Coyle continued

"I made a mistake." Now get a job"...Fact and philosophy

Well, the discussion around the study published by Coyle on Lance Armstrong, and the subsequent revelation that he had made a calculation error has opened up some strong debate, which is always excellent. We've had numerous responses, and of course had the study been done on John Jones, as opposed to Lance Armstrong, no one would have cared...

And therein lies the first problem - this paper got to where it did off the back of the fame of its subject, and scientific stringency was lobbed out the window. So to the one Anonymous poster who commented that we were leading the "witch-hunt" for Lance Armstrong...I'm afraid you've missed the point there. It's not about Lance Armstrong, it's about scientific process. But more on that a little later, in "Philosophy." First, some "Fact."

Fact

Many of you wrote in saying that there was an error in the statement regarding the impact of the change depending on a high or low VO2. And you'd have been correct. I've emailed some authors about this, and what I'd like to do (this is part of our "growth strategy" here at the Science of Sport), is to allow external contributions to topics such as this one. So I will try my best to actually have the people involved respond to these kinds of specifics.

However, you are correct - the impact of the change is similar in absolute magnitude, but as a percentage of the slope, it's larger at lower VO2 values. At the very least, we now have confirmation that our readership is up to the challenge! That's a privilege, and says something about the high quality of our readership...!

I'm going to credit the fact that I have a "real job" for this particular error - these posts are done on the fly, during lunch or after work, thanks to the real job (again, more on this in "Philosophy").

But it suddenly struck me as ironic that this had happened in this post, of all of them (of course, we do make mistakes, but they've never been picked up before!). Because the funny thing is how this scenario played out...consider the following:

Yesterday afternoon, you were sitting in a coffee shop, an internet cafe, your home, or your office, and you logged on or got our daily email. You read it, and it struck you that something was wrong, so you gave it some thought, and you realised that you disagreed with our statement. You then took it upon yourself to write in a comment, and express your view about our position. One of you even wrote in and requested that we provide data to back up that position. It was beautiful.

Why was it was beautiful? Because this is what happened when you logged onto a part-time run website on Sports Science. Now, imagine that instead of this website, you picked up a credible Journal, say the Journal of Applied Physiology. You opened it, and read a paper that was so full of holes, so full of errors and lacking any integrity in the interpretation of the data, that it defied belief. What would you do? I suspect you'd take it upon yourself, as a scientist that is, to write to the Editor, to respond to the Author of the study, and to seek answers.

Welcome to the Coyle-Armstrong debate. Now, imagine that in response to your email and opinions, I was to tell you to "Get a real job." Again, welcome to the Coyle-Armstrong debate, because that is what was said in response to a scientific discussion.

And that is what this series about. One of the bigger ironies is that we (and the Australian scientists) were yesterday accused of being "myopic" to our approach to criticizing the Coyle paper. That is a response that can only come from within the "Fraternity" (and I use this word deliberately, instead of "Community" because science is often a Fraternity) of scientists who are perhaps defending a former colleague.

They are the ones suffering from myopia, because they've chosen to ignore the quality of the science and attack the messenger instead. The reality is that a peer-reviewed scientific paper should meet certain standards. Making "miscalculations" (which I still believe to be significant) is not acceptable, but then nor is the litany of other problems with that study, which we described in our first post. Then the response of the author is so offensive, so disrespectful and so arrogant that it warrants a post series all by itself.

To be sure, errors do occur in data collection and analysis. This is not a crime and nothing to be ashamed of, however when other scientists challenge your findings because they think there might be an error somewhere, transparency should prevail, data should be provided, and the problem rectified. This is how we move our knowledge forward.

The fact is that subsequent to a complaint of scientific misconduct, Coyle has still not provided all the data. Why not? Just make it available and let's have this debate out in the open. Or is there a reason not to? Moving even further along, not only does this science appear in a scientific journal, it then becomes a cog in a legal defence when it was incorrect all along (and to answer one poster, I don't know why the data was not made available before - perhaps the legal team made the mistake of trusting the scientific process too much?)

