I bet the standard was higher in London.
Day one started with a presentation by Ralph Mann about sprint biomechanics. He showed the same graphics he published back in the early '80s. There was not much debate after his presentation since as those findings were scientific results, we had to take them for granted. However, back home, i compared the '80s slides with the 2010 presentation and found some interesting differences. For example, concerning the lower leg motion (swing leg) during sprinting. In 1985, Mann wrote: "The superior performer minimizes the lower leg angle during both recovery (smaller angle) and as the ankle passes the opposite leg (smaller angle) to make the task of recovering the leg both faster and easier. In 2010 it turn out to be: “To control the lower leg, the better elite sprinters do not allow the lower leg to go into maximum flexion during the initial portion of the recovery process. In addition, the proficient sprinter insures that full flexion position is reached as close to the ankle cross position as possible.” The graphs indeed showed contradictory findings.
The morning session ended with Dan Pfaff’s story about Donovan Bailey. In contrast, it was a humble and practical presentation, dealing with the incertitudes of coaching.
After the lunch, Malcolm Arnold shared his experience about coaching in Uganda in the late '60s-early '70s. While Olympic Champ and Record holder John Akii-Bua came out of this program, nothing was said regarding his training and was very general about his coaching approach. If that might have been deceiving for some of the attendance, i found that it was one of the best presentation of the week-end. He gave precise advices concerning relationship with the athletes, bureaucracy, media, etc, all things that i have faced since i started to coach in the elite environment.
Henk Kraaijenhof followed, and made various comparisons with Nelli Cooman and Merlene Ottey. The debth of knowledge here was fascinating and motivating.
Dan Pfaff came back in the last part of the afternoon for a video analysis session. It was about Carl Lewis’s start mechanics. Even though he was Tellez assistant in the early '80s, the video was probably a decade later since Mike Marsh was in there. I would have prefered a speach about an athlete he coached like Surin or Thompson, but Dan’s comments were very enlighting and practical.
Before the Gala Dinner, there was two groups of discussions in two rooms. I was late and rushed into Malcom Arnold’s one, it was boring as the talk was about the raising of hurdle’s height for women, a topic that has been on the table for decades. I should have opened the other door where Ron Roddan (Linford Christie’s coach) was speaking.
During the dinner, Tom McNab made an intervention of history of coaching, which was full of inaccuracy (the coach in ancient Greece was actually a masseur who was an expert in running, wrestling and diet within an educational program with the aim to make men’s body beautiful and strong, and the goal was not to win the Olympics which training was limited for 30 days!) and omission (appart ancient Greece and a mention of coach Cromwell, it was all about Great Britain) but very entertaining.
Sunday’s morning session started with Ralph Mann, regarding hurdles this time. Same comments as yesterday. It was irritating to hear from Mann that Americans lost the Olympic only three times (it was 7 actually - 1920, 1928 1976, 1992, 2000, 2004, 2008, not counting 1980 boycott) only because of technical mistakes over the barrier. And explaining during David Oliver’s video analysis that the minor shortcoming seen might be due to the strong head wind during the race where he just missed the world record (actually the wind was +1.7 during that 12.93 race at Nationals this year).
Dan Pfaff and therapist Gerry Ramigoda gave an exceptional speach about commin mechanical faults and resulting injury chains, giving theorical and practical data on muscles tendon, fascial chains and their biomechanical interplay.
The afternoon session opened on three too short but very informative presentations concerning 400m by Kevin Tyler (Tyler Christopher), Tony Lester (Nicola Sanders) and Lloyd Cowan (Christine Ohuruogu).
Henk ended the day with aging factor and sprint training with example of Troy Douglas, but unfortunately i missed that one as i had to sprint to the airport.
Swedish coach Benke Blomkvist spoke about hurdles and example with Kallur sisters, but this was during the sprint sessions so i can’t comment on the hurdle sessions.
Overall very well organised, they really did a good job, and as Kevin told me, you can quickly run out of presentators doing such high quality conference every year.
There was about 10 forum members out there + the ones i don’t know!