The Great North Run 2008

Kebede and Wami claim double win for Ethiopia, and The Sports Scientists return to the field

Apologies for our long absence of late. We are both under quite tight deadlines right now, and until The Science of Sport starts paying our bills then from time to time we have to bow down to our "real jobs" and spend time away from this site. So apologies for "disappearing" all of last week!

Today we are back, though, coming to you from Newcastle, England, where I was part of a field study looking at fluid ingestion, changes in weight, and plasma osmolality in 40 half-marathon runners. More on that later, but for the record it was a stunning day in Newcastle and perfect for a half-marathon---clear blue skies and lots of sunshine, a slight tailwind for most of the course, and a max temp of about 12 C (53.6 F), and the conditions produced two very different but exciting races.

On the women's side it was a local thriller as British runner Jo Pavey went head to head with Gete Wame (ETH) and Magdelane Mukunzi (KEN). Wami and Pavey had let Mukunzi get a gap, and with about one mile to go found themselves trying to claw back the Kenyan. At first it looked like Mukunzi would hold them off, but the two eventually caught her with less than a mile to go. Mukunzi surged repeatedly, but could not shake either of her shadows. Then Pavey had a go at the two Africans and looked strong in doing so. However it was all she had to mount that surge, and in the last 200 m Wame made the move and beat Mukunzi by one second, winning in 1:08:51. The local crowd was cheerling loudly for Pavey and it would have a brilliant upset for the Brit, and in any case it was a great showing for her and a fantastic race to watch down the stretch.

On the men's side it was exciting, but for an entirely different reason. In that race it was 2008 Paris Marathon champ Tsegay Kebede who ran away from the field before the 10 km mark and continued to pull away all the way to the finish, eventually trouncing them in 59:45 and winning by 1:45. The two big favorites, Luke Kibet and Felix Limo, were no where and left 2nd and 3rd for Gebre Gebremariam (1:01:29) and Abdi Abdirahman (1:01:33). If you saw Kebede's Paris win back in April, it was also an occasion where he put his head down and ran way to a win, that time in 2:06:40 in what was his second marathon.

The return of the field study

It is good timing for this as just last year around this time it was the Chicago Marathon and the unusually hot conditions there that spawned our popular series on dehydration and fluid ingestion. In that series we tried to explain how the body mass is not the regulated variable during exercise, and therefore your body does not care about how much weight you lose during a run or cycle. Instead it is most concerned with the concentration of the plasma, or its osmolality, and by drinking to thirst you regulate this variable quite tightly.

So the small study this year at The Great North Run, performed by Dr. Paula Robson-Ansley from the Division of Sport Sciences at Northumbria University, measured the pre and post- body mass and plasma osmolality in 40 male runners (Full disclosure: this study was funded by GlaxcoSmithKline, makers of Lucozade sports drink and one of the sponsors of the race). It was a simple and relatively small study, but the aim was to examine if the runners lose weight while maintaining their plasma osmolality. The preliminary data is in, i.e. the changes in body mass, and it was no surprise to us what the results were. The runners lost an average of 2.2% of their starting mass, and the interesting thing about this is that when you look at any of the field studies published in the scientific literature, the mean change in body mass, independent of the race distance or the weather conditions, is about 2%. In fact scientists knew this in the mid 1960s when John Greenleaf first coined the term "voluntary dehydration" to describe the concept that when people exercise they do not replace 100% of their weight losses.

Science repeats itself

Even more interesting is that as recently as 2007 a sports drink-funded study concluded essentially the same thing that Greenleaf did thirty years ago---that even when given full access to fluids, humans do not replace 100% of their weight losses, which are taken to be a surrogate of fluid losses since one Liter of water = one kg of mass. Therefore if you lose one kg of body mass, then that must eequate to one Liter of fluid. But even in that study the average change in mass during a 75 min run was 1.9%, which is again about 2%. And to go in the entirely different direction, one study from my doctoral thesis measured runners before and after a 56 km ultra-marathon. It was a cool and rainy day, but can you guess what the average weight loss was? (For the record it was 2.1%.) So the question is, "Are we the only ones who think it is a bit uncanny that no matter what the distance and no matter what the conditions, when people drink to thirst they lose the same amount of weight?"

