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Over the past couple of years I have been quite busy speaking about the role of technology in disability sport at numerous science festivals and conferences. South Africa’s ground breaking decision to select the bi-lateral amputee, Oscar Pistorius, to compete at the IAAF World Championships in South Korea has prompted me to finally write a new blog post on the topic.
I am a huge supporter of disability sport and have been privileged to attend the past two Paralympic Games. I also lead a major Cultural Olympiad project called Extraordinary Moves that aims to challenge perceptions of disability through the creation of a new body of provocative artworks. Furthermore, through academic research I have tried to understand why some performance enhancing technologies are permitted, whilst other are prohibited. Perhaps I am somewhat qualified to comment on this highly emotive issue.
What do physicists think about when they’re running? I’m currently training for my first marathon (gulp) which gives me a lot of time to think. Running around Sheffield, most of the time I think about how unfair it is that there is another hill and wonder why it is that the wind is always against me no matter which direction I’m going in. Generally, when I’m running all the blood seems to flee my brain so mental calculations take an awful long time: here are just a couple that keep me occupied on my long training runs.
Fig. 1. Usain Bolt winning gold in the World Championships in Berlin 2009 (click to watch the performance).
A lot has been said about Usain Bolt – his brilliance, his stature and his music tastes. But the suggestion that he is the limit of human performance has been soundly rebuffed by sports scientists and statisticians alike. We did the same as many others and looked at previous performances to see if there was anything in the statistics that would allow us to make predictions. Read the rest of this entry »
Unfortunately as I spent so much time preparing for my presentation yesterday (time mostly spent pacing around with nervous tension) I’ve decided to cheat a little and combine the last two days of the conference.
I’m going to focus on the great work being done by some big sports companies who have presented at the conference.
Introduction
Usain Bolt is currently the fastest sprinter in the world. His two world records in last year’s athletics world championships were astonishing even for his standards, but what next? Bolt has often talked about reverting to competing in his original event of the 400 metres, and has already competed in a 400 metre race this year. If he focuses his training sufficiently, he may be able to top Michael Johnson’s 400 metre world record (43.18 seconds), which has stood for 11 years. Bolt has also told his coach that he would love to try his hand at the long jump and thinks that he would be very good at it. Is this likely? Could Bolt be any good at the long jump, and will we see any new world records?
Recently, I received an email from Inside the Games, an online newsletter used to keep people up-to-date on the London 2012 Olympics and other events. It had the following headline:
Rawlinson removes breast implants to help win Olympic gold in London
With only this to go on, I was confused because the only Rawlinson I could think of was Chris Rawlinson the male Commonwealth gold medalist in the 400m. Momentarily my mind raced away with questions: Has he come out of retirement? Has he got implants? Why? Of course he should remove them, they could only be a hindrance to running surely?
Figure 1. Jana Rawlinson earlier this year
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