So that is the problem. The final point I wish to make before moving onto "Philosophy" is that in a normal state of affairs, when a research study is sent off for review, it is usually sent by the editor of the journal to a few reviewers - experts in the field, who cast their eye over it to make sure it is well-controlled and worthy of publication. The Coyle study of Armstrong was submitted on February 22nd. It was accepted three weeks later. Of course, short turnover times are not unique, but this is remarkable. Remember, this is a study so criticized that it inspired two SEPARATE letters in response, and trust us, letters like these are not all that common in the publication process. It became a case study here at UCT in how not to write a case report, and as mentioned in our first post, was criticized widely at conferences.

Yet it got through the Review process in three weeks. That is where the problem began, and it continued, all the way through to the admitted error. Perhaps a lot of people with "real jobs" were involved along the way.

Philosophy

Speaking of real jobs, one comment we received yesterday got me thinking about our existence here at The Science of Sport, and specifically, what our purpose is. We are now just over 17 months old, and it's wonderful to be able to count among our readership the likes of the people who wrote yesterday. In particular, this poster (sorry, I would refer to you by name, but I don't know it), mentioned that he gave our posts to his students on occasion, but was critical of the "lack of objectivity and professionalism" in the posts. What a privilege to have such readers, and we are very blessed to have such wide (though we'd love to grow it - send this to your friends!) and influential readership. Clearly we have many scientists and other academics among our audience, and we do feel privileged that these people have chosen to read and comment here.

When we started out, our intention was to use it as a vehicle to coach. Jonathan's passion is cycling, mine running, and we felt that we could get into the coaching world this way. It lasted about two days, before I realised that in fact, the "market" was crying out for a more thought-provoking approach to sports news reporting. And so the concept of "Performance analysis and discussion" was born. Our mission then evolved into trying to marry our passion for sport with our training in science.

We said that our objective would be to provide the "Why and How" to what internet news sites, magazines and newspapers were reporting as the "What and Who". That remains the idea today. So our flagship posts have been the Oscar Pistorius debate, which I genuinely believe we have covered better than any media outlet around, and the Major Marathon races, where we look at the pacing strategies, splits and race news in real time, from a physiological point of view. The Olympic Games were obviously a huge focal point as well. But we're not here to analyse the science - that's what journals do. We're also not here to tell you what happened in the world of sports - the newspapers do that. We're here to try to strip down the stories and provide some insight which hopefully brings science into the sports news, and sports stories into the world of sports science.

But the point I have to make is that it is all opinion. This is not a scientific journal, though we recognize that we offer (or should try to offer) a little more than the usual media/blog fare. So what we try to do, where possible, is provide references and links to the "objective" research. So to respond again to the Anonymous poster, if you want the "objective" discussion, then simply refer to the letters by Gore et al. in the scientific journal.

Our intention is to translate, and to inform, and then to entertain through the use of the site, and hopefully give people new perspectives based insight that we have (or hope to have). I mentioned earlier that I had a "real job" - I work as head of research for a sports management and marketing company, and so my involvement with science is these days in a consulting role. Jonathan is more immersed in a University position. But my training, both PhD and Commercial, allow me to stand with one foot in a commercial block, and another in the sports science world, and sing. Or dance, or play, whichever you prefer. Speaking personally, these posts are what I see when I look at the world, nothing more.

One of my favourite books is "The Undercover Economist", by Tim Hartford. That book was described as "spending an ordinary day wearing X-ray goggles". I'd like to think this is a site that lets you watch sport through X-ray goggles. That requires opinion, and it's guaranteed to offend some (Pistorius' father among them), but I won't apologize for opinion.

So we are sorry if you feel that our discussion sometimes lacks objectivity, and fact. But then again, consider the discussion on Usain Bolt. I believe he is clean. Is that fact? Of course not, but then if we restricted ourselves to "fact," this would be a very empty website. And no one wants that...