Perhaps there is something going on here, some kind of "regulation," shall we say, of something else other than weight losses, and if you go back to our series last year you will see that this "something" is the plasma osmolality, and that is why we lose some weight: the body does not care about this and is not trying to maintain a 0% change in body mass. If it were then we can assure you that it would accomplish this, because the body is much more clever than a bunch of people in white coats who call themselves scientists, and because it does so in every other instance in which it is critical to maintain some variable within a narrow range: blood glucose, core temperature, blood pressure, or even plasma osmolality.

Looking ahead

It will be worthwhile to revisit the concepts we described in our dehydration series, but for now we must look forward to the fall marathons, and Chicago looms in just one week!

A sub-2 hour marathon?

Before that, however, we received quite a few questions about whether a sub-2 hour marathon would ever be run. This has also been the topic of some discussion in the chat rooms of the running community since Geb went through the 2:04 barrier. So later this week, we'll have a look at this question and whether in fact it might be possible.

Chicago is next...repeat of last year?

Chicago takes place on Sunday 12th, and it is a race we will watch closely, first because of the drama of the event last year as the city experienced higher-than normal temps and had to shorten the race course for many runners.

But more importantly this year I will be at the finish monitoring the environmental conditions all over the course as the event expands its net of safety on the race. Information is power, and if we can know what is happening at different points on the course then as organizers and scientists we will all be in a better position to make difficult decisions if necessary. I hope to do a live post from my vantage point at the finish, providing I have Wifi access, so watch for updates followed by our popular race analysis.

Later this week we will preview the races, which last year were remarkable for their amazing finishes on both the men's and women's sides. Unfortunately neither Patrick Ivuti or Joahaid Gharib will be returning to battle again, but both Adriana Pirtea and Berhane Adere will be racing again, and the question there is whether or not Pirtea will learn from her novice mistake last year and actually keep her eyes on the prize all the way to the finish! And also joining in will be Constantina Tomescu-Dita, the Beijing Olympic champion who has been a regular in Chicago over the years. Will she be able to reproduce the amazing form she showed in Beijing and run away from the field again?

Join us for these exciting races and posts this week, and then we look ahead to NYC where Radcliffe is lining up to defend her title and is again racing against Gete Wame!

Jonathan

Haile Gebrselassie

Haile Gebrselassie: 2:03:59 WORLD RECORD in Berlin
Analysis, splits and race report

Haile Gebrselassie has broken the Marathon World Record AND the 2:04 barrier - 2:03:59. In an incredible performance, he first dealt with the surprise challenge of James Kwambai, who had the race of his life to keep Geb company all the way to the 35 km mark, and then went on to fly to the finish line and take 27 seconds off his one year old record. It was a spectacular final 12 km that did the trick, because he was more or less exactly on the pace up to the 30km mark.

Below is my "real time" analysis of the race, including split times and paces of the magnificent performances.

Race report

The Berlin Marathon, and Haile Gebrselassie's shot at his own world record, is underway. Welcome to our "real time" analysis of the race. As far as Marathon analysis goes, this race will be relatively easy - no pesky race tactics or surges, just one man, 4 pacemakers, and the clock! The analysis is below...

Pacing and splits

The graph below shows the split times for each 5km interval, and the pace and projected times at each point. Below that is my "real time" commentary of the race, as it unfolded.

Note: These times are off the TV coverage - the official splits may differ by one second - they change the projected time by a whole 1 second, at most. So I hope you'll bear with the margin for error (1 sec) in return for getting these up within 15 mins after the race...

