REVIEW-Olympics-Athletics-Wonderful data, dash shocks, however shoe tech clouds the glory

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By Mitch Phillips

TOKYO (Reuters) – Two unimaginable 400m hurdles races, a girls’s dash clear sweep, a shocking 100m shock and a shared excessive bounce gold medal would be the indelible athletics recollections from the Tokyo Olympics as the game confirmed there’s life after Usain Bolt.

But hovering above the stellar shows was the dual shadow of “performance-enhancing sneakers” and a super-speedy monitor, that has followers by no means fairly certain how you can decide what they’re seeing towards a number of the greats of the previous.

Karsten Warholm’s battle with American Rai Benjamin noticed the Norwegian destroy his personal world document by .76 seconds – an enormous margin for a one-lap race – with Rai additionally nicely inside his personal mark.

The state of affairs was then repeated within the girls’s race when Sydney McLaughlin shattered her personal world document forward of fellow American Dalilah Muhammad additionally contained in the previous mark.

Warholm then spoke out to criticise the thick-soled sneakers of his rival, regardless of additionally carrying spikes with a carbon plate that unquestionably improves efficiency.

With the designer of the Tokyo monitor saying its know-how could possibly be price as much as a 2% efficiency profit it turns into comprehensible why Geoff Burns, a biomechanics knowledgeable, stated: “We simply should cease getting enthusiastic about quick occasions.”

World Athletics President Sebastian Coe repeated his perception that his organisation “mustn’t stifle innovation”.

“It is a crucial challenge and I am not minimising it however I do not suppose we’re leaving right here the place what we have seen on the monitor is something however credible,” he stated.

The improved occasions additionally filtered right down to the sprints, the place Elaine Thompson-Herah accomplished a superb 100m/200m double earlier than finishing a clear sweep as Jamaica received the 4x100m relay.

Her occasions make her the quickest girl alive over each distances, second within the all-time lists solely to late American Florence Griffith-Joyner.

If Thompson-Herah’s good repeat of her Rio double was predictable, the lads’s 100m, the primary after Bolt’s hat-trick, was the precise reverse with Lamont Marcell Jacobs profitable a race the place Italy had by no means beforehand received a medal.

The transformed lengthy jumper, who had by no means damaged 10 seconds earlier than this season, pulled off a shocking victory in a European document of 9.80 seconds.

He additionally took half in a panoramic 4x100m relay victory as Italy received 5 golds in all, their finest achievement within the sport at an Olympics.

There was a 3rd world document, additionally an enormous one, for triple jumper Yulimar Rojas as she turned the primary girl Olympic champion from Venezuela, whereas Neeraj Chopra’s javelin gold was the primary within the sport for India.

Burkina Fasa turned the a centesimal nation to win an athletics medal – Hughes Fabrice Zango’s triple bounce bronze – and the game’s governing physique wheeled out a sack of statistics on Sunday to underline its really international attain.

A document 83 nations reached finals, there have been 43 groups on the rostrum and 23 profitable gold. There have been three world data, 12 Olympic data, 28 space data and 151 nationwide data set.

The US topped the medal desk with 26, together with seven golds, however it was a skinny time for his or her normally omnipotent males’s squad, with solely their 4x400m relay crew profitable gold on the monitor.

It was a special case for the ladies, topped off by the peerless Allyson Felix. The 35-year-old turned probably the most adorned feminine monitor and area athlete in Olympic historical past with 11 medals, after profitable gold within the 4x400m relay and bronze within the particular person 400m.

But when one second summed up the spirit of the entire Olympic motion it was in all probability within the males’s excessive bounce.

Qatar’s Mutaz Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi, each of whom have returned from the identical career-threatening damage, agreed to share the gold medal and each exploded in pleasure when officers agreed.

(Reporting by Mitch Phillips, Modifying by Peter Rutherford)

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