So apologies for the philosophical, and somewhat self-indulgent post (I indulge twice a year). It won't happen again until perhaps March next year!

Ross

Coyle-Armstrong research installment 2

The "error" is discovered, thanks to scientific detective work

Apologies for the gap between posts - I wanted to spend more time on this particular piece to make sure that I captured what is a techical matter accurately.

In our last post, we looked at the 2005 research study published by Coyle on Lance Armstrong, in which he concluded that Armstrong's efficiency had improved by 8% over a 7 year period during which he was tested.

That finding became a crucial cog in the legal defence of Armstrong after his fifth Tour de France title, because Coyle argued that this physiological adaptation was responsible for Armstrong's dominance of the Tour. We said in our last post that there were numerous scientific flaws in the study, not least of all the fact that Coyle never once tested Armstrong during the Tour de France season. What transpired in the aftermath of the 2005 publication was only really the beginning, and those study design considerations and problems of interpretation were soon going to be overtaken by the realisation that in fact, the data was incorrect thanks to a calculation error made in working out the efficiency. That is the subject of this post.

The "minor miscalculation"

The story behind this latest revelation is that three scientists and one mathematician from Australia requested access to Coyle's data, presumably to examine it more thoroughly. At this stage, we must point out that the Coyle finding was surprising and challenged for a number of reasons:

1. The numerous flaws in design, questions around calibration and issues of interpretation that we have already explained
2. The fact that cycling efficiency had never been shown to change so consistently over a period of time as a result of training/maturation. Take the following quote, from Michael Ashenden, one of the paper's authors: “They were really concerned, on a scientific level, that Coyle had been able to perpetuate this myth that cycling efficiency changes."
3. There is a theory that cancer treatment and chemotherapy, should cause a decrease in efficiency. Why? Because what happens with the removal of a testicle and subsequent chemotheraphy is that the body shifts to a greater use of fat as a source of fuel. Fat, however, is not as efficient as carbohydrate - the energy produced per liter of oxygen is lower for fat than carbohydrates, and so this theory suggests that Armstrong should, if anything, have been less efficient. This is not by itself reason for doubt - theory is, after all, any hypothesis exists in order to be proven incorrect, but it was another reason to view the Coyle data with skepticism.

However, the key point was that this "science" was being propogated as fact, when there were very clearly errors and problems with it. The scientists approach was then to ask for the data, so that they could analyse it themselves, interrogate it and discover whether in fact the conclusions were valid.

Getting the data - apparently a problem

Science is, in theory, transparent. It should be, and every scientist should be confident enough in their method and results to make data available at any time for evaluation. If they are not, then the data should not be published. That's why a scientific paper is so particular about its method - every study should be repeatable by others, to confirm or refute what it has found. If the process is legitimate, then the data should be above "reproach". It turns out that getting hold of Lance Armstrong's data was not quite so simple. Apparently, Ashenden and his colleagues were stonewalled when they raised their concerns, and eventually had to lodge a case of scientific misconduct against Coyle, with his University in Texas.

That finally got them SOME data - I must stress, that it seems they only got some of the information. If you look at the letter that Gore et al sent to JAP, they state in the opening paragraph that "Coyle made available raw data from the January 1993 test..." If you then jump to the end of the letter, you read the following: "The magnitude of this error warrants recalculation of the entire data set, but raw data from the remaining test sessions are not available from the author".

Therefore, despite having gone through an official complaint of scientific misconduct, the scientists are still not able to evaluate ALL the evidence, because its author will not make it available. Now, why is this the case? Could Coyle have "lost" the data? Highly doubtful - I suspect that given the subject and his importance, this data will be backed up numerous times. So then the only conclusion is that some reason exists not to make it available.

