India just had its first gold in track and fields in 100 years in Tokyo 2020, in Javelin throw, and What might be the intention to post this blog from 2012 now ? Its offensive.
[deleted]
Embarrassed by your Olympic javelin: did cavemen do it better? (2012)
51–60 of 96 posts
Re: Embarrassed by your Olympic javelin: did cavemen do it better? (2012)
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
swimming technique and bicycle technically have improved a lot and all of the grading sports (gymnastics, diving) are constantly being changed since they were introduced into the Olympics. That is why so many of those records could be beaten. However it looks like Olympic archery does not allow a compound bow. I guess every sport decides if they want innovation or not.
Cycling is actually another notorious example of a sport where the rules are holding back significant innovation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle
Pro cycling is already a pretty dangerous sport, both on track and on the road. To mitigate those dangers a very important part is having a maneuverable bike. Recumbents are nothing of the sort.
I doubt that any pro-cyclist wants the speed advantages of one if it means that cornering is more difficult, veering into dangerous.
Re: Embarrassed by your Olympic javelin: did cavemen do it better? (2012)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it has been close? Johannes Vetter got a result of 97.76m under a year ago, that is only 0.72m shy of the world record. Also the reason he was underperforming in the olympics was that the surface of the run-up track was not able to take his weight on the final step and he would slip, making it impossible to perform on his normal high level.
Source for the reason Johannes Vetter failed? Does not look like this was covered well in the press.
My source for this was watching the final myself. When I watched the broadcast myself it was clear to me that this was the problem. Also the (Finnish) commentators were very knowledgeable in the sport and pointed out the problem many times.
I was unable to find a clip of his throws in YouTube, but here's a Google Translated article from a Finnish newspaper: https://bit.ly/3xvZWMk.
Re: Embarrassed by your Olympic javelin: did cavemen do it better? (2012)
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you deeply misunderstand the statistical nature of a world record. there is a piece out there somewhere about zelezney's record being a more significant outlier than Bolt's. But to be clear, you're insinuating that Jan was a cheat? I had training sessions with the former AR holder and numerous conversations with a former WR holder and threw at a high level. I'm quite familiar with the sport and I'm truly curi…
> I'm quite familiar with the sport and I'm truly curious as to whether you're making this claim about JZ and if you could name 10 throwers without Googling it. What does his claim[1] have to do with knowing who the throwers are? FWIW, I think that, if you look at a sport and find that the performance of athletes in that sport decreased significantly after the introduction of more comprehensive drug testing, then it…
"FWIW, I think that, if you look at a sport and find that the performance of athletes in that sport decreased significantly after the introduction of more comprehensive drug testing"
The issue is the premise is incorrect. 11 of the top 20 throws ever happened since 2015:
https://www.worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/thr...
Re: Embarrassed by your Olympic javelin: did cavemen do it better? (2012)
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cycling is actually another notorious example of a sport where the rules are holding back significant innovation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle
Pro cycling is already a pretty dangerous sport, both on track and on the road. To mitigate those dangers a very important part is having a maneuverable bike. Recumbents are nothing of the sort. I doubt that any pro-cyclist wants the speed advantages of one if it means that cornering is more difficult, veering into dangerous.
There are also clear safety advantages to recumbents, like harder breaking without flipping over and an unobstructed view without sacrificing aerodynamics, so I do not think they should automatically be considered less safe.
I am also pretty confident that the 'manoeuvrability' disadvantage is completely irrelevant for any individual track event. And do you think that it would be an important factor for time trials?
Re: Embarrassed by your Olympic javelin: did cavemen do it better? (2012)
#56The idea of "freeform" sports competition is interesting. It shouldn't be a replacement but rather a addition to current sports.
By freeform here I mean that you remove most of the rules. For example for biking you could allow whatever vehicle the competitors choose so long as it is powered entirely by the cyclist.
Not sure what a reasonable "freeform" ruleset would be for javelin, at some point javelins stop being javelins and start being model airplanes, but I can see some entertainment value in "throwing model airplanes as far as possible"competitions too..
Re: Embarrassed by your Olympic javelin: did cavemen do it better? (2012)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pro cycling is already a pretty dangerous sport, both on track and on the road. To mitigate those dangers a very important part is having a maneuverable bike. Recumbents are nothing of the sort. I doubt that any pro-cyclist wants the speed advantages of one if it means that cornering is more difficult, veering into dangerous.
There are also clear safety advantages to recumbents, like harder breaking without flipping over and an unobstructed view without sacrificing aerodynamics, so I do not think they should automatically be considered less safe. I am also pretty confident that the 'manoeuvrability' disadvantage is completely irrelevant for any individual track event. And do you think that it would be an important factor for time trials?
It depends but I don't think a recumbent bike is all that great when climbing or descending. I can't see cyclists wanting a recumbent if there are any significant elevation changes on the course.
Re: Embarrassed by your Olympic javelin: did cavemen do it better? (2012)
#58In the context of competition, it doesn't matter if you can throw furthest in the history, you just have to throw it further than your competitors.
Re: Embarrassed by your Olympic javelin: did cavemen do it better? (2012)
#59Javelin is a bit of an outlier in the Olympics in that throws today are nowhere near the records, even after the changes discussed in the article. The winning throw this year was 87.58m, with only one other competitor managing even 86m. The world record, dating from 1996, is 98.48m , a full 10 meters and then some longer. Germany's Vetter, the one modern javelin thrower who has come within striking distance of that (…
It's not really an outlier, there are plenty of sports where there are long standing world records, some of them have been broken recently but stood for a long time. It's just the nature of having so many sports, not every sport will attract as much talent resulting in having a much bigger impact when that world class talent appears (Zelezny). Usually these sports are technical in nature and thus harder to dominate through sheer improvement in nutrition and muscle power.
Take for example Usain Bolt, he competed in the sprint but if he focused his career on some other less popular athletic sport he probably could have been WR holder there as well.
If you combine this with the fact that it's possible there was more doping in the past (especially 80s), you can get these incredible world records that stand for decades.
Re: Embarrassed by your Olympic javelin: did cavemen do it better? (2012)
#60Cavemen would not even conduct Olympics you know its a big waste of money