Olympic History
Dibaba Would Have Won Men’s 10000m In 1948
Saturday, August 16th, 2008
This kind of trivia staggers the imagination: Ethiopia’s Tirunesh Dibaba would have beaten the great Emil Zatopek by 4.94 seconds had she competed in the men’s 10000m at the 1948 London Olympics. In fact, Zatopek would have won only a bronze medal. Had Turkey’s Elvan Abeylegesse also been in the race, his gold medal-winning time of 29:59.60 would have been 3.26 seconds behind hers.
Top 100 T&F Olympians Of All Time
Sunday, August 10th, 2008
Ever heard of Raymond Ewry? No? Don’t worry - neither have I. For that matter, ever heard of the standing long jump? I’ve heard of that one, but I couldn’t tell you how far a decent jump* would be (12′, maybe?). Anyway, Ray Ewry takes first place on the list of the 100 Greatest Track & Field Olympians of all time, according to a points system devised by Calvin Shulman of UK’s Times Online.
Can’t get enough of this kind of stuff? Then check out Shulman’s list from last year of the Top 100 athletes at the World Athletics Championships 1983-2005.
40 Years And Counting For Bob Beamon
Monday, July 28th, 2008Nearly forty years after he jumped the jump that stunned the world, Bob Beamon still holds the Olympic record for the men’s long jump. His world-record jump of 8.90m (29′ - 2 4/10"), which he set on 10/18/1968, was, for many years, considered to be unbreakable. To this day, only one man has jump farther, and he only did it once. Mike Powell recorded a mark of 8.95m (29′ - 4 4/10") in Tokyo, Japan on 8/30/91. The same day that Powell set the existing world record, Carl Lewis jumped 8.87m (29′ - 1 2/10"), still the 3rd farthest of all time.
Olympic Time Machine: Athens, 1896
Sunday, July 20th, 2008
Check out these screen shot images I made from Google Earth. The left image is an overhead view at 791 meters of the Panathenian Stadium, site of the Athletics events at the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. These were the inaugural games of the Modern Olympic Movement.
The image on the right is an overhead view at 791 meters of Hayward Field, site of the 2008 US Olympic Trials - Track & Field. Notice that the track on the left is much longer and narrower than the one on the right.
The track from the 1896 Olympics was considerably different than a modern-day track in other respects, too. According to the official website of the city of Casey (Victoria, Australia), the home of Edwin "Teddy" Flack, the first Olympic gold medalist in the 1500m run (actually, he was from Berwick, which is now a suburb of Casey):