The Error and why the complete data set must be evaluated

The Australian group, in their letter, make the point that a calculation error had been made, which is really the catalyst for the latest round of discussion. What was that error? We gave a hint in our previous post when we introduced the following graph:
This graph shows how the delta efficiency is calculated - basically, it's the inverse of the slope of this line. So your use of oxygen rises as you do more and more work, and if you take the slope, invert it, you have a measure of how much work is doing per unit of energy consumed (you calculate energy using oxygen).

Now, what Coyle did, you'll recall, is calculate Armstrong's efficiency over 7 years from 1993 to 1999, interrupted by the cancer diagnosis and treatment.

However, what the Australian researchers realised when they looked at the data from 1993, is that Coyle had used the wrong equation. Without going into massive detail, if you look at the graph above, you will see that even when you are doing ZERO work, you are still using oxygen (otherwise, you'd be dead). This resting oxygen use, at zero load is important, because it reflects a base metabolic rate. Now, what Coyle did was to neglect this zero work point, and he FORCED the line to go through zero. This means that the slope of the relationship between oxygen use and work rate was changed because he used the wrong equation, and his calculation of delta efficiency is incorrect.

What the Australians realised is that if you used the CORRECT equation, then the values calculated change substantially. Their letter provides the numbers - they applied the correct equation and worked out that Armstrong's Delta Efficiency in 1993 was actually 23.55%, and NOT 21.75% as Coyle reported. The graph below shows the effect of this correction.

The question marks are there, of course, because we're all speculating as to how the correct equation would change the values - that data has yet to be released, so speculation is all we have...

The impact of the change

The change is huge - 8%, and therefore, the rest of the data must be evaluated. In response to this revelation, Coyle has admitted that he made an error. However, he has downplayed the importance of this error, saying that it is minor and makes "no practical difference". I might point out that his error is in fact LARGER than the change in efficiency he found in Lance Armstrong! The 8% change was significant when it was Lance's efficiency, apparently it is not when it is the error he made...

The other defence put forward by Coyle is that the error is reduced in signficance because he calculated efficiency at a high VO2, and so the effect of a resting metabolic rate is expected to be minimal. This is in fact completely incorrect. The higher the VO2, the greater the impact of the calculation on the slope. In otherwords, the slope actually changes by MORE (and hence, the efficiency changes) when you have a high VO2, than a low VO2. So Coyle's defence doesn't hold there either.

Summing up: The big picture

The relevance of this error, and the whole process of evaluating this paper, extends into the scientific community, perhaps more than it does the cyclist. So these two posts have been much more technical than we usually write, but hopefully you can appreciate the importance of discussing this kind of scientific misinterpretation and error.

In response to it all, Coyle is quoted in the New York Times as saying: “This is a minor waste on my time. However, I don’t understand how they can afford to spend so much time on this. Don’t they have real jobs?”

I suppose one would put this down to opinion, but as I wrote the other, I would say that as a scientist, your "real job" is to pursue scientific truth. So in fact, they did exactly what they were supposed to. It doesn't seem that the same applied in 2005 when the study was done.

Ross

Coyle and Armstrong: Research "errors" evaluation

The Coyle study on Armstrong: A "minor error" or a scientific "hoax?" Analysis and insight

As promised, we turn our attention to this story, which broke last week, co-inciding with the news that Lance Armstrong is coming out of retirement and will try to race the 2009 Tour de France. It's quite an intricate story, and technical, so forgive the longish post, but we try to go back to the beginning and then work through the sequence of events in order.

The story, which was reported in the New York Times, reports that Ed Coyle, physiologist at the University of Texas, admitted to making what he calls a "minor error" when calculating Lance Armstrong's efficiency during his research. That "minor error" happens to have a major impact on the study's findings, since his main finding was that Armstrong became more efficient between 1993 and 1999.

The paper was, it must be said, widely criticized from the beginning. It drew two separate letters, criticizing the methods, debating the scientific stringency of testing, and questioning the conclusions. It became something of a "shining light" to research without quality control, a running joke of sorts within sections of the scientific community.

