If Montgomery is to be believed that he had a poor start (and my viewing of it yesterday does not bear that out), then possibly that is one of many reasons for his great time - he didn't hit his top speed until later in the race, so he decelerated least. I have often wondered if perhaps the ideal 100m acceleration pattern is not to have the peak speed be at 60-80 meters, but instead to be a sustained buildup with the peak at 85-90 meters. It's a very difficult proposition to test, but I'd be curious to hear others' thoughts on it.
- Ed Parrot ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Prizy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Track List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 6:11 PM Subject: t-and-f: Montgomery on reaction time On today's USATF teleconference, Tim Montgomery had this remark regarding his fast reaction time (I think Walt asked this question.) http://usatf.org/news/showRelease.asp?article=/news/releases/2002-09-17.xml Q: Although you had a tremendous reaction time in Paris, you said you didn't really have a good start. Could you explain that? A: Power forward is movement forward, but my power came upward so the power went up in the air. That's why (Dwain) Chambers was with me and the field was with me at 10 and 20 meters. ... "You can have a reaction but the reaction is just movement. It depends on movement up or down, but my movement wasn't forward." ... So it helped me, but it didn't help me. Other than the pull-up, I had the perfect race. I did not have a slow down at any part of the race. The race actually got faster coming in and that's hard for a lot of sprinters to do. That's the reason the world record went. I didn't have any slow movement during the race. It was just a steady hard run.
