Gatlin's 'new technique'

The latest stats (in Berlin) didn’t show that, comparing the 60-80m with 80-100m sections.
Bolt 9.58 : 1.61 - 1.66
Gay 9.71 : 1.63 - 1.69
Powell 9.84 : 1.68 - 1.74
No one was celebrating in that race.
MaxVel during the race is still the best predictor of the ranking at 100m, better than accel or speed maintenance/deceleration.

I’d be very interested to see this ‘new technique’ in action, especially as I was a massive fan of his technique. Rangy stride…almost like he was bounding down the track. Charlie how would you describe in coaching cues a way to run like that? Would you have changed it if he was with you? What is it that he does from the blocks that makes him look so different to other sprinters? Richard Thompson starts in that particular way also.

I am no Charlie but a few years back I was teaching an athlete to start in a similar fashion and had a senior level 5 coach half way down the track poke fun at us. This coach approached the athlete later and told him if he asked him in front of witnesses he would coach him.

I think sometimes coaches have to say something to appear different and brilliant,but the results in the last few years are not bad for Seagrave…his camp seems to be quite interesting, with Dwight Phillips leading the pack, including:
Melisa Barber, Joice Maduaka, Danielle Carruthers, Walter Davis, Perdita Felicien, Ebony Floyd, Justin Gatlin, Travis Padgett, Avard Moncur, Dwight Phillips, Angelo Taylor

The coach had/has never produced a top male sprinter and each that has been inherited has bombed out soon after starting.

I see the work of a lot of different coaches gathered in one place (John Smith, Charles Poliquin, Trevor Graham, Gary Winkler, Innocent Egbuniki, Todd Lane, Thomas Johnson, Clemson Univ, to name a few) but have any in there been produced by him?

You got it. Do you want to comment on the recruiting frenzy going on here?

Dwight did have his best year last year, at an advanced age and after some rather mediocre years.

Can’t say much about the others.

I can’t comment on recruiting because this is not my best part. I’m not a good recruitor. Maybe i should go into warm-up pitches and interrupt athlete-coach conversations to introduce myself to the athlete and give my business card.

I agree on Dwight Philips…having him lose some weight helped for sure…I saw him in the warm up area and on the massage table in a Golden league meet in 2006…his hams were freakingly huge!Upper body also…and it seems he got even bigger in the following 2 years…and in the long Jump that could have impaired his performance.

Been told it is not as messy if you get your athletes to do it for you.

“Everything I learned I had to throw it out the window and learn a whole new technique,” Gatlin told Reuters in a telephone interview from Naples, Florida.

A lot of what he did back then was very good…to throw it all out the window could be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

For all his other ‘faults’ and issues, Trevor Graham was still a pretty good operator in getting blokes to run fast, so I would hope that Gatlin wouldn’t be getting too radically removed from what Graham did in terms of technique.

btw, IMO, I will be very surprised if Gatlin ever gets back to PB shape.

Can we get Andre Cason on this forum to post some comments on this thread? I had a chance to talk to him on the phone a little while back and he certainly had some choice words.

“Choice words” for who and regarding what exactly?

His oft repeated phrase was “Shoulda listened.”
John Smith developed him but a falling out led to a switch- and a resultant very short career after.

Yes, the word “bitter” does not adequately describe his state of mind on the subject.

Cason was a legend. I found some footage of him on my old hard drive from WC 1995. Great front shot footage and his 10.09 heat.

I have some old footage of Cason in 1988 in the World Junior Champs that were held in Sudbury, Ontario. It’s on a VHS tape somewhere. Have to dig it out.

Since we’re talk about Cason…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_Pr3Y9QpYU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u36Oiv-AShI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlCD0j_SST4

:slight_smile:

look at his leg action in the first clip…superb! charlie and co-what happened between him and smith,was it $$$?