I recall attending a conference in the USA soon after its publication - it was the hot topic, of course, because not only was Coyle doing research on an elite subject, it was THE elite subject - the "greatest physiological specimen in the world". Just like roadies wait years to see rock stars or musicians, any exercise physiologist would leap at the chance to publish data on a record-breaking Tour de France cyclist!

So predictably, the paper was something of a conversation starter at scientific conferences and in the media. At the conferences, conversation was not positive, however, with many dismissing it as trivia, rather than science. They were being kind...Few would have expected the next two years to keep the paper quite as much in the public and legal eye, since it became a legal defence vehicle for Armstrong, as we shall see...

With regards to the media, the paper was huge - it was reported widely as "fact" that Armstrong's success was the result of his never-seen-before increase in efficiency. This is typical of how media spin sometimes contaminates science. In this particular case, that science was not even particularly "clean", with many holes, but nevertheless, the media lapped it up. This is of course frustrating for most scientists, since the "sensationalization" of science is rarely constructive. When it is also poor science, all the more reason to pursue the truth...

First things first: The Coyle study from 2005. What was found?

To begin with, we have to look back and report on the findings of Coyle in the research study that is now the focal point of the "error".

The paper was called "Improved muscular efficiency displayed as Tour de France champion matures", which kind of reveals the paper's hand from the very first line. Here's a breakdown of what Coyle did (note that we're focusing only on the efficiency part, and not some of the other measurements made. If interested, you can download the entire paper here. See also the end of this post for the links to the entire series of exchanges in the Journal of Applied Physiology.)

The figure below demonstrates just what Coyle did, and what he found.


The research began in November 1992, when Coyle did his first battery of tests on Armstrong. He then did a second test a few months later, followed by a third in 1993. Then a long break interrupted the testing, and it was in that period that Armstrong was diagnosed with and treated for testicular cancer.

Testing resumed in August of 1997, and the final test took place in November 1999. This was the only testing session that co-incided with Armstrong's Tour de France dominance (1999 to 2005), although it must be pointed out that it was done in November, four months AFTER Armstrong won the 1999 Tour. This has relevance for Coyle's conclusions, as we shall see.

The test: Explaining efficiency measures

Testing consisted of a VO2max test, during which time, Coyle measured gases (oxygen in, CO2 out) and did a blood lactate measurement at the end of the test. He calculated two important variables:

• Gross Efficiency - the ratio of work done to energy expended to do the work. The work done is taken from the power output, while the energy expended to do the work is calculated using the respiratory gases and calculations we won't get into here. But for example, if a cyclist is riding along at 200 W, and their respiratory gases are used to calculate that their energy consumption is 1000 W (or Joules per second), then that cyclist is 20% efficient, according to this method.
• Delta Efficiency - this is a more comprehensive method, because it is calculated as the ratio of the change in work done per minute to the change in energy expended per minute. It is considered a better measure of efficiency because it takes into account the use of oxygen (and energy) at rest and when no work is being performed.
  

This gets technical, but the simple way to think of this is that as you do more work, your oxygen use rises. We can use that oxygen use to calculate how much energy you are using, and then say that energy use is proportional to work rate (that's fairly obvious, hopefully).

Now, if we take the inverse of the slope of that line (in otherwords, work done vs. energy use), then we can work out delta efficiency. However, it's critical that this slope take into account what the energy use was when you were not doing any work - the resting energy use, and also the energy use when cycling at zero load. The graph below is schematic, but I use it illustrate the point - the energy use rises with increasing work rate, but must take into account energy use when work rate is zero.


Studies as far back as 1975 (Gaesser & Brooks) have shown that gross efficiency tends to skew the results, because of the failure to account for energy use at zero load. Therefore, delta efficiency is considered the better method, but only if used properly, as we'll see!

