Maybe Ronald is just trying to stay positive about a somewhat disappointing performance… I don’t get anything from his statement that proves he doesn’t have the will to win. Some people express themselves differently… More importantly, I tend to focus on performance more than words. For me, a person doesn’t PB 6.45 without the will to win. Give him a little time to develop, he’s obviously way ahead of his stated goal…
I doubt that there is too little will to win- more likely too much combined with too little experience at this level. Give him a string of outdoor meets and we’ll see.
Would be great to find out something about his training to see if he went past his peak as well (though he lost enough with his technical problems to account for all of the difference).
My god, in few years he may laugh or not even remember about these losses. That’s like he lost the Olympics for the 4th time at age 35! Ronald is awsome, let’s hope he will use this pressure to run fast. If i’m mad about his attitude that’s because i know he can do much better.
That’s possible he went past his peak. However, the difference in technique between Karslruhe race and his recent ones are obvious and can’t be only explained by decreased form. His coach doesn’t understand why he stands up at 10m, he told me that he doesn’t do it at practice.
Just before 6.45 he had a car accident, and a couple of day after he had a flue. These 3 things in few days surely costed a lot. The next week-end he had the obligation to run at Nationals but didn’t have the motivation and the 3 races in the same day with low motivation, no opposition, new media/fans pressure and so-so shape had a bad impact on him i think. The following week-end, 2 bad races against strong opposition (Scott and Greene), and finally these European Champs. Actually, he never recovered from the 6.45 nervously and emotionaly.
I think that Pognon couldn’t cope with the pressure of being favourite. We saw what happened when the French public expected him to win in Lievin-he crumbled psychologically and I think that’s what happened here.
Also what a start from Jason Gardener! And yes PierreJean it was a SB from him when it mattered. I just hope he can use confidence gained from here and transfer it to Helsinki.
Ah ha! I see said the blind man! He had a car accident which prob forced him to rest a bit extra and he had the flu a few days before Karlsruhe. When you are at the start of an illness, you are faster because the fever opens up all the neural pathways and lowers electrical resistance (we’ve talked about this before in the form archives) BUT after a longer time you become wiped out! It may not be any more complicated than this! Someone’s got to talk to him about this and get him to relax about the result here (that would be you, Pierre-Jean!)
no idea Charlie! he also said that most probably he won’t be tempted by Birmingham next year (WIC, i think), which means he’s convinced that this is one of the reasons he’s not racing outdoors!
years now he’s got the same problem and can’t transfer the indoor speed to a 100m race… something might be wrong with his training perhaps, although a few times he was a bit unlucky with injuries -which again might relate to the training part…
and since i presume he’ll try staying away from indoor racing the following year, it would be interesting to see if Finland changes his mind in the summer…
Sorry, i didn’t expressed myself correctly. This is how things occured if my memory serves me right:
Thursday or Friday car accident
Sunday 6.45
Tuesday stayed on bed ill
(actually the illness started around the meet on Saturday or Sunday and stayed on bed on Tuesday). But this doesn’t change much the fact that he took some unplanned rest before the 6.45. I already told his coach many times about this before, but does he believe in this i don’t know… He used to do a hard speed endurance cession for example on Tuesday before a competition on Saturday. No wonder why Ronald hasn’t fullfield yet his potential at 200m. Few minutes before the 6.45 his coach was still worry about a bad performance because of the car accident. I thought my God he had some rest so he will do awsome time.
Same thing happened with my sprinter this winter, the less he trained during the week, the better the performance was. Actually last month he trained less and less (but with increase quality) and his performance improved race after race.
i think that’s what Charlie means; the combination of rest before and the actual race once the illness started both worked fine… If the race was a week on, it would be too late…
that’s my understanding of how it works, anyway…
