I wonder if they’re working on slightly different race modeling. There’s all the psychological stuff that Charlie hated but Asafa himself admitted to at times. He got nailed by Gatlin but not by much in a time that, wind adjusted, is faster than Bolt ran.
If you have Powell’s power output, one way of dealing with the “panic” thing is to simply go out as hard as possible right from the gun, and make everybody else try to catch you.
Looks like Asafa kind of died at the end, but I’d love to know what his 60 split was.
It is interesting that Gatlin’s arm action at the start mimics Gay’s. He fully extends his arm, leaving him at a mechanical disadvantage while trying to quickly establish the frequency of his cadence. It might not be a big deal, but starts are not the strong suit of either of these guys. You don’t see this sort of indulgent movement from either Bolt and Powell (just a fantastic starter). They both use their arms to quickly establish rhythm. Where they allow for exaggeration is with keeping the feet low over the first couple of driving steps out of the blocks and almost dragging the trailing leg after push-off. Great contrast in technique.
Gatlin was running 10.2 with Seagrave. I saw Seagrave speak at a Toronto conference a couple of years back. Didn’t sound like Gatlin and him saw eye to eye on too many things even when they were still working together.
But philosophy can be shared as I now coach the same mechanics to my guys after speaking with Seagrave last year n the reviewing video data with my athletes
Jimson and I visited coaches and athletes at the Clermont and ESPN tracks several weeks ago. Brooks mentioned in one of the discussions that Gatlin had used as many as five techniques in previous races. The comments are here at the 1:45 mark (yours truly holding the camera) http://speedendurance.com/2012/04/17/interview-with-brooks-johnson/
They don’t, unfortunately. Lance and Dennis have their groups on opposite sides of the track, nothing is combined. But I’m pretty sure Gay would hurt Gatlins ego anyway
Coach Mitchell of Star Athletics is sponsoring a meet at the National Training Center, Clermont FL on June 9. For more information see http://starathleticsintl.com/sprint-series
