Olympic Marathon

Well as expected an African won the marathon, and in record time. So Blacks have taken all the titles but there seems to be a window of opportunity in the middle distances of 800m and 1500m where New Zealander Nick Willis got bronze for coming third. Maybe it doesn't help as he got assistance from on high. The winner was not from Africa but was Rashid Ramzi from Bahrain. The distance is just too far for the muscled West African descendants in the US and Jamaica with a preponderance of fast twitch muscle fibres and too short for the East Africans from the highlands of Kenya and Ethiopia.

Lightning Bolt

I wish I could have written this. It's what I wanted to say.

Bolt rose with the gun and streamed around the bend, emerging with a lead of several yards. The crowd roared and opponents strained. They ate up the yards, he devoured them. In a trice, the race was over and it only remained to follow the winner. Did anyone see the rest? It is hardly fair, but that is sport. This time Bolt did not ease up till the line had been crossed. Even then he did not celebrate straight away. Instead he looked at his time on the screen. Already gold medals were not enough.

In those two races, Bolt proved himself to be the greatest sprinter ever to put on spikes. But it goes further. His trim body discounted any suggestion of steroids. His style was stunning. His celebrations were entertaining. Moreover, he is an athlete in a Games overtaken by unsuitable sports, like soccer and tennis, and unbalanced by others such as rowing, sailing and cycling with more variations than Elgar, and therefore a disproportionate number of medals. (Hey,wot about swimming??)

Bolt rose above all that and thereby confirmed that, though sport can stoop, it can also soar.

•Peter Roebuck is an international sports correspondent who is based in the KZN midlands.

.

Reg Harris

Reg Harris, one of Britain's greatest sprint cyclists was unexpectedly beaten into second place in the 1948 London Olympics by Italian Mario Ghella.He also won silver in the tandem 2000m sprint partnered by Alan Bannister.Harris won the World Professional Championship five times, the first in 1949. Incredibly he won his fifth British sprint championship at the age of 54 and continued to race most of his life. He died at the age of 72.

In 1949 Walter Jowett brought Mario Ghella out to South Africa to race against the locals

Phelps

I didn't expect so many to support me about the value of medals.
See this on the BBC There is now a big argument over Phelps incredible performance. He is undoubtedly the greatest swimmer and most successful medal winner but he is not the greatest Olympian. I can go into the reasons why it is impossible for an athlete to accumulate so many medals but most people understand this already. But the most important is that of physiology. An athlete uses the large muscles of the legs to run together with quite an input from his arms and upper body.This means that he has to have a higher VO2 max than a swimmer in the long distances and takes longer to recover and in the short sprints goes into oxygen debt much quicker.A piano player can practice all day without getting into a sweat because he uses such small muscles and a swimmer really only uses his arms which are small muscles compared to legs.

Then there is the problem of injury. Swimmers seldom pull muscles. When last did a swimmer pull a hamstring? You can also see how rowers were devastated after their rowing events and cyclists having to be helped off their bikes because of being so exhausted. See the difference?

Now Emil Zatopek is one I can call a great Olympian. He won the 10000Metres at the London Olympics in 1948 and then incredibly won the 5000M, 10000M and then the Marathon in Helsinki in 1952. Yes he is one I can call the greatest, but there are others as well.

Olympic Cycle Road Race.

All gold medals are not equal. Why should a gold medal in airgun be equal to a gold in a seven hour cycle race, but at the final count they are all equal. This was a great race won by a true champion. The Spanish are on a roll. I had to be content to share the race with the rowing, making it very disjointed, but then New Zealand have put all their effort into the rowing events in which they are excelling. I suppose because there is so much water around.
I have another gripe. Maybe I'm a purist and biased but the true Olympic events are on the athletic track and field competitions, and the Marathon. But I think cycling has deservedly become a senior partner, yet rowing and swimming are getting too many medals. Take swimming for instance they have all the different styles at so many different distances giving an overabundance of medals. To make up there should be backwards running all the way up to the marathon and different styles of high jump and so on.Why have rowing with one oar each and two oars each in the pairs and sculls.The disciplines that are the most efficient should be the norm.




Back to the cycling. Did any one notice how the young South African cyclist who earlier this year climbed over Col de la Bonetta(below) in first place in le Tour, finished in joint 20th position only 2.28 behind the winner Sammy Sanchez and he's only 21 years old. I climbed up there in 1987 so know how hard it is.

The Olympics

The Olympics have started. They promise to be even more spectacular than any that have gone before. When I was young I dreamed of representing South Africa at the Olympics in Melbourne 1956, but lost the plot. That’s another story but I think I was in with a chance. I had been placed second and third in two events in the South African Championships and won a provincial title.



Well eventually I represented South Africa at World Championships in my age group which in a small way made up for my lapse so many years before, but I’ll never know what might have been.
Anyway what interests me is the way ‘race’ seems to play a part in sport. Superficially looking at the different disciplines, Black male athletes dominate all athletic events except the field events other than long jump. Right from the 100m sprint through to the marathon, though not the 50k walk.
Woman events are divided between races, but I think


Coppi(right)
this will change and eventually be the same as the men’s events.
Blacks are completely absent from cycling, swimming and triathlon. However other sports in which they are absent , sailing, kayaking, and rowing, may be through lack of opportunity.

The interesting thing though is that Blacks originating from West Africa dominate the sprints up to 800m while the longer distances are dominated by Kenyans, and Ethiopians or those living in the highlands of east Africa., with a sprinkling from other parts. It is well known that high altitude helps distance runners and having spent their whole life in the highlands obviously has an impact. But more important is the thousands years of evolution selecting for an improved oxygen transport system from the lungs to the muscles.

So White men can’t jump but Black men can’t swim or ride bicycles or so it seems. What is the reason for this. Apart from the high altitude advantage that blacks have, they also seem to have longer legs and a shorter body and the muscle groups are a different shape, some look like stick insects with very little body fat.Look at Arthur Wint, Gold medalist in 400m and world record holder in 1948 Olympics in London. Whether they would excel in cycling is not known as so few participate but it is believed that bone density handicaps them in swimming. They just sink. Who will forget that West African swimmer at the Olympics in Sydney when he almost drowned.

There certainly seems a place for affirmative action to help athletes in the disadvantaged groups, whether black, white or yellow. Ha Ha