Performance of the Weekend July 8 - 10

Easily the best weekend of the year for Track & Field - no doubt about it! But what was your personal highlight . . . ?

I think Sally Pearsons record was impressive 100mH 12.48s! I think that outclasses all of the above in terms of general performance. Can we add options to vote for?

Has she decided to run for Britain now?

lol... very good point... i missed the sub title... apologies to all. But i was still impressed - for another thread maybe.

I went for Tomlinson by the way, but the middle three options are very close and I could have picked any of them.

McMurray deserves an honourable mention too.

A national record at senior level has to get it every time - well nearly

Some mighty impressive performances; Desiree henry...is she still 15?! Running 23.25 for the 200m - a remarkable time and performance [ another Jodie Williams in the making?! Could be...LOL Now I'm giving the lot the 'Hoo Doo' - Anyway, good luck to 'em all! ]...

Another difficult choice. Tomlinson shaved it for me.

A great weekend generally but I thought the Diamond League meeting a little flat. Good to have 4 GB winners of course, but no great times for them and disappointing performances by a few others.

Yes Desiree Henry is not 16 until 26 August.

Best performance of the weekend.
Easy the background shot of the bloke who 'touched up' John Inverdale
face as his make up was being messed up by the rain in Birmingham !

I think Desiree run was truly amazing, for a 15 year old that is incredible. 200m is a tough distance for younger people to sprint.

Congratulations to Chris though. Just hope he starts jumping 8.5m+ soon though, before its too late. That is what it will take to win a global medal this year.

Above results all look promising for our future though. Isn't it funny how we're starting to really promise some real world beaters in the next 5 years. This is becoming a great time in British athletics. Is the olympics helping with urge/desire of our new youngsters?

The 'Olympic affect at Home' is not an exact science but I'm sure it must have an affect - and that it must be having an affect. Even a few percent increase in effort and ambition is enough to make all the difference!

Desiree's run, here on YouTube [ her first 150m was absolutely phenomenal ];

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUTrNn2Vz28

Well done to her

Thanks for posting link Izzy.

Mighty impressive performance from Desiree. Puts
most of our senior sprinters to shame. Even as a
15yyear old she would not look out of place in a GB
Senior 4x100m team.

Not sure it puts anyone 'to shame'.

She's just very talented.

And so was (is??) Shaunna Thompson

To shame? - well let's face it the top women run sub 11 for fun as the top men run sub 10 - something we unfortunately can not say about any of our own sprinters.

Far too many talented young british sprinters do not fulfil their youthful potential or in the case of Vernicha James are lost to the sport.

Everybody was raving about Shaunna Thompson in 2008, last year Jodie Williams now we have Desiree Henry.

Michael Johnson has expressed his own opinion of the poor conversion rate of British sprinters from Junior to senior level (an obvious swipe at the coaching)

MLF used to get a lot of stick but people forget that Christian Malcolm ran 10.0? and 20.0? aged 21 - did he push on??

And Asafa Powell famously accused British sprinters of being lazy - not practising enough. Maybe a bit strong use of words but unfortunately if you do not know any different - athlete and coach - you may not be working to the levels required to step up.
Amount of conditioning work has always been a sore point and whether or not UK Athletes generally were doing enough - and whether or not the lack of conditioning work was linked to frequency of injury.

When it comes to Sprinting there are only 2 countries(areas) to look at - Jamaica (Carib) & USA and if your level of training/coaching falls below their level how do you expect to compete at the same level.

I would have expected some sort of improvement from Shaunna Thompson over the last 2-3yrs but seems to be going backwards

I'll tell you one thing though.

Our armchair coaches are the envy of the world.

I have a certificate from DFS

I wonder what people make of the fact that a lot of our top male sprinters are bulky and heavy set. Linford Christie and John Regis (or Johnny Two-Chests as our 400m runners dubbed him) seem to be the template for our sprinters these days and not the lean and lithe Colin Jackson. If you look back at the top sprinters of the 60s and 70s, guys like Jim Hines and Tommie Smith were fit and slim, not musclebound. In recent times this has become less typical although the wiry Frankie Fredericks and Christophe Lemaitre show what's possible without pumping iron all the time. If you look at MLF, Harry A-A, Dwain Chambers, and Simeon Williamson they all have a muscly/bulky build. I would dispute what Asafa Powell says although he is right to question what is going on with our sprinters. I don't think they are lazy, you don't legitimately acquire their upper body physiques by sitting around watching TV. I do think, however, that conditioning and training techniques are an issue and it's possible that they're training hard but not smart. Maybe coaches are trying a little too hard to create the next Christie or Regis and aren't acknowledging how individual sprinters should evolve free of the context of the UK sprint scene as it was before.

East End - it is just a nice way of saying that maybe UK coaches are not as knowledgable as their International counterparts.

A UK Level 4 coaching qualification is just that - a UK Qualification. Its significance internationally is not measureable.

UK has no history in PV, DT, HT,SP for instance yet there are British Level 4 coaches in these disciplines. Are we to assume that they are as able as their top international counterparts. I think not.

Can anyone honestly say that there is a British Level 4 PV coach as good as say Alex Parnov or Vitaliy Petrov.

And theres the rub

EEB;

"...I do think, however, that conditioning and training techniques are an issue and it's possible that they're training hard but not smart... "

An interesting point about training hard and training smart - one I really like. I would add though, that I personally believe that bulkiness is to do with conditioning i.e. that if an athlete is too bulky to achieve their full potential, they're not in the right condition - and hence, by implication, not having trained 'smart'...

But totally think that there are too many bulky British athletes ( HAA, MLF, Williamson, even Pickering; bigger doesn't mean better...)...

I think they enjoy pumping the weights most. It is something we can practice all year round due to the weather.

What can you do? If you were HAA, how can you slim down? Look at Walter Dix of the US, he is achieving.

With the exception of HAA & Chambers i don't think our sprinters are too muscle bound. Maybe some are a little chubby looking in comparison to their international competitors.

Maybe it is because of the weather we can not do so much different training during the winter. I don't know, but something isn't right.

Interesting to observe that there were no nominations for the brits (except McColgan) who performed so well in Sunday's diamond league meeting. Four winners against (most) of the best in the world seems a rare feast for those involved, but sadly not even a nomination in this weekend's list. Dare I say we are giving too much prominence to records being broken?

Having said all that, I very much enjoy the opportunity to vote each week and appreciate the effort being put in by EBB and others who contribute.

Just to say there was an article about Lawrence Okoye in the Times today, worth a read if you happen to see a copy lying around.

In an ordinary weekend I would've nominated Mo Farah, Dai Greene and Philips Idowu for their DL wins but it wasn't an ordinary weekend. I consciously nominated athletes that either won medals at a global championships or broke records, senior or junior. Now I think Dai Greene, for example is a great athlete but he doesn't need more publicity from me, he's successful and he competes frequently so he's going to be in the news a lot. This is the specialist athletics section of the website and I'm trying to differentiate the coverage away from what even the broadsheets do, which is talk about the same half dozen athletes all year long. That is why I have nominated the likes of Sophie Papps and Desiree Henry. It's better to debate and deliberate over the merits of these unheralded athletes than talk about what everyone else is across the print media or the 'net. People on the AW website barely discussed English Schools - why the hell not? My choices will be arbitrary and my rationale will seem flawed to some. I'm going to restrict the choices to 5 otherwise the poll gets diluted, if people want to mention other performances then that's a good thing because that only reinforces what a rich and entertaining sport we're following.