5km - too fast early?

The 5km mark was reached in 14:35, a pace of 2:55/km. I feel that is too quick, which is actually what was predicted in the preview - perhaps the pacemakers and Geb got a bit carried away with the occasion. Unless it slows down pretty soon, the chances of the world record may be gone by the 15km mark...

Speaking of pacing, since our preview post on Thursday, I learned that Geb had spoken about a first half in the same time as last year - 62:29.

That might have been fine for the world record (2:04:26), but if Gebrselassie is serious about cracking 2:03-something (which he did say he was chasing), then his projected pace is too slow. To run a first half of 62:29 would require a second half of 61:31, which would represent a massive negative split of one minute. That's not only undesirable, it's probably impossible. Turns out it's a moot point anyway - they are going to hit halfway in 61-something at the current pace.

10 km - still too quick

The second 5km were covered in 14:37, the same pace as the first 5km. So the signal to slow down has clearly not come yet...whether that's a conscious decision, that the pacemakers are being spurred on by Gebrselassie, I don't know. Regardless, if he continues at this tempo, he'll hit the half marathon in 61:11. That's not going to happen (they'll slow down), but in my opinion, they have about 5km to sort this out - if they don't, the chances of the record will disappear under the quick pace...

Perhaps Geb believes that this pace is managable - in Dubai, he hit 10km in 28:35, or thereabouts, and maybe that gave him confidence that a brutal early pace is in fact possible. They're coming up to 15 km now...

15 km - pace slows down, back to "reality"

The 5km interval from 10km to 15km was covered in 14:51, which is a substantial slowing in pace. At the 10km mark, the pacemakers were visibly discussing something with one another - perhaps they made the decision to back off slightly? The pace certainly has dropped, although the projected time is still sub-2:04. That interval is probably just what was required, to settle the race down a little. The chances of the record are still very much alive.

20 km - another 'steady' interval

2:57.4 per kilometer for the last 5km interval, which was covered in 14:46. If you look at the graph above, you'll see that the last TWO intervals have been run SLOWER than what was required at the outset to break the world record. As a result, Geb's projected time is drifting slowly back towards to the world record - it now projects 2:04:07. If that trend continues, Gebrselassie will need to find a brilliant final 10km to break the record.

The commentators are currently waxing lyrical about how he's going too fast. If you take the halfway split in isolation, then they're right, of course. But the signs are ominous, because having started so fast, the pace has now settled down into what might be too slow. If they keep up the pace from the last 10km, then he'll finish in 2:04:36. So rather than being too fast, the last 10km have been too slow - it's only the incredibly fast early pace that has created the illusion of going too fast. The race really begins at 30km, however, and so that's when the action will begin.

25 km - settled pace continues

A third successive 5km interval has been run SLOWER than the intial pace required. That might turn out to be a blessing, because Gebrselassie may just be gearing up for a big final 10km, when he is almost certain to be alone. But his projected time, having been 2:03:12 at the 10km mark, is now 2:04:20, and so the last 5km are certain to be captivating. Gebrselassie will be gathering himself for that final assault. He still looks very comfortable, no signs of trouble yet.

30 km - the second half begins...

We're in a bit of a 'holding pattern' - the same consistent pace has been maintained at the front - 14:45 for the last 5km (projected 2:04:21). But the pacemakers have been thinned out, and only Abel Kirui has survived beyond 30km. Gebrselassie has other company in the form of Kenyans James Kwambai and Charles Kamathi, and it is interesting that they've stuck around for quite so long. However, the real race begins now.

35 km - down to two

The pacemaker and Charles Kamathi both dropped off at about 32km, and it was down to two. Gebrselassie and James Kwambai, who was racing out of his socks to stay on this pace. The last five kilometers were run in 14:40 - they've dipped back under the world record pace.

