TheFinalSprint.com - Track & Field, Marathons, Racing News, Training Advice, Elite Athlete Blogs, Interviews, Podcasts, Videos and More! - TheFinalSprint.com is the Premier Destination for Track & Field, Marathon, Cross Country, Olympic and Road Racing Enthusiasts.

Lead Stories: Saturday, September 6, 2008

World Points Standings:
Men’s Sprints

Posted June 11th, 2008 at 12:00 PM by Jesse Squire

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Rankings, World Standings

My rankings are being run on a pilot program this summer and I’m sharing them with the track community via The Final Sprint. Last year I did a trial run on just the men’s 100 meters and it correctly predicted the World Championships medalists in order, and then by the end of the summer readjusted to match Track & Field News’ world rankings nearly exactly.

The system is based on that of the IAAF’s World Athletics Tour standings, but with a few twists–most importantly, all kinds of meets are included in the standings and athletes can earn bonus points for fast times. At this early time in the season, athletes are given points for the results of their best four meets (one of which can be in a different event).

100 meters
1. Usain Bolt 46
2. Nesta Carter 42
2. Olusoji Fasuba 42
4. Kim Collins 38
4. Mike Rodgers 38
6. Darrel Brown 34
6. Tyson Gay 34
8. Derrick Atkins 32
8. Michael Frater 32
10. Ivory Williams 30
Read the rest of this entry »

2 comments, add yours | Permalink

Gay, Powell Clash Set for London Grand Prix 7/25 - 7/26

Posted May 25th, 2008 at 9:30 AM by Bob Ramsak

Section: News & Results, Track & Field

An eagerly anticipated 100m face off between World champion Tyson Gay of the U.S. and world record holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica has been set for the Aviva London Grand Prix on July 25-26, organizers announced.

With both sprinters gearing up for the Olympic Games, the race at London’s Crystal Palace will likely be their only face-to-face prior to Beijing.

“London will be very crucial for me,” said Gay, who last year stormed to World titles at both the 100 and 200m in Osaka. “It is one of the biggest meets of the year right now and that is where it is going down between myself and Asafa. He has the title of being the World record holder and I have the title of being the World champion, and I think that is really good for the sport.”
Read the rest of this entry »

One comment, add yours | Permalink

Nick Symmonds: World Indoor Championships 2008
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #8)

Posted March 11th, 2008 at 4:30 PM by Nick Symmonds

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Elite Athlete Blogs, Nick Symmonds

Welcome to the official blog of elite American middle-distance runner Nick Symmonds. Make sure to check every other Monday at http://nicksymmonds.thefinalsprint.com/ for Nick’s latest entry! For more information about Nick, also please visit: www.nicksymmonds.com

I am currently sitting in a cafe in Oviedo, a small city in the north of Spain and I’m thinking I have the best job in the world. I get paid to travel to many foreign places doing what I love to do. Well, usually I love this job, but sometimes it challenges me with the most difficult experiences. I ran into a new challenge this past weekend in Valencia, Spain at the 2008 IAAF World Indoor Championships.

After passing through the prelims and semi-finals with relative ease, I found myself preparing to race in my first World finals. I was about to compete against five of the fastest people on this planet. The prospect had me excited to say the least and I had no idea what to expect. Though this was my first final on the World level, I have been in many championship races. They are, especially in the 800m, impossible to predict.

I assumed that it would go out at a modest pace and eventually slow down leaving things perfectly set-up for me to unleash a 200m kick that would surely result in a top three finish … No such luck.
Read the rest of this entry »

5 comments, add yours | Permalink

America’s Tyson Gay Named Male Athlete of the Year

Posted November 27th, 2007 at 8:00 AM by Jamal Walker

Section: News & Results, Track & Field

Three-time World Outdoor champion and 2007 Jesse Owens Award winner Tyson Gay was named the Male World Athlete of the Year at the World Athletics Gala in Monte Carlo over the weekend.

Gay had an historic year in 2007, sweeping the 100 and 200 meters at both the IAAF World Outdoor Championships in Osaka and the USA Outdoor Championships. He added World Outdoor gold in the 4×100m to become the fourth man in World Championships history to win three gold medals at a single championship.
Read the rest of this entry »

2 comments, add yours | Permalink

Video: Felix notches best time of the year in 200m

Posted August 31st, 2007 at 9:30 PM by Martin Kennedy

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Special Features, Live Race Coverage

American Allyson Felix defended her 200-meter title in style on Friday, surging down the home straight to win gold in the best time of the year. Felix, the youngest athlete to claim a sprint world title when she won as a 19-year-old in Helsinki two years ago, dashed across the line in 21.81 seconds to match Jamaican Marlene Ottey in winning back-to-back world championship 200m golds.

World 100-meter and Olympic 200-meter champion Veronica Campbell looked to be in with a chance to sprint double at the bend but Felix stormed past her and the Jamaican took silver in 22.34.

Courtesy of: WCSN
Via: TheNewsRoom

Comment on this post | Permalink

Boston Marathon 2007: Thanks to all of our sponsors and supporters!

