Rarely do we see a world record at the Games. At one time, I looked at the averages from Games and World Championships for all events. If I remember right, WC performances were always higher. Doping maybe a big part of the reason for the performance declines, but I think that the athletes experience more distractions at the Games along with the pressure to perform for economic reasons than in the past. Those are intangibles that would be hard to measure, but I feel have an impact.
Catherine Sellers United States Olympic Committee Manager, Coaching 1 Olympic Plaza Colorado Springs, CO 80909 719.866.3236 FAX- 719.866.4850 Get Olympic Coach magazine at: http://coaching.usolympicteam.com/coaching/ksub.nsf -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Roger Ruth Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 9:17 PM To: t-and-f@lists.uoregon.edu Subject: t-and-f: Olympic Shot Put Decline Kurt Bray and Wilmar Kortleever have offered very different perspectives on the declines I noted for winning marks in the men's and women's Olympic shot competitions. I probably should take the blame for going beyond my original inquiry into medalling repetitions to assessing trends in winning marks. There obviously are too many possible variations in the conditions that affect performances on any single date to try to draw conclusions from differences across four olympiads. I still think it would be interesting to explore whether those trends in the shot put (and other events) can be observed in more general data, such as annual world ranking lists. I don't have the library of resources that would be needed for that sort of study. Perhaps someone else will undertake that inquiry. I can contribute this further information about Olympic winning marks, over the time period I investigated, in each of the weight events. It can be seen that the downward trend is not as consistent in other events as in the shot put and the women's discus. (The asterisks indicate an improvement over the winning mark in the just-previous Games.) Men Shot Discus Hammer Javelin 1988 22.47 68.82 84.80 84.28 1992 21.70 65.12 82.54 89.66* 1996 21.62 69.40* 81.24 88.16 2000 21.29 69.30 80.02 90.17* 2004 21.16 69.89* 82.91* 86.50 Women Shot Discus Hammer Javelin 1988 22.24 72.30 NC 74.68 1992 21.06 70.06 NC 68.34 1996 20.56 69.66 NC 67.94 2000 20.56 68.40 71.16 68.91* 2004 19.59 67.02 75.02* 71.53*
