Usain Bolt - Puma’s Gold Slipper Boy
August 18th, 2008 by Dan HugoHow incredible was that run? I dont know if I’ve seen anything like it. If only my old gold Puma race flats went half as fast as those custom gold spikes. I’m glad for Puma, and their Runway Collection campaign that hinged on the games, and on their principal player Usain Bolt - from his island of less then 3million inhabitants. Carrying the hopes of a nation, of campaign, all at the age of 21 (22nd birthday in three days time).
Imagine being the fasted human of all time?
August 19th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I really struggled to get the Olympic Spirit going…not even looking at all the astonishing photo’s everyday or reading the most amazing stories about the athletes in Beijing could get me going!
Then it happened…I switched the channel from rugby to the 100m final….the grand finale!!! it was a race that i not only will never be able to forget…usain bolt finally gave me what was lacking!! something to get really excited about!!! Jeez it was unbelievable…and imagine…he was joking around with 10m to go!!!
That to see Michael Phelps golden dream….
Bolt and Phelps made this Olympics for me and now i cant wait for the 200!!!
August 19th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I really struggled to get the Olympic Spirit going…not even looking at all the astonishing photo’s everyday or reading the most amazing stories about the athletes in Beijing could get me going!
Then it happened…I switched the channel from rugby to the 100m final….the grand finale!!! it was a race that i not only will never be able to forget…usain bolt finally gave me what was lacking!! something to get really excited about!!! Jeez it was unbelievable…and imagine…he was joking around with 10m to go!!!
and topping it of with Michael Phelps golden dream….that Serb came extremely close and my eyes told me he did win the gold from Phelps, but technology differs from what i saw….
Bolt and Phelps made this Olympics for me and now i cant wait for the 200!!!
August 19th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
That 100m does freak me out: people aren’t supposed to with with that big a margin at the Olympics?! I’d add a caption for Usain: “Hmm, I’m at the finish line, where is everybody? What are you guys doing? You’re supposed to be sprinting. Don’t tell me that’s what you call ’sprinting’… come visit in Jamaica, and we’ll teach you what sprinting is!” Meh, the Jamaica thing doesn’t work so well, doesn’t seem like that much of a stereotype. (E.g. “Come to Kenya, we’ll show you what long distance running looks like.”)
With regards to swimming: using technology to do the timing means technology becomes a part of the race… I don’t know what the touch pads look like at the Olympics, but if they’re anything like those I used to touch, I suspect swimming is now a race not to be the first person to touch with a molecule, but the first person to push against the wall with sufficient force to trigger the pad. That’s the first consideration, it’s like the ref being part of a rugby game, the clock being part of a chess game?
The second consideration requires trust of the setup: do signals from all mats take the same time to propagate? I’m sure they set it up to work just fine. 1/100th of a second is a long time in that realm, if it needs any kind of setting up or calibration, they’d know and do it right. What’s a more interesting question: 1/100th? Measured how? Because it is likely that when we are talking about 1/100th, we’re not talking about the time from the first touch to the second. We’re probably just subtracting two *rounded off* numbers. If two numbers rounded off to a 1/100th and then subtracted to get 1/100th, the original difference could be between ~0 and ~0.02 (just over and just under), with a particular statistical distribution (a little triangle peaking at 1/100th).
Disclaimer: I’m verbosely speculating without any specific knowledge of the event or the timing system: I just saw the slow-motion touch on TV and heard people talk about “1/100th”. Apologies for my verbosity!
August 19th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Oh, follow up question: when do they start timing in 1/1000th’s?
More idle speculation: the system might effectively do so already behind the scenes, but not reporting it, because the thousandths aren’t accurate enough to be validly considered “authoritative”…
August 19th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Who said sport wasnt a science….jeez…looks like you need maths to understand sport these days…oh well…phelps got 8 GOLD medals…and thats the end of it…even the Serb wasnt TOO upset…
usain is making my boss insane…and giving me haert attacks when he slacks of with 50m to go in the 200…
Like some Russian said about Phelps…he might be human, but he is from another planet…out of this galaxy…sounds like usain too…
August 20th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Hmm, indeed: come to Jamaica, where we’ll show you what sprinting is:
From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/sports/olympics/21bolt.html