The presence of Kwambai may prove to be a major boost for Gebrselassie - he has some credentials, having finished second in Boston before. Gebrselassie is pressing hard at the front, and Kwambai is hanging on half a stride behind him, looking reasonably comfortable, it has to be said. He may well be in this the whole way. Will he be the spur Gebrselassie needs...? Then again, Gebrselassie has never excelled in marathon RACES, only time-trials. Perhaps he prefers being alone, and Kwambai will be a hinderance. Tactical games may slow the athletes down, as a result of watching one another, as happened in London this year. It's certainly a pleasant, unexpected angle to the race.

40 km - Gebrselassie breaks away, the clock is all that remains

It's now a solo race against the clock, which is what was expected all along. The last 5km were run in 14:29, the fastest of the race, and brings Gebrselassie within sight of the sub 2:04 clocking! Fabulous running, he's visibly increased the pace, and it's a majestic run for the line now.

Finish line - 2:03:59

Enough said! The record is gone, by 27 seconds, in the greatest marathon (time-wise), ever run! An incredible final 7km in particular, and the sub 2:04 performance was delivered. Haile Gebrselassie didn't need more confirmation of his status as the greatest distance runner ever - that position was secure. He gave us a reminder anyway, with world record number 26.

Considering the young generation coming up behind him, perhaps he did need this race, but it leaves the marathon in good shape for the future!

Join us tomorrow for more insight, once the dust has settled. We'll also look at Irina Mikitenko's fantastic sub 2:20 performance (fourth fastest ever).

But for Geb's race, we'll analyse that pacing strategy in more detail, give some thoughts on the race and also compare this performance to other great runs, including last year's Berlin World record!

Join us then!
Ross

2008 Berlin Marathon

The Berlin Marathon: A world record for Gebrselassie?

Breaking news: The Record is gone: 2:03:59. Click here for our race report, including the splits and pacing strategy by Gebrselassie as he became the first man under 2:04!

This Sunday sees the first of the Autumn marathons, and it's a big one, with Haile Gebrselassie making a big effort on his own, 1-year old record in the Berlin time-trial...er, Marathon.

Whenever an athlete of Geb's caliber lines up, the talk of world records is inevitable, but this particular race is even more in focus than usual, because this is the event that cost us the opportunity of seeing Gebrselassie in the Olympic Marathon in August.

You'll recall that it was earlier this year that Geb announced that he would not run the Olympic Marathon because he did not want to "damage" his long term-health in the polluted Chinese capital - many were sceptical then, suggesting that the big pay-day of a Berlin World record was the real reason he didn't run. And now, 6 months later, that potential pay-day has arrived.

Geb will line up in a race that really does lack competition, at least in terms of what he's probably going to be asking of his pace-makers. The World Record, you'll recall, stands at 2:04:26, and averages 2:57/km. Given that the next fastest man in the race has a 2:07 PB, and that the half-marathon mark is likely to be reached in 62 minutes, it's hard to see how anyone will be within a kilometer of Gebrselassie by the time he approaches the Brandenburg Gate and the finish line.

Looking back to look forward: Last year and this year's predictions

The talk is all about the record - the race is secondary (or non-existent, unless we have a miracle performance by someone, or a disaster run by Geb). Can he go sub-2:04? One year ago, as tends to happen when world records are broken, people waxed lyrical about the first sub-2 hour clocking. Never mind that it was "only" 4 and a half minutes away. The more "conservative" types were talking of a 2:02 within the next few years, and Gebrselassie himself said 2:03 was on.

And that's become the magic number for this year's race - 2:03-something. In order to become the first man to break 2:04, Gebrselassie will have to run just over 0.5 seconds per kilometer faster than he did last year. Sounds pretty straightforward - after all, 0.5 seconds represents about 3 m for every 1000m. When you look at it that way (a 0.3% increase), the sub 2:04 seems a reasonable guess. But as you'll know, it's far easier said than done.

Have a look at the splits from last year's race, which we analysed and reported in this post.