Coyle's study found that Armstrong's efficiency increased progressively over the 7 years in which he was tested, as shown in the figure above. His delta efficiency improved from 21.37% in 1992 to 23.12% in 1999. This increase (1.8 percentage points) is relatively small, and it must be noted, is actually less than the typical error of the equipment used to measure it with! In other words, taking nothing but equipment variation into account, this kind of change is possible...

Based on this finding, Coyle named his study, and the theory was published that Lance Armstrong had seen a progressive increase in his efficiency over the years. This was to become a key part of this "armour" in 2005, when this study would provide some support for his claims that his ascendancy in the world of cycling was "natural". Coyle speculated on a number of physiological factors explaining this finding (changes in enzyme activity, muscle fibre switches etc.). However, the first responses to Coyle's paper were swift...

The first response: Criticism of methods and overinterpretation of data

The first response and criticism was swift, and came from two sources. First, David Martin and colleagues from Australia wrote a letter titled "Has Armstrong's cycle efficiency improved?". This was accompanied by a letter from Yorck Olaf Schumacher and his colleagues titled "Scientific considerations for physiological evaluations of elite athletes".

Essentially, these letters criticized the study design, the method and the scientific process follwed, including the conclusions. The raised the following points:

• Timing of testing sessions - Coyle very clearly concluded that his measurements of muscular efficiency were of paramount significance to Armstrong's Tour victories. He denies this, but the title and his conclusions make very clear that his view is that Armstrong's success is a function of this improved efficiency. Coyle would go on to testify in court that Armstrong's rise could have been achieved without doping, so it's quite clear that his finding was intended for support of Armstrong's Tour performance. Yet remarkably, NOT A SINGLE testing session co-incided with the Tour. All the testing happened out of season, and only the 1999 test even overlapped with the Armstrong Tour victories.
• Issues around equipment - calibration, reliability, validity etc., which we won't get into here, other than to say that over a period of seven years, the control of equipment is obviously crucial. Coyle responded to these queries, and they do not seem to have huge influence over the current debate
• The conclusion - Coyle's was really one of the first papers to even suggest that muscular efficiency improves over time and with training. While this would seem intriguing, it also disagrees with many other findings, which are that extensive endurance training does not improve cycling efficiency. Also, efficiency is not a factor that seems to be associated with performance in elite cyclists, and so the conclusions are 'liberal', to say the least.

The next steps: Re-analyzing the data and digging up errors

These issues are primarily behind my earlier observation that the paper was widely criticized, even early on. However, what transpired next is even more significant, because Christopher Gore, Michael Ashenden, Ken Sharpe and David Martin continued their quest for the "truth", and eventually managed to get hold of (some) data from Coyle's testing.

Between the publication of the paper in 2005 and the latest round of debate, there was also the matter of a court case in which Coyle was a paid expert witness on behalf of Armstrong. His testimony was aimed at building a credible case for how Armstrong could have dominated the sport for 7 years thanks to the remarkable physiology put forward in this paper. And so this study, with its holes, flaws and inaccuracies, actually went on to form part of a legal argument despite those problems. It also reveals a big part of Coyle's incentives, something we'll look at in our next post.

These holes and flaws in the Coyle study however pale into insignificance when compared to the latest revelations, where analysis, and some "between the lines" reading of Coyle's data revealed outright errors in the research. That is, it's no longer a case of questionable methods and over-interpretations, it's now a matter of miscalculation and wrong results. All the way from the lab, into the media, and on into the court-room!

But in the name of time (and length!) I'm going to call it for today's post, and leave you with that teaser, which we'll pick up on tomorrow, when we look the "minor error" and what impact it has on the results.

Join us then!

