Among lite runners, the 100-metre sprint specialist is gunslingerand prizefighter rolled into one. They are poker-faced and lightningfast, trading strides instead of punches; when the fastest men on theplanet take their marks, bums stay on seats.
The pinnacle of the discipline, the men's Olympic final, is one ofthe most anticipated events in sport. Reaction, power and control "get it right and in less than 10 seconds your name will appearalongside the greats; get it wrong and you're a nobody in the blinkof an eye. The blue riband event bar none, its history has beenwritten by some of the finest examples of the human thoroughbred, mensuch as Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis.
In a state-of-the-art training facility in Bath, one of the fewBritons to have tasted Olympic sprinting glory is busy preparing forhis latest campaign, the World Athletics Championships, which getunder way in Helsinki on Saturday. Last summer, when the starter'spistol sent off the men's 4 x 100m relay final in Athens, it wasJason Gardener who took the baton out. Just 38.07sec later, withAmerica's Maurice Greene closing like an express train, the anchor,Mark Lewis-Francis, flashed across the line to secure victory.
Currently top of the British rankings, the 29-year-old Gardener isone of only three British athletes to have broken the magic barrierof 10 seconds (Linford Christie and Dwain Chambers are the others),with a run of 9.98sec in Lausanne in 1999. Until America's Jim Hinesclocked 9.95sec in 1968, a sub-10sec 100 was sprinting's equivalentof the four-minute mile. For despite its apparent simplicity, the actof barrelling down a lane requires far more than raw speed; thesprinter's art is complex, a series of technically demanding skillsrefined and rehearsed to the nth degree.
Just how demanding I'm beginning to understand, having joinedGardener for a training session. My breathing is laboured, sweatdrips from my nose, muscles tremble with the effort " and I haven'teven left the blocks. In the 100 metres, the most crucial part of therace is the start, according to Malcolm Arnold, the seniorperformance coach with UK Athletics and Gardener's trainer. And with38 years in the business, coaching such stellar names as the hurdlerColin Jackson, he should know.
'If you cock it up,' says the bluff veteran, 'the next guy willtake three inches out of you in the first stride and six inches aftertwo; suddenly it's a foot.' Like Jackson, Gardener is a startingspecialist, one of the reasons he is the world indoor champion at60m, the shortest sprint distance.
Arnold invites me to take my marks. To spectators, starting fromthe blocks looks perfectly natural: kneel, up into a crouch, and go.Executing it under pressure is another matter. When kneeling,athletes must be entirely motionless before the starter can call themto the 'set' position, itself a triumph of will over physics. Aimingto lean as far forward as possible without falling over, the staticstrength required to keep every limb still in the crouch isformidable. Particularly when the faintest movement will betray you.In the modern era, all meetings run under the auspices of the IAAF,the sport's governing body, use starting blocks containing electronicsensors. Designed to counter the likelihood of a false start, thesensors measure the speed of reaction to the gun " any reactionfaster than 0.12sec is deemed to be illegal.
This first stage of the race, the 'reaction phase', is all aboutexplosive power, creating momentum by driving forwards rather thanupwards. Elite sprinters can generate a force equivalent to 1.5 timestheir body weight in less than 0.4sec.
'When you go,' says Gardener, 'think of the top of your headsmashing through a brick wall.' Arnold chips in: 'This is where Jasonwins races,' he says. 'Your job is just to survive.' After what seemslike an age, Arnold gives the command to go. Instead of explodinglike a human missile, I stagger from the blocks like a newborn foal.
At the first attempt, my reaction time registers as 0.387sec. Lessthan half a second? Can't be bad, and by my third start I've shavedthat to 0.317. Then Gardener tells me his fastest reaction time:0.103. But just as a sprinter must tame his nervous energy, he mustalso preserve that instinct which governs flight; the very bestsprinters have the reflexes of the antelope that runs before the lionhas even left the bushes.
'That first contact [with the ground] is critical,' explainsGardener, 'as that will set you up for the rest of the run. It's thesprinter's equivalent of the sweet spot, and you'll know if it'sright.' Hitting 30 metres, says Gardener, sprinters enter the nextstage of the race, the 'acceleration phase' or 'surge'. 'If you comeup too fast you're cutting off acceleration,' he says, 'so you need aslow transition into your racing position.'
During this phase male athletes achieve stride rates of up to 4.6strides a second (women about 4.8 strides), with each strideconsisting of two phases, 'stance' and 'flight'. Propulsion is onlyproduced during the stance phase , with the foot in contact with theground for between 0.08 and 0.09sec. The strength required togenerate this propulsion " about 3.5 times his bodyweight " meansGardener's training includes copious gym sessions. 'I'm a step-frequency athlete,' he explains. 'Quick leg- speed is my strength inthe first part of the race. Athletes with longer limbs are 'stridedominant' " those longer strides will reap the benefits later in therace.'
Running between timing sensors, I progress through 30 metres in5.96sec, on course for a 100 metres of around 19.86sec. Had I beenrunning against the current 100m world record-holder, Asafa Powell ofJamaica, who last month clocked a blistering 9.77sec, he would havefinished as I hit halfway.