The race was a textbook example of how to pace a marathon race - the early pace was a little bit quick, but settled up to halfway, which was reached in 62:29. The pace then picked up in the second half, which was run in an incredible 61:57.

Between that race and Sunday's, Gebrselassie ran one other marathon, in Dubai. There, his pacing was not quite so assured - the first half was run in a suicidally quick 61:27. He died somewhat in the second half, coming home in 63:26 for a 2:04:53.

That Dubai race is an illustration of just how fragile the pacing strategy for the marathon can be...then again, the Berlin race last year demonstrates the same thing. Note how Gebrselassie never ran any 5km segment slower than 2:59, but that his fastest split, in the final 2.2km, was run at 2:53/km. The consistency in pace is remarkable, and it illustrates just how close to the limit Gebrselassie was.

For that reason, talk of a sub-2:04 may be a little optimistic, unless his training has been much better for 2008 than it was last time around. Given the "distraction" of the Olympic 10,000m, I find that unlikely.

To run a sub 2:04 would require a half-way split of around 62:00. At the slowest, I'd say 62:15, because to run a second half in sub-62 minutes off that pace would be a very difficult task, if not impossible. But an over-ambitious start, say 61:50 for the first half, may also see record chances disappear. The margin for error is thus so small that the pacemakers have an enormous responsibility - 15 seconds either way, over 21km, is their margin for error.

The other pivotal factor is how long they'll stay with Gebrselassie. Needless to say, running a 62 minute half marathon is no mean feat, and ideally, the pacemakers would want to continue onto the 30km mark (at least). Last year, Geb was alone from 30km onwards. He'll need at least the same performance this time around, at a faster pace. He'll also need the weather to be perfect - so far, it looks pretty good, with very little wind predicted, and temperatures between 13 and 16 degrees Celsuis (55 and 65F). The weather may yet become a factor...or an excuse...

Gebrselassie's last shot? And our prediction...2:04:40

The other story is that Gebrselassie may not have too many more shots at the record - he is running great times over 10,000m this year, an encouraging sign, but at the age of 35, it's hard to see that he has more than 4 more great races in him. Then there's the emergence of some real challengers - Sammy Wanjiru ran 2:06:32 in Beijing's heat and humidity, in a tactical race with a brutal early pace. Incredible performance, and maybe Geb is lucky he didn't try to run that race - he would likely not have won anyway. And there's Martin Lel, beaten in Beijing, but invincible before. He'll be back and I still favour him to run the world record close.

Regardless of who it is, I feel that this time of 2:04:26 will be beaten within the next 18 months, and so Gebrselassie will want to "pad" it with some reserve.

My prediction:

Geb will get the pacing slightly wrong and go out a little bit too fast (around 61:45). He'll pay for that in the second half, and fall just short of the world record - 2:04:40.

Then again, I might be completely wrong! Feel free to fire away with your own predictions - we'd offer a prize, but for now, you'll have the satisfaction of winning the "Nostradamus" award for closest to the actual time...

Either way, we'll do a "real-time" analysis of the race on Sunday morning, so the splits and race report will be up almost as soon as it's over!

Join us then!
Ross

The Paralympics: What to make of it?

Paralympic heroes: Evaluating success (or failure) and avoiding minefields

Last week saw the curtain call of the Olympic cycle for four years, and the Paralympic Games came to an end amidst a spectacular closing ceremony. It brought to an end the biggest Paralympic Games to date - in terms of atheltes, support staff, media coverage, and financial incentives (both direct and indirect for athletes), and it was a fitting end to a spectacle of sport in Beijing over the last 6 weeks.

The Paralympics are themselves a fitting way to end the Olympic cycle - I dare say that the original Olympic ideals are embodied MORE in the Paralympic Games than they are in the Olympic Games, with the triumph of the human spirit evident in every one of the participants of the Games. That will possibly incur the 'wrath' of those who are intimately involved in the Olympics, and I certainly don't wish to discredit either Games - just look at our comprehensive Olympic coverage and you'll see that the Olympic Games are THE pinnacle of the world of sport. But the Paralympics brings something else, an angle that can't be matched by the Olympics, though for different reasons.