Ross

Links to the original article and follow-up letters:

• Original paper by Coyle
• Initial letter to the editor and author response
• Additional letter to the editor and author reply
• Gore et al.'s 2008 letter to the editor
• Original paper by Coyle
• Initial letter to the editor and author response
• Additional letter to the editor and author reply
• Gore et al.'s 2008 letter to the editor
• Coyle's response to the Gore et al. letter

Usain Bolt 9.55s? Yeah, right

Could Usain Bolt have run 9.55s without his celebration in Beijing? Not a chance...

Thank you for visiting The Science of Sport. If you've arrived here searching to find out what Usain Bolt is capable of after his amazing 9.58s, you've come to the right place!

Click here for our detailed analysis of Bolt's 9.58s time, including Bolt's splits, speeds and a comparison with his previous world record in Beijing.

And check in at our homepage for more in the coming days!

Late edit to this post (NB):

If you've arrived here in the aftermath of Usain's amazing 9.58s WR in Berlin, I must emphasize a very important point: This post was written back in September 2008 to answer the question "Could Bolt have run 9.55s without celebrating in BEIJING?". It was NOT written to say that Bolt would NEVER run 9.55s. So if you are here to point out that he just ran 9.58s, yes, you are quite right. And yes, 9.55s is on the cards. But this post, I must stress again, looked at the very specific issue of Bolt's 100m in Beijing, and whether he might have been able to run 9.55s in BEIJING. The post was written in September 2008 - we are now a year on, so to use this to prove your point...well, you're in the wrong place.

If you would like to read the latest thoughts on the Bolt 9.58s WR, and if you're wondering what Bolt is really capable of, as well as the rest of our coverage of athletics, please click here.

Yesterday, the news wires were buzzing with the news that scientists in Oslo predicted that Usain Bolt, Jamaica's triple Olympic champ, would have run 9.55 seconds had he not celebrated prematurely in his 100m final in Beijing.

It was on the radios, internet, TV news, all over. A while back, just after that race, we speculated that a 9.61s time was about the limit, given the split times that were available.

So this 9.55 s is quite different from that. And far be it from me to criticize the physicist's assumptions, and calculations, but what we have here is a classic case of losing sight of the wood for the trees. Their method involved looking at the final 2 seconds of the race, where Bolt began his celebrations, and compared his acceleration to that of Richard Thompson, who finished second. They looked at two possible outcomes: One is that he maintained the same acceleration as Thompson (that is, slowed down, because all athletes slow down at the end of a 100m race), and the second is if he maintained an acceleration 0.5m/s2 greater than Thompson.

It was in the second of these scenarios that they worked out that he'd run 9.55 s. But the problem with this emerges when you consider the official 10m splits from the race, courtesy the IAAF analysis and a website in which they discuss the race.

So let's look at the analysis, and let me start by asking a simple question: Where in this race are you going to find 0.14 seconds to help Bolt run 9.55 seconds? The answer, as you'll see, is that you won't find it at the end of the race, in the celebrations. It's just not physiologically possible...

The splits:

These are the split times from Bolt's race, according to the IAAF analysis. The graph below it shows the times making some basic assumptions (apologies for the lack of integration and physics equations, but I wish to make a point using simplicity as the vehicle). Again, ask the question: Where are you going to help Bolt knock 0.14 seconds off his time?


The RED line represents the ACTUAL PERFORMANCE. It adds up to a time of 9.685 seconds, considering also that Bolt's reaction time was 0.165 seconds. You'll note that Bolt's fastest 10m interval was from 60 to 70m, taking 0.82 seconds. I must point out that no one has ever measured a human being running a 10m interval faster than this. In our analysis of the race, we got a lot of interesting discussion and data from people, and of all the recorded 10m split times, this is the fastest ever measured. To speed up for the remaining 30 m would represent not only the fastest splits ever run, but also the longest period for which they are ever run.

That's not to say, of course, that Bolt would not be able to run a 0.80s segment. But the key is the pacing strategy - nobody speeds up progressively all the way to the finish line. Nobody. There are mechanical and metabolic reasons for this, but the point is that even holding that speed would be unusual, and speeding up would be highly, highly unlikely. Note, for example, that Bolt has already started slowing down BEFORE he starts celebrating. According to the splits, Bolt slows from 70m to 80m. The celebrations started at 80m. So speeding up? I don't think so.

