refreshing point because Cierpinski whiped all the water from the table.

The Olympic Torch and Chariots of Fire

Rember this one. The scene on the beach in the classic Chariots of Fire?



The Olympic torch was in Scotland last week. There on West Sands Beach in St. Andrews, 20 schoolchildren reenacted this famous scene. It's a beauty!

Wear red and improve your performance

Jessica Ennis in
new kit (source usatoday)

The controversy over the new kit, by Stella McCartney designed for Adidas, for the Olympic sporters form the UK triggered me to look into the meaning of colours. The kit lacks the red from the Union Jack.

Research published in Nature in May 2005 shows that: "Given the undoubted role of other factors, such as skill and strength, it is likely that the red advantage will determine the outcome only in relatively symmetric contests. That is, wearing red presumably tips the balance between losing and winning only when other factors are fairly equal. We found that this is indeed the case: only in contests between individuals of similar ability were there significantly more red than blue winners"

bron: http://www.math.ku.dk/~rolf/RedVsBlue.pdf

For more details read this PDF. The explanation given in this article is evolutionary: Red colouration is a sexually selected, testosterone-dependent signal of male quality in a variety of animals. As for human: When angry humans colour slightly red due to increased blood flow in the skin. Whereas fear is associated with increased pallor in similarly threatening situations. Hence, increased redness during aggressive interactions may reflect relative dominance. And as artificial stimuli can trigger natural stimuli: Red clothing can influence the outcome of contest. As a runner each run you do is in competition with yourself so all the circumstances are the same so deciding to wear red clothing can positively influence your performance. Remember this next time you are in front of your wardrobe wondering what to wear during the marathon or any other run.

Marathon Road; a road movie;p

This short documentary highlights Jason Lehmkule, Andrew Carlson, Matt Gabrielson and Josh Moen of Team USA Minnesota as they train for the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials.

Lets hope they know "It is al about the journey and not about the destination" because they did not succeed in running in the top three of the trails. Actually: The top three is made up of two quite senior runners with an African background.

First to finish was Meb Keflezighi, born in the African nation of Eritrea but immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was 12. He won the trials race in a personal-best time of 2 hours, 9 minutes and 8 seconds. Aged 36 he will be 37 when running in London.
Second in 2:09:30 and earning a trip to his second Olympiad was the pre-race favorite, Ryan Hall, 29, who stamped himself as America's fastest marathoner when he ran a 2:04:58 in the 2011 Boston Marathon, placing fourth behind three African runners.
Third was another Africa-born runner, Somalia native Abdi Abdirahman, also breaking 2:10 with a time of 2:09:47. Like Keflezighi, he is, at 34, one of the older practitioners of this physically punishing sport. A three-time Olympian at 10,000 meters, he will be on his fourth Olympic team in London.

Haile Gebrselassie in video

In this posting a couple of videos that provide an insight into the live of Haile Gebrselassie. First a video with an interview clrearly sponsored by Adidas. Secondly in three parts a kind of documentary "Road to NYC Marathon".




Road to part 1


Road to part 2


Road to part 3

Running on Empty: Insights into the death of Samuel Wanjiru

Above the
Dutch cover
below the
english edition

A year after the death of Wanjiru the Dutch reporter Frits Conijn published his book on the death of the one time Olympic Champion on the marathon. Wanjiru died from a fall (or jump) from the balcony of his house in Kenia.

A quote from the international well known manager of athletes Jos Hermens  who wrote the foreword: "I knew Wanjiru always friendly and smiling. Trough this book I understand the tragedy he was hiding behind this smile."

Sammy Wanjiru ran a world record on the half marathon of the Hague, the City Pier City run. His best performance was the gold medal in the Olympic marathon of Being.

Conijn had access to Wanjiru’s inner circle and found evidence of a possible over up.

The Dutch edition was published exactly one year after the death of the athlete.

The video below, from Dutch Television, shows some of the highlight of his career.

 

Bold statement from Kenyan Women

Photo: All Athletics

After the clean sweep last Sunday in London there is a bold statement by the Kenyan Women to enter the Olympic race. They want to repeat last Sundays success with a gold, silver and bronze medal during the olympic marathon next summer.
Read more...

There is however one important difference: The Olympic marathon is run on a different course. It is a course that consits of one smaller en three larger loops. Twisting and turning trough the city center. It has 90 turns and the longest straight line they run is 800 meters. Maybe this will help to come up with a surprise winner. A runner that can cope with changes in rythm.

Olympic Marathon Route London 2012

Endurance: Haile Gebrselassie

A film on Hailes live from before his marathon achievements: Endurance in 8 parts from youtube:
Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Part 7:

Part 8:

What to do after retiring from prof marathon running?

What to do after you end our marathon carreer? Some end up being trainers, coaches, write books on running etc. In other words they stay in field of running.

Some however start something completely new like Naoko Takahashi, the 2000 olympic marathon winner frm Japan, who started a vegtable farm (see Reuters).

Bolt and Shoelaces

From time to time it happens that I have to redo my shoelaces while running. Sometimes it is becouase they became undone. Sometimes is it because that get to tight later on in the run. It is good to know it happens even to the best of the world. I expect that everyone has seen the images of Usain Bolt winning in Beijing and setting an new world record with his shoelaces undone!

As this picture from the Reebok Grand Prix Saturday, June 2, 2007, in New York shows this is not an incident. Bolt ran the 200meter. Check out his laces of the left shoe (again):

Tis blijkbaar toch moeilijk, vetersstrikken....

What a race!

6.69 over 100meters from stand still. It's amazing. And you could easily tell Usain Bolt just went for the gold because in his last 10 meters he was already slowing down and leaning back. It is obvious that he wants to keep some margin so he can improve his world record again in one of the well paid grand prix races were running a world record comes with a nice bonus.

No we can look forward to a interesting 200meters.

Countdown...

A few more hours and the real fire works will start in the Birdsnest stadium of Beijing: The 100m final for men where Bolt, Powell and Gay will fight over the medalls. On the BBC News site a nice report from Jamaica.
Mind you both Powell and Bolt made it to the semi final as well as a third Jamaican: Micheal Frater...