Different, but equal - why we should avoid comparisons

And therein lies the key - "different", and that's really what this post is about. Much has been made in the media back here in South Africa about the fact that the South African team did so poorly in the Olympic Games (only 1 silver), yet managed an incredible sixth place in the Paralympics (30 medals, 21 gold). In response to this disparity, the South African media have asked the question: "Why are the Paralympic team so successful, whereas the Olympic team is such a "failure?" (apologies for the SA-centric post today, but hopefully interesting discussion points will emerge no matter where you are...read on!)

That's a very difficult question to answer, and sometimes, the problem is that if you ask a difficult question, you won't like the answer you get. You should not, in fact, be asking the question...And this is the case here, particularly when the media choose to sensationalize this by taking it completely out of context. This happened to me last week, unfortunately, when a daily tabloid (Die Burger) took some quotes completely out of context and I was vilified for "criticizing" the Paralympic Team. Much of the last week has been damage limitation thanks to that article.

However, the one good thing that came of it is that it got me thinking about what we can learn from the difference in performance between our SA Olympic team and the SA Paralympic team, and just how one might compare the two Games, if at all.

Success in both Games: A given, except for SA

First of all, one has to objectively analyse performance, otherwise it's emotive, subjective guesswork. South Africa finished 71st on the medal table in the Olympcis, and 6th in the Paralympic medal table. But what of the other nations? It's helpful to figure out whether this change is common or completely unusual. So the graph below shows the finishing position of nations on the Paralympic medal table plotted against the finishing position in the Olympic Games.


I've had to change the scale of the axes to fit it all in, but you can see that the correlation is fairly tight - in other words, nations who do well in the Olympics tend to do well in the Paralympic Games. China won both, the USA were second and third respectively. Great Britain were top 5, Australia top 6 in both. The outliers to this correlation are the "poorer" nations, where disabled athletes are not prioritized - that was China until very recently, I might add. In 1996, they finished only ninth. Twelve years later, they won double the number of medals of the second best country, thanks to a focused effort on the Paralympic Games! However, there are still nations, like Ethiopia and Jamaica who are missing from this comparison - that's a functon of ACCESS, which I'll get to shortly.

The green line represents where the nation would lie if it finished in EXACTLY the same position in both Games. If the country is in the yellow shaded area, then their Paralympic performances are superior, whereas if they are in the orange, their Paralympic performances are inferior to the Olympic performances. So the Ukraine are strong at the Paralympics - they finished 11th on the Olympic table, and 5th in the Paralympics. In contrast, Italy had a good Olympic showing - 9th, but only finished 28th in the Paralympics.

However, the "winner" for big improvers is South Africa - 71st to 6th, which is an enormous difference. So therefore, the SA Paralympic Team is deserving of all the praise it can get. We should be celebrating, it is an astonishing performance when viewed this way.

Why the difference? What can we learn from the success of the Paralympians? Or is that the failure of the Olympians?

Now here's where it gets tricky. People in SA have asked this question with the intention of trying to label the Olympic Team as failures, and because they want to prove that the "Sporting System" for Paralympic sports is so much better. Both are grossly unfair, because, and I'll be as direct as possible here...you cannot compare performances BETWEEN the two Games - the comparison between Olympic Games and Paralympic Games is completely erroneous.

Why? Because they are such completely different "phases" of their lifecycles as events. Sport undergoes a certain evolutionary process, which sees the number of competitors, the depth of competition, and therefore the intensity of competition change over its life.