The BLUE line, to simplify, represents Bolt's projected splits if he continues to accelerate. This is effectively the assumption made by the physicists when the calculate his 9.55 second time. I must emphasize that if you want to find 0.14 seconds at the end of the race (and answer my simple question), then you HAVE TO project that Bolt continues to speed up.

According to this assumption, Bolt would run faster and faster - he has to, in order to do what was projected by the analysis. Again, I must stress that this has never been done - I believe it to be impossible to speed up this much after 70m, and even Bolt would have slowed, or at the very best, held his speed. The whole basis for the argument by the physicists is flawed because there is no reason to believe that Bolt would continue to run faster than Thompson, or accelerate.

The GREEN line represents what I would in fact consider a more likely scenario. In this case, Bolt maintains that top speed that he hits between 60 and 70m. He thus runs the final 30m at 0.82 seconds/10m speed. If he does this, then he run 9.605 seconds.

In reality, I suspect that Bolt would slow down at the end anyway, even without his celebrations. His most likely performance is thus somewhere between 9.61 seconds and 9.69 seconds.

Now, I know there's no fancy physics here, no integration. Just split times, and a very simple question: Where in this race are you going to find 0.14 seconds to help Bolt run 9.55 seconds?

Answer, you can't find that time at the end of the race. Unless you assume that Bolt is going to run a 0.79 second 10m interval somewhere in the race. But that, I'm afraid, is not possible, and therefore, you cannot conclude that he would have run 9.55 seconds without celebrating.

What is possible? There is still time to be made up, but it wasn't the celebration

Having said this, I make the suggestion that Bolt's CELEBRATIONS cost him only about 0.05 seconds. However, that's not to say he cannot still run under 9.60 seconds.

One area for improvement is the start - a reaction time of 0.165 seconds can easily be cut down. Asafa Powell, for example, had a reaction time of 0.134 seconds in Beijing. Therefore, we can estimate that Bolt might get a 0.140 second reaction time.

If that happens, then suddenly he's down to 9.66 seconds. Add to this the fact that there was no tail-wind in Beijing, and it has been estimated that a tailwind of 1m/s improves 100m times by 0.05 seconds. Therefore, on an ideal day, with a tailwind of 1m/s (it could be as much as 2m/s, recall), a super fast reaction time, Bolt could run 9.61 seconds, and still celebrate. Take away those celebrations (another 0.05 seconds, in my estimation), and we have a 9.56 seconds.

But there is no way the 9.55 second time would have come without those celebrations - the trees just got in the way.

Preview of forthcoming attractions. The Coyle-Armstrong debate:

A big debate has flared up in the last few days, ignited by Lance Armstrong's comeback. It turns out that Ed Coyle, he who published a paper that "proved" why Lance Armstrong was superior without doping, has admitted that he may have made "some mistakes" in that paper. He only did so under pressure from the University of Texas after fellow scientists lodged a formal complaint of scientific misconduct against him.

The paper, which you can find here, showed that Armstrong improved his muscular efficiency over the years, but it was fraught with problems. In fact, it became a running joke within sections of the scientific community. That didn't stop Coyle from using his data to testify at a legal hearing that Armstrong had a physiological reason to have dominated without using drugs. It was a shameful display of science meets money meets tacky indulgence, and loses all credibility.

In response to the latest "attacks", Coyle had this to say: “This is a minor waste on my time. However, I don’t understand how they can afford to spend so much time on this. Don’t they have real jobs?”

Well, yes, Ed Coyle, they do have jobs. They are credible scientists, who search for the truth. But then aren't we all?

So the announcement, and the challeges to the Coyle paper are more than welcome. We'll look at the issue early next week. So join us then!

Ross