Rodney Martin is my former teammate. When trevor straightens him out,he will be one to watch out for.Great guy who has been through alot.
That far into the race, things can go very wrong technically when fatigue sets in, even if your form is normally good.
20.37 is where he’s going… :rolleyes: I don’t understand what you see wrong with what Martin is doing…Maybe you can elaborate…
He Does look as though he’s heading on collision course with Wariner in another 15m or so. But it could be some sort of parallax error through the camera lens.
Having looked at the race (thanks Thor) He was leading coming of the bend. The problems from what I saw were over the last 20-25 meters. (can’t be seen from that pic!) His head tilted backwards (ala John Capel) and the end result was a 4th place.
guys without even seeing the race you can tell that martin is going to steam over.spearmon and wariner are controlled…what is the 400 about…control,relaxation,technique and rythem and this is what spearmon and wariner are displaying is this photo.
What KK & X-Man said, nothing aginst Martin, he obviously has great talent to even be there but it is a great contrast between them.
Guys…This is a 200m race…not the 400. As for contrast between all the runners…isn’t that the beauty of our event?! More than one way to skin a cat…
Colombia’s Yomara Hinestroza, right, runs neck-in-neck with Dominican Republic’s Marleny Mejia, during the preliminaries of the women’s 100-meter, in the 12th Iberian-American Atheletics Championship, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Friday, May 26, 2006.
Patrick Johnson, WL 100m 9.93 in 2003; 2006 CWG 100 & 200 finalist, a medallist in neither. At age 31 should he make the move up to 400m?
Marion In Hengelo
Marion wins Hengelo 2006
I’m sure you would love him to kitkat - and no doubt want to coach him as well! Could be a good transition for him.
Batman going down to 100/200 and PJ going up to 400!
The only thing is he would have to learn how to run a bit more efficient - ie stop fighting the curve for example… But it would make for an interesting one…
he would have the best pr for the 100 for anyone to enter into a 400m race to my knowledge. in my humble uninformed opinion it’d be great.
Nah, not interested in coaching anyone these days. But I can’t help observe.
Patrick fights only for speed. If he was capable of tolerating the training needed for a successful switch up in class (
to 400m, that sort of speed in a race would not be needed. Hence the tension wouldn’t be there, at least not caused by that kind of stress. You can see from the picture above how superbly relaxed and fluid he can be when speed isn’t the issue. He could have been the Aussie male equivalent of Cathy Freeman. But unless you’ve coached the guy, you wouldn’t be able to say whether a move to 400m would be great or disastrous. Maybe his endurance at sub-max sucks. But I’d love to see him give it a season… anyone he is coached by Tudor Bidder who is a hell of a good 400 coach, he worked with Mohammed Al Malky and took him from zero to hero in Seoul 88 where the Man From Oman reached the 400m final. Heck of a coaching effort.
Would be good to see, but i do not think it will happen. I think an athlete has to have a different mindset to be able to train for 400m - its totally different to the 100/200 training (as you know!!) and not many of the sprinters have any inkling to run a 400, let alone train for one.
Another aussie athlete that should give 400m a go is Kieran Noonan - such a fluid looking sprinter - always injured from the explosivenesses of the 100m, should move up to 400m. But, he is scared of the training - timewise and phyiscally! Its a tough move, one i dont think Patrick will look too kindly upon.
On another note kitkat, have you see the preclassic 400m? i was wondering if there was any word on steffenson - 45.8. i was hoping he would be more in the mix. Would he have had time off after comm games (how long?) and what sort of training would he have returned to? Will he improve this season? Or will it be a build up to 2007/08 now for him? I was hoping he would get down to a 44.5 this year - really show he can mix it
Hard to know what Steffensen’s plans are without talking to him. Maybe he’s just running for the pocket money, while training hard to step up a notch in Europe in July-August? I wouldn’t know. I heard he had been training long hours, but to what end I couldn’t say. 
Didn’t Tudor coach the Poetschka (spelling) sisters from Western Australia - awesome girls, Renee was an absolute talent but had major injury problems.
I rate Tudor as a coach, seems to get a lot out of athletes.
I think PJ would be good 400m - subject to his endurance, because I think he is better at 200 than 100m.
I can remember Roy Boyd suggesting Tanya Van Heer having a go at the hurdles.
Steffenson was in lane 8 so it was real hard for him to be a factor.
Debbie Ferguson (left) and Me"Lisa Barber in Ostrava, May 2006
