very closely last night as Tara Davis is from here and one of my fellow track coaches at the HJ I coach at coached her for years.
In regard to your question, everyone has a different approach. Some start behind their actual mark with more of a jog and then speed up when they hit their mark, while others start at their mark and go all out from there. It’s personal preference. This is the same for high jump.
I disagree that the jumps should be averaged. That said, the fouls can be a problem in the event of a tie. In the event of a tie, the tie breaker goes to who had the next best attempt and so on. If someone fouls on their other attempts, they would obviously lose in the tie breaker.
This article describes the mechanics of long jumping well to help understand what the athletes are trying to do.
It also tells the story of one man from New Zealand, Tuariki Delamere, who tried to change the way long jumping is done.
Needing just one good jump to win the competition means that the competitors are pushing the envelope towards perfection, teetering right on the edge of failure. If they were to take the average of all the jumps, I would bet the jumps would be shorter.
That said, the men's gold medal was decided by who had the best second best jump, as there was a tie for best jump. So consistency does matter under the current system.
Yes, her technique seems to be a bit different and she doesn't get as much speed as others. The traditional thinking (and correct IMO) is you want as much speed as possible while still being able to launch off your jump leg effectively. Once off the ground, it's a physics problem. That's why there are many who use the bicycle technique in the air - it should in theory help one be able to travel farther in the air before coming down.
You'd think if Brittany does so well at the speed she's currently going the focus should be figuring out how to speed her up but still maintain her launch technique. Then again, the approach quite often taken by coaches is to let athletes do what works for them if they are performing at a high level. Don't know if that's what has happened in this case, but I've definitely seen this quite a bit.
field events and should not be changed. In the throwing events, for example, not only does the best of six throws decide a winner (assuming you make the final three throws with a sufficient performance in the first three), there is both a foul line or ring that you may not cross, but also your implement must land within the marked sector. That's particularly evident in the hammer and weight throw, where the cage around the circle extends just out of the front of the sector for spectator protection. We have seen those implements hit the cage on the way out, resulting in a foul.
On approach speed, whether it be long or triple jump, as well as pole vault and javelin, it is about converting the speed of the approach into the jump or throw, i.e translating vertical force into the final effort. In order to do so, you must not only measure the length of your approach not to foul by crossing the line (which is perhaps a reason to penalize for fouls along the way), but also maintain sufficient control while still achieving maximum approach speed. Maybe Reese is simply more comfortable with a more gradual approach and an explosive effort at the end.
I went to track camp as a teenager and sat in on the long jump session. The one thing that I recall is that it is difficult to run full speed and then plant the jump leg because there is so much force on the knee/leg.
At some point, too much speed/force became a negative. They taught that it was better to either slow down a little or to "stomp" the step before the jump in an effort to dissipate some of the force before jumping.
I'll slightly disagree on the average jump suggestion. As noted below, the idea behind the event is who can jump the longest. They don't average times in the 100m or any other running event, the fastest in the finals wins. Its the same with shot put, etc... I believe. Think about the situation where someone jumps 21 feet on all six jumps compared to someone who jumps 23 feet, 22 1/2 feet twice and faults three times. The second person can jump two feet longer than the first person, but would still lose.
All anyone should care about is who can jump the farthest. With modern technology, it’s simple to measure from wherever the jumper leaves from to wherever they land. I suspect that at one time the jump line (whatever it’s called) was necessary because technology did not exist to capture the departure point perfectly. So they established a jump line and had somebody make sure that the jumper didn’t cross it on takeoff.
I don’t care who can get her takeoff foot closest to some arbitrary line. That isn’t a competition I would bet on in a bar parking lot. Just let them run up, jump, and measure the difference.
My wife made the same point you did about needing just one good jump out of six. If they did it my way, everybody would have 6 qualifying jumps and you could just average them.
athlete takes off from. A main component of technique is pushing the envelope with how close to the edge of the board the athlete can jump from. If you look at the high jump or pole vault, you don’t move the bar forward or backward based on his high the jumper/ vaulter goes. The approach is key in order to ensure that the peak of the jump is right over the bar (HJ), the vaulter hits the sweet spot in the box with their pole (PV) or the jumper takes off as close to the edge of the board (LJ/ TJ). It’s part of the skill that differentiates track from something like they do at something like a football combine where they test vertical jumps.
Specifically, “A main component of technique is pushing the envelope with how close to the edge of the board the athlete can jump from”. I don’t give a crap about some contrived, insular “technique”. It’s called the long jump - so who jumped the longest? All the faults made it boring.
High jump is different. There is a need to ensure that the jumper’s entire body gets over a certain height at a certain point in space, especially with the adoption of the Fosbury flop. I suppose technology could be devised to measure the highest point in free space that a jumper’s entire body clears but it would be much more complicated and non-intuitive. Pole vaulting requires a pivot point to lever the pole - it’s nothing like the other two. Measuring long jump from point to point is extremely straightforward.
I saw some weightlifting yesterday. Saw a woman lift an enormous weight over her head only to hear that judges (WTF?) had ruled that the lift didn’t count. Why the hell would judges be needed in weightlifting? It’s pretty damned easy to tell if the weight got up. I can see requiring other to be held for a couple of seconds, which this woman did. But her elbow apparently wobbled a minute amount despite objectively evidencing maintenance of the bar above her head. It takes a great deal of the fun out of the sport for the vast majority of people, except those who have made the sport part of their identity, who almost always ruin their chosen sport in an ill-advised effort to demonstrate the “beauty” and/or “nuances” of it.
It’s like all of the silly hand motions in gymnastics. My daughter is a fairly serious gymnast (light years from Olympic level) and she agrees with me that the hand waving is dumb. Judging by her consistent facial expression during the “jazz hands” portions of her routines, we think Melnikova agrees with us. Just do the actual moves - the higher the degree of difficulty the better. Require sticking the landing? Objective and makes sense. Hand waving? Perfunctory and silly.
And both can jump the 9 ft gap with a foot to spare but one jumps 2 feet early - you do the math breh. It’s a functional event that’s why there’s an edge. Same thing with high jump. It’s supposed to replicate a challenge in real life.
You rightly explain why this event is different from other events and so is possible to change the rules to accomplish what you perceive as the chief objective.
Sure the technique has been part of the sport because that's the only fair way of measuring it. But working an umpire or ref is part of a lot of sports. And I appreciate that. But in the end, I just want the call to match what the player did. I would have no issue using technology to measure the furthest jump. There's still plenty of room for technique.
However, faults do make for better television. You know exactly when they'll take off. There is drama in seeing if they'll fault as they're trying to push the envelope. There are still good reasons for wanting it. But I agree doesn't best accomplish the objective of seeing how far someone can jump. If the event were created today (HA! It would never be created today if it didn't already exist) I would guess they would just give a range from which you need to lift off and they would use the technology to measure.
These athletes practice days and years on end to become Olympians, how come they haven't perfected a starting run that has them leaping off the block in the correct spot each time?
Also, how does one start doing the triple jump?
would you Andy, but you are dead wrong.
"I could jump over that thing" is much more fun than I can jump "X far" or "X high"
…them something to jump over. I’m thinking a fire or crocodile pit. That would indeed be more interesting. A quite material portion of jumps being negated on a technicality? Not more interesting.