If bolt had a complete season, I could see it happening.
Bolt does it again.
I expected the fast semis to take a toll on Bolt and DeGrasse, but didn’t think it would be by this much. I think Bolt ran his fastest semis and slowest finals of any major championships at these Olympics. He was lucky that no one was in top shape this year. If I was him I would retire now while still on top rather than wait until he can’t win anymore.
I hope so also. I don’t want to see him deteriorate like Ali or Michael Jordan. Just end it on the biggest stage with a relay championship gold, then stop
i blame degrasse, but a complete injury free season and bolt can run fast again next season.
You guys are silly. Stop it!!!
cocaine is a hell of a drug
Foolish? Have you see the social media attention #DeBolt has received? He is a sponsors dream. He won gold on so many fronts it’s not even funny. And he is only just starting out. If he stopped right now which he won’t he is golden. I don’t think anyone could have created such a great buzz around this knowingly ahead of time and it’s so authentic as well.
Here are a few links that have been making me chuckle.
http://www.cbc.ca/m/sports/olympics/rio2016/can-you-feel-debolt-tonight-1.3725919
and this is good too.
http://www.cbc.ca/m/sports/topstories/debolt-debunked-in-200-showdown-1.3727515
I think it plausible that just the opposite occurred relative to the intended strategy outlined in the article. The assumption on behalf of DeGrasse/McMillan was that by pushing Bolt he would fatigue; however, that implies he didn’t have the capacity coupled with Bolt’s own admission that he didn’t like the scheduling (rightfully so) and was tired in the 100m final. This assumption of DeGrasse/McMillan was also based off of the fact that Bolt hadn’t been showing top form times prior to the Games this year.
Amidst all this assuming, lies the implication that DeGrasse was in some sort of secret form; however, no different than Bolt, DeGrasse had not shown top form prior to the Olympics this year either.
Further, what if Bolt simply decided to let DeGrasse win their semi final round. Wouldn’t have mattered as the top 2 auto qualify anyway.
End result, a miscalculation that likely reduced what chances, if any, DeGrasse had to win the 200m final had he not pressed in the Semi.
All said, DeGrasse is a super talent and I hope Altis is able to guide him in reacquiring and surpass what he accomplished under Smith-Gilbert.
He has already surpassed what he had accomplished under his previous coach. He set PBs in both events at these Olympics under conditions when everyone else was running slower than they did at the world champs last year.
Great job Pfaff.
How do people interpret this line from de Grasse’s coach?
https://twitter.com/StuartMcMillan1/status/766997966712221696
“For those who think you have to sprint maximally to get faster - not once all year did De Grasse sprint at maximal speed …”
I saw that as well and hope Stu expands on it at some point. There were some interesting comments that followed, namely that Stu doesn’t believe in rules, as in the 95% rule, and he doesn’t assign % effort to sprints. Someone did comment that all of Andres races served as the main stimulus which I found insightful. Sometimes I think comments like the one Stu made are more alluring when the athlete wins or PRs. Not sure how many of Stus athletes adhere to these principles (or lack of?) and what their performances were like in 2016? I think it just shows us that we’re continuing to learn we may not need to do as much as we think we do to get the job done.
Definitely thought-provoking. I wonder how much this only applies to Andre in his unique situation. The guy already had a 9.92 PB from last year and is a genetic freak. Would someone with much lower speed capabilities benefit just as much? Rhythm, coordination, technique oriented training, are definitely ways to increase sprinting performance but are those apt training strategies when it takes away from exposure to max velocity stimulus?
I want to know whether an average high school sprinter could be trained with a deemphasis on maximal speed training and still be able to maximize his/her short term/long term potential.
Nothing new…
What do you mean?
Agree
But…
If that’s the magic recipe I’ll say this: Anaso Jobodwana. What happened? Isn’t he supposed to be the next great thing according to Stu?
De Grasse’s times improved from 9.92 to 9.91 and 19.88 and 19.80 between 20 and 21 years old. I don’t give the new coach credit for that. And keep in mind, albeit wind-aided, he hit much faster times last year in the NCAA championships.
Perhaps some maximum effort work would have resulted in non-age-related progress.
ALTIS added a phenomenal athlete to its squad, who ended up running as well as he did the year before.
I disagree robin1, he ran his 60m PB (6.60) in Feb of 2015 and his 9.75 (+2.7) and 19.58 (+2.4) in June 2015, while wind aided, still by all accounts correct to times faster than he’s ran since the coaching change (~9.87 and ~19.72).
In regards to your statement about him performing well in Rio in the conditions that affected everyone else seemingly more so, you have forgotten that the wind aided performance in Eugene was the fastest single day sprint double in T&F history. Point being that he already demonstrated that he had excellent reserve/capacity prior to the coaching change.
He only did one 60m race in 2016, which was within 0.01s of his PB achieved during a full indoor season in 2015. It is difficult to determine how much time is gained through wind assistance. Wind measurements are not very precise and different people are affected differently by wind. For me, for example, a difference between +0.2 (as in Rio 2016) and +2.7 (as in Eugene 2015) would easily equate to a gain of 0.25s or more in a 100m race, while for others it doesn’t make that much of a difference (I have a friend who runs the same time every race no matter what’s happening with the wind.). Moreover, he didn’t run through the finish line in his 19.80s semi final, which was run into a -0.3 headwind. It was also a lot cooler in Rio than it would have been in Eugene, and Eugene is known as one of if not the fastest track in the world, while most times below 400m in Rio where not very impressive. At the end of the day, you have to compare apples with apples, and De Grasse did better in Rio this year than he did in Beijing last year, while others who made it to both finals were slower in Rio. No one knows what he would have been capable of this year under the same conditions as he got in Eugene last year. De Grasse’s official 100m and 200m personal bests were both set in Rio.