Gatlin breaks 100m World Record

Amen to that Michael Johnson is the greatest athlete i've ever seen in my (admitidly short :p) lifetime. He had that aura of invinsability when you knew he just wouldnt get beat.

That 19.32 in Atlanta has to be one of the greatest runs of all time if I remember right Frankie Fredericks broke the old world record as well and finished about 15 metres behind Johnson!!

Just looked on wikipedia and the 200m world record is actually quicker than the 100m world record in m/s terms :eek: would be a 9.66 (of course he might have taken him longer to get up to speed so you couldnt say he would have won the 100m as well)
 
MJ ain't all that quick over 100m. His PB is over 10s, and the secondhalf of his 200ms was 9.2s. With a rolling start, the real 100m pros like Donovan Bailey etc have clocked sub-9s, although admittedly Johnson would have been at a slight disadvantage from having to run so far to start with.
 
Psycho Ned said:
That 19.32 in Atlanta has to be one of the greatest runs of all time if I remember right Frankie Fredericks broke the old world record as well and finished about 15 metres behind Johnson!!
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Frankie just missed out on what would have been the old world record, which was 19.66 set by Johnson in the US trials. Fredericks ran 19.68 in the 200m final, which would usually be enough to win, and he also ran 9.89 in the 100m final, which would also usually be enough to win. He was unfortunate to be behind two fantastic athletes at the time (Johnson in the 200m, Donovan Bailey in the 100m).
 
Just saw on the news that Gatlin is facing a drugs investigation. Apparently, he failed a test in April after running in the 4x100m in Kansas. He's already failed a test in 2001 so could end up with a lifetime ban IF found guilty.
 
JohnnyG said:
It's just been announced that his B sample has been found positive too, that's probably the end of the track for him...
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Someone had to make that joke and it might as well be you I guess :p

I always find it interesting when a high profile anti-drugs campaigner is caught, is their stance on drugs some kind of double-bluff to try to remove suspicion I wonder.
 
I think Gatlin has shot himself in the foot by announcing the results. I'm sure the Americans would've happily swept this under the carpet given a chance. I think the fact that he's an American hero and one of their best athletes will no doubt help his cause as will his coaches claim that his athlete has been sabotaged. It's very likely the USADA will give him a short ban or let him off so the WADA will probably be the ones to impose the lifetime ban. Whatever the outcome, it's highly unlikely Gatlin will keep his WR equalling time.
 
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Its not drugs.
Its to do with better techniques that they have developed, Better technology to analyze all the tiniest little mistakes they make and teach them how to correct it.

Its all down to the technology advancements really :)

The smallest mistake can cost you a 10th of a second or more in sprinting.
It can be such a cruel sport :(
 
I don't think people are claiming that the only reason world records are broken is drugs, it's just that in this case, he's been busted, so you can hardly let him keep the record.
 
An interesting read....

From http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/sport.cfm?id=1030322006


......All of which raises an interesting issue. Johnson was running these times 20 years ago, but with chemical assistance. In the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the Canadian steamed away from Lewis to break the beam in 9.79sec, an eyelash away from what Gatlin and Powell have recorded in the last 12 months. But once the giant was rumbled, Lewis for one produced what came to be a mantra for the times: "Drugs gave Ben the extra yard." So out went the 9.79 seconds.

Then in Paris four years ago, Tim Montgomery ran 9.78 seconds, another time that has been erased from the records after his involvement with the Balco scandal. In that race Chambers clocked a European record-breaking 9.87 seconds, now also erased.

An extra yard? Maybe, after these disappointments, where we hooted and hollered and celebrated only to find we had been hoodwinked, it is difficult to get worked up about yet another fast time where the extra yard has gone who knows where? Or as the world renowned Italian statistician, Roberto L Quercetani noted in his History of Modern Track and Field Athletics: "Sometimes, the price of records appears to be too high in the perspective of sound sport and sound ethics ... the ever present exposure to doping leads one to believe that not all progress is genuine."

The East Germans knew a thing or two about progress and human ability. They researched it painstakingly and came up with the conclusion that no man of woman born could run under 10 seconds for 100 metres (11secs for women) unless he received some help along the way. They decided that if they were going to dominate sport, they would have to do it unfairly. And so the greatest medal-winning nation for its size the world has ever seen was born in the Jenapharm factory in the shape of little blue pills - known as Oral-Turinabol in the trade.

There is no suggestion that the new 100m world record was achieved with any assistance. As for the lack of status that Dick espied, he suggests one possible cause, a lack of headline-grabbing heroes. And if that is the cause, then a solution has to be found. Dick's blueprint is to suggest Britain return to the notion of the coach/athlete relationship if it is to be successful as an athletics nation at the 2012 Olympic Games. It was an equation that produced champions: Peter Coe and Sebastian, Harry Wilson and Steve Ovett, Stan Long and Steve Cram.
 
