On Tue, 17 Sep 2002, Richard McCann wrote:
> Four other key factors that have an influence outside of the athletes control:
> 1) rounds (have a nonlinear effect)
> 2) humidity (combined with temperature, also changes atmospheric density)
> 3) crowd presence and participation (can energize an athlete)
> 4) competition level (obvious)
>
(1) Rounds affect the athlete from a physiological point of view, and this
isn't beyond their control. Proper training and tactical racing will help
one to successfully negotiate rounds. This isn't in the same boat. You
can't train to overcome drag effects.
(2) This is true, and is something which I have yet to include in my
models. So, I will freely admit that they could (do) have an effect.
Will it be large (as large as wind)? I'm not entirely sure, but I would
say no. I would implicitly rank these as tertiary effects behind wind
(#1) and altitude (#2), because it would probably take siginficant
temperature differences to reflect the changes in density you see with
altitude variation. They are at the most on par with altitude effects.
(3) This is a psychological effect, which is technically in the athlete's
control. These correction models are not designed to transform all
sprinters into a single monolithic faceless runner. If they were, then
all corrections would reduce performances to the same time. Along these
lines, you should include:
3a) some athletes are better than others (allows one to beat another)
(4) Competition is also hard to model, because it is implicitly
psychological. I am in fact trying to account for that in some new
simulations I'm doing, however this is part-in-parcel with big races.
> Rather than further restricting
> performances, we should move toward expanding the conditions, and leave the
> debates about how to compare them to these type of lists where the most
> enthusiastic fans converse.
>
A good way to "expand the conditions" would be to introduce a correction
method which accounts for ambient wind and altitude (and temperature)
conditions. That way, we could compare a performance run with a +3.5m/s
wind in El Paso to one in Rome with a -1.2m/s wind. Sounds like a good
idea to me.
And speaking of Garry Hill, I gather he must see some value in such
figures -- those of Jesus Dapena [which agree with my results] were worth
some ink in the Big Green Book.
J.
