Christophe’s stride length has slightly increased since last year, 2.70 vs 2.67. Many factors outside specific training can be envolved, especially at such young age, it seems he is 1cm taller, and he is still taking benefits of general work over all the aspects of his performance, since he has not much training years and density behind him.
Bounding performances can be deceptive even for those long striders. Christine Arron and Marie-Jo Pérec both had 2.50-2.52 stride length at max speed (even though total of number of steps was different), but Christine’s height was slightly shorter and i believe Marie-Jo had longer leg length. I don’t know for Christophe (however his early performances at LJ and HJ done at interclub don’t indicate that the guy knows how to jump, but who cares anyway), but Christine is not a good jumper. Even with a 10.73 speed, her former coach Piasenta used to say that she would barely long jump 6m but would break her back while landing. She has a long and flat foot, she likes very soft spike shoes so that she can use every articulation of her foot and ankle. Even now, after a hip arthoscopy, she has no problem to sprint using strides over 2.50m interval cones (i really mean it’s sprinting, not bounding strides), but producing a jump on a board with conversion of horizontal into vertical velocity is an other story, and landing is the most dangerous.