The better the athlete, the longer he or she will be able tosustain acceleration. For lite men, maximum velocity is reachedbetween 50 and 70 metres. 'Once you hit that point,' says Gardener,'it's critical to stop yourself decelerating. That's when the drillscome into play; a solid trunk, good body posture, keeping that stepcadence going. If somebody flies past you, you mustn't get drawn intohis stride pattern.'
On the posturing that accompanies the start of most major finals,Gardener is nonplussed. 'If an athlete next to me is giving it thebig one and they succeed in putting off three other guys, I've noproblem with that. Some flex their muscles in the heats, slowing up,looking around, but the final is a different pressure.'
Despite his own heavily muscled frame, Gardener says his appetiteis small. 'As a power athlete, I try and load up on proteins, chickenand meat. I use energy drinks such as Red Bull in training; if you'retired it can lift you, help you get that edge.'
To a certain extent, the finish of any race, the 'decelerationphase', is an exercise in smoke and mirrors. In the last 10 to 20metres, while it may appear that one runner is speeding up, he ismerely decelerating less rapidly than his rivals. For sprinters, thekey source of fuel is an energy-rich compound called creatinephosphate, and the amount stored in the muscles is sufficient forbetween six and eight seconds of all- out effort.
As fatigue takes over the central nervous system, a sprinter willcompensate for a decreased stride rate by increasing his or herstride length. The staccato running style that results is oftenreferred to by commentators as 'tying up'.
'When people talk about relaxation in sprinters they don't meanwe're not trying,' Gardener says. 'When you're running well it justcomes, each contact feels like you're barely touching the floor. Therace seems to take place in slow motion; you're hyper-sensitive,aware not just of what your body is doing but everybody else's.'
When analysing strengths and weaknesses, sprinters are necessarilycritical. 'I've run one of the fastest times ever by a human being,'Gardener says, 'but there is very little margin for error. For me,that's the joy of the event. When all the training comes together,the satisfaction is immense.' It is perhaps ironic, then, given theselfish nature of the sprinter's art, that Gardener's greatestsuccess came in the event's only team discipline. Nevertheless, hemaintains it was technique that won the day. 'On paper, the Americansshould have cleaned up; they had all that raw speed, but couldn't useit. None of us had made the [individual 100m] final and the Americanteam had all run under 10 seconds " that's just the way it works.'
Sports active: Quicksilver service Life in the fast lanes of world-class sprinting is not for the faint- hearted. Athletes need nerve, strength and guile " and that's before the race starts. As Olympic gold medallist Jason Gardener prepares for his next campaign, Mark MacKenzie gets a masterclass
Among lite runners, the 100-metre sprint specialist is gunslingerand prizefighter rolled into one. They are poker-faced and lightningfast, trading strides instead of punches; when the fastest men on theplanet take their marks, bums stay on seats.
The pinnacle of the discipline, the men's Olympic final, is one ofthe most anticipated events in sport. Reaction, power and control "get it right and in less than 10 seconds your name will appearalongside the greats; get it wrong and you're a nobody in the blinkof an eye. The blue riband event bar none, its history has beenwritten by some of the finest examples of the human thoroughbred, mensuch as Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis.
In a state-of-the-art training facility in Bath, one of the fewBritons to have tasted Olympic sprinting glory is busy preparing forhis latest campaign, the World Athletics Championships, which getunder way in Helsinki on Saturday. Last summer, when the starter'spistol sent off the men's 4 x 100m relay final in Athens, it wasJason Gardener who took the baton out. Just 38.07sec later, withAmerica's Maurice Greene closing like an express train, the anchor,Mark Lewis-Francis, flashed across the line to secure victory.
Currently top of the British rankings, the 29-year-old Gardener isone of only three British athletes to have broken the magic barrierof 10 seconds (Linford Christie and Dwain Chambers are the others),with a run of 9.98sec in Lausanne in 1999. Until America's Jim Hinesclocked 9.95sec in 1968, a sub-10sec 100 was sprinting's equivalentof the four-minute mile. For despite its apparent simplicity, the actof barrelling down a lane requires far more than raw speed; thesprinter's art is complex, a series of technically demanding skillsrefined and rehearsed to the nth degree.
Just how demanding I'm beginning to understand, having joinedGardener for a training session. My breathing is laboured, sweatdrips from my nose, muscles tremble with the effort " and I haven'teven left the blocks. In the 100 metres, the most crucial part of therace is the start, according to Malcolm Arnold, the seniorperformance coach with UK Athletics and Gardener's trainer. And with38 years in the business, coaching such stellar names as the hurdlerColin Jackson, he should know.
'If you cock it up,' says the bluff veteran, 'the next guy willtake three inches out of you in the first stride and six inches aftertwo; suddenly it's a foot.' Like Jackson, Gardener is a startingspecialist, one of the reasons he is the world indoor champion at60m, the shortest sprint distance.
