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7 Gear, Gadgets and Gismos
Date: 20 July 1984.
Place: Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Sportpark, East Berlin. Event: Javelin.
A tall muscular figure wearing striped tracksuit bottoms and a matching singlet over a white T-shirt gathers speed down the approach. About four strides from the line he draws back his arm, leans back and, with a strangled cry of determina-tion, launches the javelin into the air.
From a technical point of view, the throw is just about perfect. The athlete, East Germany’s Uwe Hohn, stops before the line and lifts his head to watch. A second or two later, his face breaks into a grin and he raises his arms in delighted triumph.
This is incredible! The javelin is soaring across the stadium on an ideal trajectory. It’s a world record, certainly. But just how far will it go? Officials and spectators
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hold their breath and watch in a nerve-tingling mix of amazement and disbelief as the deadly missile finally hits the grass just a few feet from the edge of the running track.
It was a truly extraordinary performance and Hohn’s throw of 104.80 m, beating the previous world record by an astounding 5 m, has never been bettered. It is most unlikely to be, too. Shortly afterwards, the IAAF changed the javelin regula-tions to remove the possibility of a competitor hurling the instrument right out off the field and piercing an unfortunate official or fellow competitor.
Few other events or athletic activities display more clearly the complex relation-ship between sport and technology in modern sport. After scientific training and javelin design had made Hohn’s throw possible, science was called on again to ensure that it could not be repeated. It was almost as if the officials were saying to the scientists, ‘You got us into this mess: now get us out of it!’ By 1984 (ominous date), the link between sport and applied science – and by definition technology – had become unbreakable.
Hohn’s throw can be seen on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = QGuVV7UYe7g
From There . . .
Spin and Stall
We saw at the beginning of this section how apparatus technology, in the form of swinging weights for the standing long jump, was used to enhance sporting per-
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formance in the original Olympics. The long jump was not an exception, either. Early javelin throwers used a leather thong wound round the implement’s centre of gravity to spin it as it was released. This helped nullify the vibrations and waving that might otherwise have arisen because of minor imperfections in the javelin’s construction. Another early innovation was a crude form of starting stall, now employed just for horse racing but apparently once also used for human sprints.
Early javelin throwers used a leather thong wound round the implement’s centre of gravity to spin it as it was released
In contrast, other than being standardised, the apparatus used in a number of field events – particularly the shot (or ‘weight’), the discus and the hammer – has changed hardly at all. ‘Technology’ glamorises a fairly basic development in hammer throwing: the original implement, some form of weight on the end of a wooden shaft, was superseded by the modern ball and chain design towards the end of the 19th century. In 1895, the solid wooden obstacles that had hitherto been used in hurdle races were replaced by lighter ones that fell over when hit. At least, that was the theory. In practice they remained heavy enough to cause heavy bruis-ing if struck. The modern L-shaped hurdles made their debut in 1935.
Spears and Poles
Throwing a metal-tipped spear or javelin was revived in the 1896 Olympics, although without the leather throwing thong. By this time, the original olive wood of the shaft had been replaced by hickory or Scandinavian birch, the weight was fixed at 800 g and the length 2.6 m.
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The year 1950 saw the start of a javelin revolution when the American Richard Held introduced the hollow javelin of steel and aluminium. Its tube composition enabled Held to increase the surface area by 27%, while maintaining the same weight. This allowed his javelin to ‘fly’ and the world record was soon shooting up towards Uwe Hohn’s life-threatening launch. The response was interesting: instead of increasing the instrument’s weight, as non-scientists proposed, IAAF officials moved the centre of gravity forward 4 cm. Women’s javelins underwent a similar change 15 years later.
Bringing forward the javelin’s centre of gravity had a double effect: (1) it flew shorter distances and (2) it fell nose first, making distances easier to mark.
The impact of technology on the pole vault was even more dramatic than that in javelin throwing. In a sort of early bullfight, the Greeks and Cretans vaulted over bulls; further north, the Celts levered themselves forward to see how far they could go; finally, it was left to the Germans to instigate the modern era with verti-cal vaulting in the late 18th century. Until the turn of the next century, poles were of a strong, solid wood such as ash. These were replaced by bendy bamboo, then aluminium (1957), by when planting the pole in a box at the foot of the jump had come into general use. The next few years saw the key developments that are with us today: the highly flexible fibreglass pole, which inspired a revolution in vaulting technique, and deep foam cushioning for the landing.
The Dutch claim that pole-vaulting grew out of an ancient tradition of using long sticks to lever themselves over water-filled dykes.
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Pumping Iron
‘Tennis is . . . a spontaneous sport that . . . depends upon . . . the keenness of the player . . . Real training will do tennis far more harm than good.’
– Helen Wills, 20th century tennis champion (in Tennis, 1929)
From time immemorial, athletes have been preparing themselves for upcoming challenges. Systematic training was a regular and widespread feature of the lead up to the original Greek Olympic Games and included care over diet, as well as work to improve skill levels and increase physical prowess. Competitors were known to improve their strength with what we now call ‘progress resistance train-ing’, using early forms of weights – and anything else that came to hand. The wrestler Milo apparently lugged a newborn calf about on his shoulders, a form of training echoed in the 20th century by the All Black legend Colin ‘Pinetree’ Meads, who was said to train by running up hill and down dale on his New Zealand farm with a ram tucked under each arm.
Athletes planning to compete in the ancient Olympics trained intensively for 10 months, often employing professional coaches who might refer to manuals, such as Philostratus’ Handbook for a Sports Coach.
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