Off the top of my head (I'm sure this has been done "properly", forgive my over-simpification), the phases are:

Formation is the starting point, where the event or sport begins. In the case of the Olympic Games, I guess we could argue the semantics, but I think it's safe to say that it began in 1896, although in 2008, we could also say we saw the formation of 10km swimming, BMX cycling, and women's steeplechase events, for example.

The Paralympics began in 1960 (officially), although they can be traced back to 1948 for soldiers injured in the war. It was in the 1960s that other categories were added, and the Paralympics really began their growth. However, a key point is that the Games we see today really only began in 1988, when the Paralympics were placed immediately after the Olympic Games. That juxtaposition has driven the growth of the Paralympics, and so my feeling is that "Formation" of the Paralympics is much more recent than the 1960's. Regardless, it's clear that the formation of the Paralympics happened long after the Olympic Games were well established - at least 60 years later. This has important implications...

The next phases might be described as Foundation, Explosion, Plateau and Stagnation. Foundation is really where the "pioneers" come along and chart the previously unchartered waters. We see this is sport all the time - there is a period of improvement which can be rapid or gradual depending on the sport, but the point is that this is almost always followed by an "Explosion" in performance. Suddenly (for a number of reasons) the sport becomes popular, and more and more athletes turn to it. It gets more professional, training improves, financial incentives increase, and performances explode. Eventually, it reaches a plateau, where improvements are much smaller and infrequent.

Finally, there is stagnation, where the sport loses impetus or requires modification to keep interest levels up. This is a general illustration, of course, and you'll be able to pick 'outliers' to this trend - swimming, for example, has recently undergone another explosion, thank to technology of swimsuits, pools and training methods. But I'm sure you can think of other examples that fit - women's pole vault is a good one. It's in an "explosion" phase right now, thanks to Yelena Isinbayeva who followed on from the foundation phase's "pioneers". Eventually, others will bridge the gap, and the event will hit a plateau. The marathon goes a similar way.

However, the key point is that the Paralympics are in a completely different phase - I believe they are still in the explosion phase, where performances are improving rapidly. The Olympics, on the other hand, are in the plateau phase, where the sport has reached a level of performance that makes it difficult to find further rapid improvements. A lot of this has to do with access and maturity of the sport.

Access and maturation - the drivers for growth

This life-cycle model partly explains why the margins of victory in the Paralympcs are so much larger than in the Olympic Games. In 200m swimming events, for example, the winning margin in the Olympic Games was just under 2 seconds. In the Paralympic Games, it was over 6 seconds. There were two 200m races that stand out - one was won by 11 seconds, another by 12 seconds. Natalie du Toit, the athlete of the Games, won a 400m race by 25 seconds!

That is clearly not "normal" when compared against the Olympic Games, but in the Paralympics, it happens because we're still in that Explosion phase, where it is perfectly normal. What will happen over the next 20 years is that more and more athletes will bridge that gap, and by 2028, we'll see a very similar standard of competition between Games.

The other excellent example of this is the emergence of the Kenyan men. Beijing was really the first time that a GROUP of Kenyan men dominated middle and long distance events (by dominated, we're talking five gold medals. We're accustomed to seeing this at the Olympics, but for the Paralympics, it is a major step forward, because it shows that ACCESS to the Games is increasing. The fact that those Kenyan men broke world records by in excess of 20 seconds (in a 5000m event) is yet another indication that that Paralympic Games are in the "Explosion/Evolution" phase - such margins do not (or should not) happen in mature competition.

The next step is that these "pioneer" Kenyan men will be succeeded by even better Kenyan athletes, and the records will fall even faster. Then the Ethiopians and Ugandans will emerge, and pretty soon, perhaps two generations from now, the Paralympic distance events will be in their "Plateau" phase as well - natural progression raises standards.

