http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/20050418-9999-1s18forty.html Good article, albeit a little dated. With recruiting season coming up, just take the stats you see with a little bit of salt. Having said that, X Carter seems to be the real deal with the times he is putting up.
SEEMS TO BE THE REAL DEAL!??! Well, gee, he did just run the 2nd fastest time in the world this year... :thumb: But anyways, thanks for the article. :geauxtige
A Ben Johnson 4.38 METER time sounds about right. A Ben Johnson 4.38 YARD time sounds right if he fell down and got back up to finish. The article does say they broke it down in meters, not yards. Looks to me like the writer got his yards and meters confused. "Timing officials have since broken down that famed race into 10-meter increments, and Johnson was so preposterously fast that he went through 50 meters in 5.52 seconds and 60 meters in 6.37 – both under the current world records at those distances. He went through 40 yards that day in 4.38 seconds. " And Lambuth University is in Jackson, Tennessee not Jackson, Mississippi. "Lambuth, an NAIA school in Jackson, Miss., had its offensive line prospect run on a cracked tennis court."
That is an interesting read, especially taking into account reaction times of runners and timers. However, I think that it's reasonable to assume that these deviations are pretty much constant from runner to runner or timer to timer. Therefore, these 40 times that everyone obsesses about are still valid if viewed strictly on a relative scale.
That Ben Johnson crap has been around for years and it's not true. Donte Stallworth ran a 4.26 on an electric clock and he's not in the Olympics. They got their calculations wrong on there. The Olympic 100 and 60 meter guys would post about a 4.05-4.15 40 time if they ran one at the combine. 40 yards is 36.576 meters. So if he ran 4.38 at 40 36.5 meters, that means he covered the next 13.5 meters in 1.14 sec. Then the time between the 50 and 60 times is .85 sec. So at the pace between 50 and 60 prorated over 13.5 meters that would be 1.1475 seconds. There is no way a 100 meter sprinter got slower between 50 and 60 meters than he was between 36.5 and 50 meters. That just goes to prove their math is wrong. If you divide the 50 meter time by 5, which gives you a 1.104 sec per 10 meters average, then mutiply that by 3.65, you get an approximated 4.029 40 yard time. Since there will be some acceleration between the 36.5-50 meters you could probably add about .02 to it which would give Johnson a 4.05 40 yard dash time, which is about what I would expect.
I hate to call you out, but your math might not be too accurate. The following website has the "Best Possible" 100m times split by 10 meter increments. 1 yard is 0.9144 meters. Hence 40 yards is 36.58 meters. According to their best ever splits: 0-10m : 1.69 seconds 10-20m: 1 second 20-30m: .89 seconds 30 - 36.58m : .86 * .658 (fraction of 10 meters) = .57 seconds Total time for 40yds = 4.15 seconds Source: http://run-down.com/statistics/100m_top_splits.php {EDIT} Oops.. I forgot to add the fastest possible 0.1 second reaction time to the starters gun. Hence the fastest possible 40yd time is actually 4.25 seconds. Also, bear in mind that using the fastest possible splits, the fastest 100m they come up with is 9.56 seconds. The current IAAF world record is 9.78 seconds by Tim Montgomery (http://www.iaaf.org/statistics/records/gender=M/allrecords/discipline=100/index.html).
breaking down track times to compare them to 40 times is always one of those things that makes me scratch my head. Apples to Oranges
There's also a big difference between the reaction time of the two. Track time - the runner starts after the gun goes off; whereas at the combine, you run and they press the stop watch. Which means that the track time, the runner has to react to the gun - and at the combine, the stop watch reacts to the runner - it's reverse. I think that's why the combine time always seem quicker - human errors with twichy fingers. They need to have electronic gate at the start and finish - and not just at the finish.
They have a sensor at the combine. When you start moving it starts the clock, at the end you break a wire. There is no reaction time in a combine 40. So lets say that the track guys really could only run 4.15. If there was .1 reaction time as stated before, that again puts them at 4.05... and if the reaction time is even slower that just knocks more off. edit: FYI the combine 40s have been fully electric and accurate since 1990.
Actually I think you misread what I wrote. The 4.15 was without the reaction time. The 4.25 was with the reaction time included. Also, the 4.15 was the cumulation of the best times ever recorded in those splits. A more realistic scenario would be to look at how the fastest 100m ever run is split up. Here are Tim Montgomery's world record splits: Tim Montgomery (USA) RT: 0.104 (round-up to 0.11) 10m: 1.85 (1.74) 20m: 2.91 (1.06) 30m: 3.82 (0.91) 40m: 4.70 (0.88) 50m: 5.54 (0.84) 60m: 6.37 (0.83) 70m: 7.21 (0.84) 80m: 8.05 (0.84) 90m: 8.90 (0.85) 100m: 9.78 (0.88) Using the same calculations as above, his 40 yd time is 0.104+1.74+1.06+0.91+(0.88*0.658) = 4.39 seconds. Basically this is either saying that there are a lot of college and pro's out there that can break WR's in athletics, or that there might be more than a few issues of integrity with these 40 times that we like to read so much into. Personally, I'm way more impressed with X Carter running 20.02 in the 200m than I am with half of the kids out there pretending to run sub 4.5 40 times.