As to regard 100m times if the mens record over the past 20 years is hooky then im damn sure the womens one is! The fact Flo Jo's record from 1988 is still standing and never even been gotten close to in 18 years compaired to the mens record which has fallen from 9.92 in 1988 to 9.77 in 2006 surely means it wasnt weatabix making her run that much faster!

Only reason Ben Johnsons so notorous is because he got caught at the olympics yet 4 out of the first 5 in that 88 race got done for drugs at one time or another so he damn sure wasnt the only one at it in those days.
 
dannyjo22 said:
Hahaha re-quoting myself as for once I was right :D

;)
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What, run the 100m in ~10 seconds? I'm pretty sure some do, whether most of the top athletes are on drugs or not it isn't something that you can definitively say nor can I say with absolute certainty that they are entirely unaided. I would however be very surprised if some people were not naturally capable of getting around 10 seconds without the use of illegal drugs, maybe it would require exceptional conditions and all stars in the solar system to align for that race but to say it isn't possible would be foolhardy. :) Kim Collins of St Kitts & Nevis for one won the 2003 World Championships in the slowest time that I can recall recently(10.07 for those who care) and there has never been any suggestions he has taken anything so yeah I believe that some people do compete in sport 'honestly'.

As someone mentioned earlier the issue of supplements is a tricky one, every athlete I know of at a high level of sport takes some kind of supplement to boost their training so where is the line to be drawn about what is illegal?
 
dannyjo22 said:
Hahaha re-quoting myself as for once I was right :D

;)
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Read my post and it will help you understand how they can go so fast in recent years ;)
The different cloths and shoes they have got help A LOT aswell :)

Technology F.T.W!! :)
 
If he took them himself or he was spiked as he claimed, why do any athletes even take drugs, it may boost their performance but doesn't seem worth it when you know there's tests and the penalty of being caught :(

Just seems really stupid..Would you risk it?
 
Zip said:
Read my post and it will help you understand how they can go so fast in recent years ;)
The different cloths and shoes they have got help A LOT aswell :)

Technology F.T.W!! :)
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Hahahaha the only technology involved is the better quality of drugs with the promised of being undetected with some masking agent or another. The promise that this drug is undetectable. They never caught linford til he got lazy or thought he was in the clear. I remember reading an article once where a trainer was saying the funniest thing with Ben Johnson was the age of the gear he was taking. They didnt even try to cover it up, he was a sure thing to be caught.

So one trainer has had 9 sprinters on his books that have failed dope tests. That trainer shouldnt be allowed to continue either.
 
dannyjo22 said:
Hahahaha the only technology involved is the better quality of drugs with the promised of being undetected with some masking agent or another. The promise that this drug is undetectable. They never caught linford til he got lazy or thought he was in the clear. I remember reading an article once where a trainer was saying the funniest thing with Ben Johnson was the age of the gear he was taking. They didnt even try to cover it up, he was a sure thing to be caught.

So one trainer has had 9 sprinters on his books that have failed dope tests. That trainer shouldnt be allowed to continue either.
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You really dont trust sprinters do you? :p

I used to sprint and i can tell you if i had all the fancy technology stuff that sporting intstertutes had i could have knocked off at least half a second off my time.
half a second is a HUGE amount of time but i never got propperly trained and i was using natual skill most the time :)

Like i said sprinting is cruel and you can lose a few 100ths of a second from just having your feet in the wrong position on the starting blocks.
 
Zip said:
You really dont trust sprinters do you? :p

I used to sprint and i can tell you if i had all the fancy technology stuff that sporting intstertutes had i could have knocked off at least half a second off my time.
half a second is a HUGE amount of time but i never got propperly trained and i was using natual skill most the time :)

Like i said sprinting is cruel and you can lose a few 100ths of a second from just having your feet in the wrong position on the starting blocks.
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No I dont purely because a my friend was a user, although not a sprinter. He was drug tested. The gear he was buying wasn't available from your average dealer in a gym. It also cost him some serious money (and almost his marriage) , he didnt ever fail the tests he took.

My faith in sprinters is destroyed, the ones I think are clean eventually get caught. Or there is suspicion and they never look good again.
 
InwardSinging said:
They should allow all drugs for atheletes to level the playing field, let them get as loaded up and lets see some proper races.
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that certainly would be something to watch but somehow I can't see that happening. Maybe as a sideshow kind of 'sport'
 
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