The sprinting name we know best in Canada today, Andre De Grasse, has already seen his performance in Tokyo influenced by two we might not, Mondo and Omega.
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The sprinting name we know best in Canada today, Andre De Grasse, has already seen his performance in Tokyo influenced by two we might not, Mondo and Omega.
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The latest generation MondoTrack WS surface almost assuredly helped De Grasse to a blazing fast 9.91-second heat five victory in qualifying for the men’s 100-metres on Saturday, while Omega, the official timekeeper of the Olympics, made sure he did it legally.
Athlete reaction to the track has been universally positive. And why not? Six women beat the 11-second barrier in the 100-metre final and the gold medal winner, Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson-Herah, went 10.61 to erase the 33-year-old Olympic record set by American Florence Griffith-Joyner.
Public reaction to the illegal reaction times being measured by Omega’s smart blocks, on the other hand, has been somewhat less positive. But who is going to say anything nice about false starts and disqualifications?
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Not Divine Oduduru, the Nigerian sprinter who was in heat five with De Grasse on Saturday. For awhile, anyway.
Omega’s smart blocks are equipped with accelerometers capable of measuring the athlete’s force against the takeoff pad at least 4,000 times per second. If the system detects a reaction within .10 seconds of the electronic starting gun going off, that’s usually a false start under World Athletics rule 167.2. Usually.
British runner Reece Prescod was let off the hook Saturday after his reaction time was measured at .093 seconds. The field instead was shown a green card, representing a technical problem with the start. When Oduduru then twitched at the line, he was shown the black and red card and was done. Five years of training gone in a controversial flicker. Pfft. There were disqualifications in qualifying for the women’s 400-metre hurdles too.
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It’s no surprise then that rule 167.2 is unpopular. Immediate disqualification seems unduly harsh, and Oduduru paid a terrible price, just as Jamaican sprint legend Usain Bolt did prior to the 100-metre final at the 2011 worlds.
That naturally sparked an uproar so World Athletics, then known as the International Association of Athletics Federations, defended itself by releasing a study of false starts from three recent major meets held under the previous incarnation of the rule. The IAAF reported 26 false starts at the 2007 worlds, 33 at the 2008 Olympics and 25 at the 2009 worlds. Conversely, with its zero tolerance rule in place, they reported only 10 false starts at the 2011 worlds.
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And that previous incarnation, in place from 2003 to 2010, wasn’t popular either; the first false start charged to the field, the second resulting in disqualification, regardless of the offender. American Jon Drummond fell victim at the 2003 worlds in Paris, and wouldn’t go quietly. Delaying the race for almost an hour with his complaints and antics, Drummond at times laid down on his back in lane four.
And before that? Well, TV didn’t like the endless delays as sprinter after sprinter used up his or her one free false start. How ironic.
But back to that track surface. Hard to say which of its technological features is the sexiest. Athletes love its “three-dimensional net of pre-vulcanized granules with a controlled composition and elasticity in the surface layer,” and the “non-directional Tessellation” that improves grip and “elongated honeycomb backing” that returns energy to the athlete.
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OK, most of them probably haven’t read the company’s website to get the proprietary goods on Mondotrack WS, a 13-mm surface that was developed specifically for these Olympics.
But they know it’s smooth.
“It feels like I’m walking on a cloud, it’s really smooth out there,” said American sprinter Ronnie Baker. “It’s a beautiful track, one of the nicest I’ve run on.”
They know it’s fast.
“Oh, it is fast,” said American 800-metre runner Clayton Murphy. “It is hard, clean. It has been baking here for two years. It is fast.”
It might be so fast that it will take world and Olympic records to win gold medals.
“Oh, 100 per cent,” said American 400-metre hurdler Kenneth Selmon. “I think it’ll be broken on Tuesday and it’s going to take that to win, that’s for sure.”
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They also know it’s bouncy.
“You can feel the bounce,” said American hurdler Sydney McLaughlin. “Some tracks just absorb your bounce and your motion, this one regenerates it and gives it back to you.”
It took Mondo two months in the spring of 2019 to make the track at their factory in Alba, Italy. They shipped it — 1,875 rolls weighing a total of 420 tonnes — in sea cans to Tokyo, where a team of 12 specialists took four months to install it in both the main stadium and in the warm-up area, in plenty of time for what would have been a 2020 Olympics in 2020. The company said it’s an improved version of the one they laid down for Rio 2016.
Through the first few days of the athletics meet, that’s hard to argue. The false starts, on the other hand, will likely be the subject of debate throughout the meet.
Twitter.com/sportsdanbarnes
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