Posted April 18th, 2007 at 3:00 PM by Adam Jacobs

Section: Announcements, Special Features, Live Race Coverage

Thanks for all of your enthusiastic readership and positive feedback regarding TFS’s LIVE coverage of the 2007 Boston Marathon!

Our coverage of this year’s race would not have been possible without the help of the Boston Athletic Association (BAA) and the generosity of the following sponsors and supporters:

Official Coverage and Contest Sponsor

Multimedia and IT Sponsors

• Audio: Plantronics
• Photo: Pentax
• Video: Samsung
• Broadband: Sprint

We would also like to thank Jim Plumb for allowing us to use his photograph in TFS’s event coverage site header (also pictured above). Click here to see more of samples of Jim’s work.

2 comments, add yours | Permalink

Studies: Caffeine can help athletes in both endurance and sprinting events

Posted March 29th, 2007 at 4:00 PM by Martha Jones

Section: Nutrition, Supplements

It has been established for more than 50 years that caffeine helps you exercise longer in events that require endurance.

Recently researchers at Christ Church University in Canterbury, UK, showed that caffeine also helps you in much shorter events. Trained cyclists raced one kilometer (0.6 mile) on three times, in random order, after taking 5 mg of caffeine, taking a placebo, or taking nothing.

Their speed, mean power and peak power were more than three percent higher after taking caffeine (Journal of Sports Sciences, November 2006).
Read the rest of this entry »

2 comments, add yours | Permalink

Podcast 11: Interview with 3-time Olympic gold medalist Gail Devers

Posted February 9th, 2007 at 3:00 PM by Adam Jacobs

Section: Special Features, Interviews, Podcasts

Today’s podcast features my interview with Gail Devers, a 3-time Olympic gold medalist. Known as the “fastest woman in the world”, Gail has overcome a multitude of obstacles to achieve tremendous success.

At 40 years old, and just 19 months after giving birth to her daughter Karsens, Gail returned to the Millrose Games on February 2nd and won the 60m hurdles; defeating many of the world’s best, including her current protege, Danielle Carruthers.

Download the podcast to hear Gail discuss how “40 is the new 20″, her battle with misdiagnosis and Graves disease, the Gail Devers Foundation, being a coach, her new protégé, the keys to longevity, and her thoughts on trying to compete in the 2008 Olympics.

Listen In
[MP3] Direct Download (Right click, select “save as”).
[RSS] Add The Final Sprint Podcast RSS feed to your RSS reader to have the show delivered to you

Host: Adam Jacobs
Guest: Gail Devers
Producer: Greg Cherniet
Music: Ryan Ahlwardt & Darnell Perkins
File size: 13.5MB
Length: 00:34:20

Interested in featuring The Final Sprint Podcast on your site, blog or My Space page? Click here to learn how!

Read the rest of this entry »

2 comments, add yours | Permalink

Low-carb, high-fat diets negatively affect performance

Posted November 17th, 2006 at 12:00 PM by Martin Kennedy

Section: Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Race Prep & Recov

A recent study from South Africa, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, shows that eating a low-carbohydrate diet slows extended sprint performance of cyclists. Competitive bicycle racers ate a high fat or high-carbohydrate diet for six days followed by a high-carbohydrate diet for one day and completed time trials on their bikes. Then they ate the opposite diet for six days followed by a high carbohydrate diet for one day and repeated their time trial. Diets did not affect their times or power output for 100 kilometers (62 miles), but the high fat diet slowed their sprint performance over one kilometer (0.6 miles).

Muscles get their energy from sugar and fat stored in muscles or from the bloodstream. The limiting factor in how fast an endurance athlete can exercise is the time it takes to transport oxygen from the blood in the lungs to the muscles. Muscles require far more oxygen to burn fat than to burn sugar for energy. So when a muscle runs out of its stored sugar, called glycogen, it becomes less efficient, hurts, is difficult to co-ordinate and slows you down. Read the rest of this entry »

4 comments, add yours | Permalink

WIRELESS RUN TRACKER: The One Service That Every Runner Needs

Posted October 7th, 2006 at 7:10 PM by Adam Jacobs

Section: Gear & Apparel, Gadgets & Acces., Miscellaneous

Wish that you could have all the advantages of a Nike+iPod Sportkit +, Garmin Forerunner, MP3 player, Google maps and even your cell phone with you on your run? Well now . . . YOU CAN with a “Wireless Run Tracker”-enabled mobile phone.

Runner’s World, Bones in Motion (an application development company) and various cell phone companies have teamed up to create “Wireless Run Tracker” - a service that will make runners of all levels and abilities, gadget lovers and technology enthusiasts all go wild.

For a fee of only $9.99 a month (added to your cell phone bill) you can use your GPS enabled cell phones on Verizon Wireless, Nextel and Sprint services to track/measure your runs, find/share routes, help you to avoid getting lost and see real-time information on your phone’s screen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comment on this post | Permalink