World Athletics Championships

[Adamski]

I've really enjoyed coverage of the world athletic championships in Budapest. Some incredible performances and great athletes. GB did picked up a good number of medals.

However .. noticed not many world records have been broken. Only one I remember is the men' shot put.

And the margin between the winning times and the WR seems high. In replays They'd sometimes impose the WR line as a graphic and it'd be miles ahead.

I wonder if it's just random, or if doping tests harder to beat, or some other reason. You cant really say any athletes from the past are cheats when been clean on every test.

Although anonymous survey in 2011 showed 57% are doping, compared to failed tests 1-2%. I dont think they'll do a reset, but i can imagine the longer without records being broken, the calls for records to be reset will increase.

[Hallucigenia]

The first question would be - how "normal" is it for there to be only the odd record broken at a world championship? I suspect it's rarer than you think - certainly championship races in long-distance running are notorious for being slow, as everyone is super-tactical which mitigates against fast times.

Also you have to consider the incentives for modern athletes - success in the placings at big championships is what gets you invites to the big money of the Diamond League where you can get big bonuses for breaking world records, and sponsorship deals etc. Sergey Bubka was the master of that game - in his early years he broke the pole vault record by 6cm in one go, but then realised he got paid the same whether he broke a record by 6cm or 1cm, so he proceeded to break it by 1cm ten times in the course of a decade. Obviously it's easier to do that in high jump and pole vault than other disciplines.

But sure, drugs has something to do with it, when you see that half of all women's records are more than 30 years old, with as many set in the 1980s as since 2010. But it's not just drugs.

And sometimes people are just good - I don't think anyone accused Bob Beamon of being on drugs, he was just really good at long jump. And many disciplines have been super-competitive for long enough that we are firmly at the stage of marginal gains, so you'd expect individual records to hang around for longer.

[Leothebear]

Yes I too enjoyed the coverage and find Gabby Logan an excellent blend of the serious and light-hearted when appropriate.

And sometimes people are just good - I don't think anyone accused Bob Beamon of being on drugs, he was just really good at long jump. And many disciplines have been super-competitive for long enough that we are firmly at the stage of marginal gains, so you'd expect individual records to hang around for longer.


Jonathan Edwards has a similar story. The BBC ran his profile where he looked back at his career. He hit a purple patch in the late nineties and slaughtered the existing world record with a leap of 18.28. Interestingly he said although he got stronger he could never reach those heights again.
When you see the record jump he looks fast and so light somehow. He floats over the ground rather than muscling along.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/53661335