If pro runners run to their full potential in every race they run, and keep improving their results (times) they would be pulled back which would reduce their chance of winning. Therefore, pro runners train with different motifs in comparison to amateur sprinters. This is an important aspect of their training regime. One can call it cheating, or dead running or not running to their full potential. Call it whatever you want but it very much exists and PRO coaches throughout the 20 century AND TODAY “tapper” their sprinters to a specific race.
I am saying that this is something that has been going on in pro running culture and WILL CONTINUE to happen. If anyone wants to deny this he/she is either in denial or fooling around. What is the point then if a pro runner would want to run faster every time he runs? He will be pulled back, as I already said and miss out on the ultimate prize he trained for.
Winning “gifts” and naming “champions” of pro running in this thread can be deceiving to say the least. It needs to be noted that those “champs” did not run off scratch (with a few exceptions only) when they were winning gifts as it rarely happens. Winning a gift for instance off 5-10m mark is not an indication that the person who won it is the fastest and therefore a true champ. That person had been given an advantage over faster runners who were pulled back. That is pro running, and yes, I understand that.
The Bradley method has helped those runners to be FIT when it mattered. This strength and conditioning method was a perfect TOOL to be sharp BUT not the fastest. Be sharp to win the ultimate gift prize but do not be the fastest runner out there because otherwise you would have a less chance in winning.
Oh no. It very much depends on the mark one gets. So in fact, to win the Stawell gift one needs to be strategic, run slightly slower, stay undetected, score a batter mark, peak at Stawell, and execute all the races right to win it.
If one keeps improving (as one would want to do so in the mainstream sprints) over the season he will be on the radar, will be pulled back and WON’T win it.
This is the reason why majority of pro runners fail to improve their running times. You can not learn to run a little bit slow, then try to run real fast in one or over 3 races and then again continue running reasonably slow so you are not hit with a more unfavourrable mark.
There is no system in pro running that will switch on your ability to run fast today while the next day you simply switch it off.
It is either impossible or one is cheating. Therefore the Bradley method is the method that kept some pro runners well prepared and conditioned for gifts but they would never make it in the mainstream sprints simply because they were never prepared to run every single race to their max. potential.
Ask yourself why M. Green or O. Thomson couldn’t win the Stawell gift eventhough they were the fastest runners on the day.
Professional runners do not try to win every event that they enter. Their objective is to win a particular, specified race: in the argot of the sport, the one for which they are ‘set’. The set race often is several years away and the athlete’s training and running tactics are organised with it in mind. The ‘handling’ of the runner, typically in the form of the ruses dictated by the trainer, in this long preparatory period is vital to securing a successful outcome. Much of the routine and expected cheating associated with the sport takes place in this lead-up to the runner’s set race.
Harry Boyle once said to me that ‘handicap is everything’ in professional running. Rob Monaghan, a man who ran through the years of the Depression and trained runners for several decades more, had an explicit strategy of letting his runners go-off only when they had achieved a very favourable handicap, even if this meant years of running dead. Rob also went to considerable lengths to ensure that his runners were concealed from the gaze of those who might realise their potential, pick the race in which they were going-off and take the ‘cream’ of the ‘market’. (18)
Running dead is a skill learned from the start of a professional athlete’s participation in the sport. The actual techniques can differ between sprinters and distance runners, although runners of all distances commonly put in a very hard training session or run the evening or the morning before a meeting so that carry-over fatigue prevents them from performing to their true ability.
I have read through this whole thread and I need more clarification on this particular topic. I know top professional sprinters avoid racing each other and I’m sure some sprint races are staged but it sounds like you are describing that there is a whole lot more going on. Can you expound on this?