Sally Pearson's World Championships Performance

Sally Perason’s World Championships 100 m hurdles gold medal performance was outstanding! Her peformance was perhaps the best of the entire meet…only .07 off Donkova’s world record which has stood for so long. It’s been a long time since any female hurdler has gone under 12.30, and Sally did it in style.

I’d sure like to know what protocol her coach, Sheron Hanna, followed to get Sally to where she is today. Anyone with such information, please post it.

When you look at the history of the 100 m hurdles you find the European women (Australians included) out performing women from the U.S. and Canada, time wise. One thing in particular that stands out big time is hurdling technique. The European women hurdlers have much better technique. This may be because the Americans and Canadians focus on speed more than technique. That’s not to say that speed is unimportant in the 100 m hurdles, but technique is as important as speed, and European women by-in-large have better technique.

woahhhhhhh there, Sally is very fast, maybe the fastest of the bunch. She has an 11.14 100m pb. If you compare each of the runner’s speed in the open 100 to the hurdles Danielle Carruthers might be operating at an even higher level, thus making a case that Sally is not the best with respect to the techincal aspects of the event.

Sally: 11.14 (100m) 12.28 (hurdles)
Danielle: 11.43 (100m) 12.47 (hurdles)

Did you see the race? If you compare Danielle’s technique to Sally’s you’d see what I mean. If Danielle had better technique her time would be faster. That’s not to say she would run the 100 hurdles faster than Sally, but her time, 12.47, would be better. As Danielle’s technique stands now she"ll never break 12.40, much less 12.30. The difference is Sally has better flat speed and hurdling technique. Furthermore, flat sprint speed and hurdle speed are two different things. For an even better comparison, if you compare Dever’s flat speed and hurdles speed and technique to Donkova’s flat speed and hurdles speed and technique you’d see what I mean.

Relentless

Devers did get better technically, I feel, as she aged and lost a bit of speed as she used to get so close she was forced to kick the lead leg out though did even later but I felt she was a better hurdler having more room to execute the TO.

Sally already has a lead going into H1. Her initial acc. and then takeoff into H1 sets up such a good race for her. Not that H1 alone wins for her but she gets out so well and the takeoff is fantastic that it leads to high velocity going into H2 and so on.

Her coach has either improved a ton from 10yrs ago or just got plain lucky with Sally. 10yrs ago she was coaching 150+ athletes/kids etc. A huge club. But with such huge numbers they didn’t dominate at State or national titles. Just a person here and there.
She ran a seminar up where i was coaching at the time, She Hated every aspect of our training for sprints (Cf style)
At the time we had 5 guys under 11sec from a club of 20. Consider half the club were females and 80% were in school. Not bad for a little country town.
Just her arrogance towards us was very offputting.
I do know when CF ran a seminar at the Gold Coast a few yrs back, she was invited to come, but AA Banned her, so a few of her Senior Athletes went instead.

I thought she was there.

here is the race

//youtu.be/i1kxvDQF0-E

Hi Boldwarrior,

Thanks. Very interesting.

Relentless

Hi John,

Great video. Thanks.

Relentless

Hi Pioneer,

Devers never corrected her lead leg. She always swung it to the outside, much like LoLo Jones currenting does, causing an imbalanced attack of the hurdle, and an off-balanced leading. Add to that the fact that she had difficulty controlling her speed between the hurdles and you can see why she never run the hurdles as well as she might have otherwise. With her 100 m speed and better technique she might have run 12.18 or better.

I think Pearson is capable of a sub-12.20.

Relentless

Yes, it was never corrected only her diminished speed allowed her to not get too close the hurdle which I think did contribute to better hurdling. So many years of the lead leg going out was obviously pretty tough to correct-if she tried to correct it.

I was under the impression she was invited, was going to come until AA Banned a bunch of AA coaches. She therefore sent along some students of hers instead.
If she turned up, i don’t remember seeing her

As a group everyone who was a member/Affiliate member of AA was banned. Didn’t Charlie say something about Paul Hallam having a private session, I can’t see why Sharon would be any different.

yeah good point. She could have?

What is the flaws with Sally’s technique?

I notice she gets high above the hurdles, but the lead leg is snapped onto the ground pretty correctly and she doesn’t appear to float over the hurdle like a lot of hurdlers who let there lead leg straighten too much.

Asking, as I have a very basic and rudimentary training and education in hurdles.

I think you could argue she is almost the complete hurdler. Just the right amount of flat speed so that she isn’t out of control. Tidy over the hurdle (lot of work done here when you compare shots of her in previous years to now). Height over the hurdle sets her lead leg up quite nicely. She runs with a very high cadence both on the flat and over the hurdle. This possibly helps with trasferance of flat speed to hurdling. No point being a sprinter who opens up on the flat when you need to have a much more compact technique over the hurdles. The icing on the cake seems to be the speed maintenance work that her coach has mentioned in the media she did this season. She has always got out well but now seems to be finishing her races. I think the progression and unfolding of her as an athlete is a great case study for coaching…good job to her, her coach and support team.

I was told ages ago Jacquie Munroe shifted to QLD and was helping with Sally’s hurdling technique. Jacquie’s coaches were, Neville White (Medowie), Jim Day & Louise Green (Raymond Terrace), Penny Gilles (NSWIS), Fira (NSWIS).