So what will happen in future, as the Paralympic Games matures, is that ACCESS will increase. More nations will send more athletes, and as a result, the "gene pool" of the Paralympics will begin to resemble that of the Olympics. This will drive even more of an evolution in performances, and it will also increase the depth of competition enormously. We can therefore expect, as a normal course of events, to see that by 2012, there are already closer races and improved performances. By 2028, I suspect that the level of competition will be very similar, and you will also have a very similar demographic of competiting nations - remember, there was not a single athlete from the Caribbean in the men's 100m finals in the Paralympics. They dominated the Olympic Games.

Now, does this mean that competition is weak? Of course not, you'd be an idiot to suggest this, because Paralympic competition can only be evaluated against previous Paralympic competition. Also, the level of preparation and commitment of the top Paralympic athletes is often equal to, or greater than that of many Olympic athletes, so to dismiss it as "weak" is condescending and blinkered. In South Africa, if you did this, you'd miss out on some valuable lessons as well. But you still can't compare them...

Therefore, with specific reference to the South African situation, you cannot compare the 30 medals won by the Paralympic team with the single medal won by the Olympic team, because those medals are won in a completely different context, against different backdrops of competition and with different criteria for evaluation. Both medals are equally worthy, but when you start making the comparison between the two, then you paint yourself into a corner, because the reality is that Paralympic competition lacks the depth of the Olympics right now. That's not a bad thing, it's just a natural consequence of maturity, access and development issues.

Other considerations - classification and size

There are, of course, numerous other issues at play here - the classification system of the Paralympics is fraught with difficulty. It's an almost impossible task to classify the different levels of disability without compromising the "integrity" of competition somehow. Sport, at its very core, has "equality of competition" as its most valuable characteristic. We know this is never true, of course, but it's implicit on the starting line. The Paralympics has to manage the fact that this is never the case, and it does pose challenges.

Then there is the size of the competition - 4000 athletes represents a large percentage relative to the Olympic Games. 10,000 athletes (out of 6 billion) make the Olympic Games, and only 300 win Gold medals. In contrast, 4000 competed at the Paralympics (out of perhaps 100 million - a much higher percentage), and 473 Gold medals are awarded. Purely by numbers, there is a difference.

That difference is a function of spreading the participation base out across a much greater pool for the Paralympics. If the Paralympics were limited to the same relative size as the Olympic Games,there'd be fewer than 1000 competitors. The fact that it is not is a positive, which we should be pleased about, not something to defend and criticize. Hopefully, it's clear that the future holds much growth in store for Paralympic competition, and the way we evaluate our success NOW should not be reflected in an "it could be better" attitude."

The future - professionalization around the corner. Are we ready?

Then finally, it would be careless not to point out that success today does not guarantee success tomorrow. That is particularly true in this case, because of the growth of the Paralympics - more nations are competing and more are focusing on Paralympic sport and that means that progress is going to be rapid. China's 2008 investment will spur on other countries, and the demand for these Paralympic golds will rise. This is driven by the increasing media attention on the Paralympics, which means more money to the Games, and more money means a more professional approach, as the standard of competition rises.

This is important because South Africa's success is NOT the result of its sporting system - it is the efforts and talents of excellent coaches, administrators and athletes working together. But it tends to happen in isolation and so we need to figure out how to harness the obvious expertise and use it to produce more of the same. Unfortunately, learning from success is very difficult, and proves impossible for most. But we need to do this now, precisely because the Paralympics is ready for the professional era. We might not be...

Conclusion: Don't compare, rather celebrate, and let's fix the other problem separately

So the point is: Let's not compare the Games. There are lessons to be learned about why the SA Paralympic Team did so well, but I won't go into those here, because most of you reading this are not in South Africa. Those lessons should be learned (they won't be, given SA's history, but anyway...), but dealing with the SA Olympic problems is a completely separate problem. It's not about the systems and the attitude of athletes and the "will to win" - it's about celebrating Paralympic success on its merits, and we need to focus on celebrating the performances of our Paralympic athletes, who are worthy of that recognition. And then let's deal with the Olympic problems separately.

Ross