Arnold invites me to take my marks. To spectators, starting fromthe blocks looks perfectly natural: kneel, up into a crouch, and go.Executing it under pressure is another matter. When kneeling,athletes must be entirely motionless before the starter can call themto the 'set' position, itself a triumph of will over physics. Aimingto lean as far forward as possible without falling over, the staticstrength required to keep every limb still in the crouch isformidable. Particularly when the faintest movement will betray you.In the modern era, all meetings run under the auspices of the IAAF,the sport's governing body, use starting blocks containing electronicsensors. Designed to counter the likelihood of a false start, thesensors measure the speed of reaction to the gun " any reactionfaster than 0.12sec is deemed to be illegal.
This first stage of the race, the 'reaction phase', is all aboutexplosive power, creating momentum by driving forwards rather thanupwards. Elite sprinters can generate a force equivalent to 1.5 timestheir body weight in less than 0.4sec.
'When you go,' says Gardener, 'think of the top of your headsmashing through a brick wall.' Arnold chips in: 'This is where Jasonwins races,' he says. 'Your job is just to survive.' After what seemslike an age, Arnold gives the command to go. Instead of explodinglike a human missile, I stagger from the blocks like a newborn foal.
At the first attempt, my reaction time registers as 0.387sec. Lessthan half a second? Can't be bad, and by my third start I've shavedthat to 0.317. Then Gardener tells me his fastest reaction time:0.103. But just as a sprinter must tame his nervous energy, he mustalso preserve that instinct which governs flight; the very bestsprinters have the reflexes of the antelope that runs before the lionhas even left the bushes.
'That first contact [with the ground] is critical,' explainsGardener, 'as that will set you up for the rest of the run. It's thesprinter's equivalent of the sweet spot, and you'll know if it'sright.' Hitting 30 metres, says Gardener, sprinters enter the nextstage of the race, the 'acceleration phase' or 'surge'. 'If you comeup too fast you're cutting off acceleration,' he says, 'so you need aslow transition into your racing position.'
During this phase male athletes achieve stride rates of up to 4.6strides a second (women about 4.8 strides), with each strideconsisting of two phases, 'stance' and 'flight'. Propulsion is onlyproduced during the stance phase , with the foot in contact with theground for between 0.08 and 0.09sec. The strength required togenerate this propulsion " about 3.5 times his bodyweight " meansGardener's training includes copious gym sessions. 'I'm a step-frequency athlete,' he explains. 'Quick leg- speed is my strength inthe first part of the race. Athletes with longer limbs are 'stridedominant' " those longer strides will reap the benefits later in therace.'
Running between timing sensors, I progress through 30 metres in5.96sec, on course for a 100 metres of around 19.86sec. Had I beenrunning against the current 100m world record-holder, Asafa Powell ofJamaica, who last month clocked a blistering 9.77sec, he would havefinished as I hit halfway.
The better the athlete, the longer he or she will be able tosustain acceleration. For lite men, maximum velocity is reachedbetween 50 and 70 metres. 'Once you hit that point,' says Gardener,'it's critical to stop yourself decelerating. That's when the drillscome into play; a solid trunk, good body posture, keeping that stepcadence going. If somebody flies past you, you mustn't get drawn intohis stride pattern.'
On the posturing that accompanies the start of most major finals,Gardener is nonplussed. 'If an athlete next to me is giving it thebig one and they succeed in putting off three other guys, I've noproblem with that. Some flex their muscles in the heats, slowing up,looking around, but the final is a different pressure.'
Despite his own heavily muscled frame, Gardener says his appetiteis small. 'As a power athlete, I try and load up on proteins, chickenand meat. I use energy drinks such as Red Bull in training; if you'retired it can lift you, help you get that edge.'
To a certain extent, the finish of any race, the 'decelerationphase', is an exercise in smoke and mirrors. In the last 10 to 20metres, while it may appear that one runner is speeding up, he ismerely decelerating less rapidly than his rivals. For sprinters, thekey source of fuel is an energy-rich compound called creatinephosphate, and the amount stored in the muscles is sufficient forbetween six and eight seconds of all- out effort.
As fatigue takes over the central nervous system, a sprinter willcompensate for a decreased stride rate by increasing his or herstride length. The staccato running style that results is oftenreferred to by commentators as 'tying up'.
'When people talk about relaxation in sprinters they don't meanwe're not trying,' Gardener says. 'When you're running well it justcomes, each contact feels like you're barely touching the floor. Therace seems to take place in slow motion; you're hyper-sensitive,aware not just of what your body is doing but everybody else's.'
When analysing strengths and weaknesses, sprinters are necessarilycritical. 'I've run one of the fastest times ever by a human being,'Gardener says, 'but there is very little margin for error. For me,that's the joy of the event. When all the training comes together,the satisfaction is immense.' It is perhaps ironic, then, given theselfish nature of the sprinter's art, that Gardener's greatestsuccess came in the event's only team discipline. Nevertheless, hemaintains it was technique that won the day. 'On paper, the Americansshould have cleaned up; they had all that raw speed, but couldn't useit. None of us had made the [individual 100m] final and the Americanteam had all run under 10 seconds " that's just the way it works.'
