osaka 2007 - side notes

Couple of notes from the World Athletics Championship that finished yesterday in Osaka:
1. I noticed some people in the stadium watching their mobiles (with the screen twisted in the horizontal position) while the events were taking place in the track. They were probably watching TBS' broadcast in their mobile TVs. It's pretty cool to be there and feel the excitement of watching the live events, and at the same time being able to check the details and interviews on your 1seg TV.
2. Carl Lewis and Mike Powell were interviewed on TBS. Of course, Lewis is one of track's greatest stars to this day, but the local reporter (sorry, don't know his name) seemed to refer the questions only to him, ignoring the fact that it was Powell who won their event in Tokyo back in 1991, arguably the greatest long jump competition ever, when Powell broke Bob Beamon's long-standing record of 8.90m and established the current world record of 8.95m. Lewis couldn't be more generous towards Powell though, always acknowledging Powell's presence and praising his performance on that evening 16 years ago. He said: "I think this (Powell's record) will last longer than Beamon's record".3. TBS's anchors Oda Yuji and Nakai Miho should be praised for doing a great job. It's not easy to anchor an event like track & field for 9 straight days. What they may lack in technical expertise they more than compensated with an infectious enthusiasm for the sport. I've watched lots of technically correct broadcasts that utterly lacked passion. No wonder many people think track is boring. With their enthusiastic comments, peppered with word such as "sugoi" (amazing), and "subarashii" (spectacular), Oda-san and Nakai-san have won the sports many fans.4. No world records, but some great performances. Couple of athletes to watch in the next couple of years:
- Jeremy Wariner is getting closer and closer to Michael Johnson's record.
- Allyson Felix. Watch her out not only in the 200m but also in the 400m (she ran a superb 2nd-leg in the 4x4 relay)
5. It's great to see athletes from Panama, Sri Lanka, and Ecuador winning medals.
6. One of the greatest upsets in the championship was Bahamian Donald Thomas' victory. He took up high jump a year ago (!) and his unorthodox style (to say the least) is easily noticeable as his legs move frantically in mid-air as if trying to climb an invisible ladder. It seems to help him as he jumped 2.35m to beat the best high jumpers in the world. It was priceless to see Olympic champion, Swedish Stefan Holm's face of disbelief when Thomas cleared 2.33m.
7. As a preview of next year's Olympics in Beijing, it seems there won't be too many surprises: the US, Russia, Kenya and Ethiopia seem poised to dominate the events. I had thought that China would've come up with a stronger performance but apart from Liu Xiang no other star appeared.
That's it. Can't wait for Beijing 2008.

bekele wins a thrilling 10K

A sane person wouldn't normally run a fast-paced 10K in a hot, humid evening (30C, 65%). Well, but then again, a sane person wouldn't normally face the same situation as Eritrean Zersenay Tadesse did in Osaka last night. You see, he didn't have much options facing the prospect of having to battle out two-time world champion, Olympic champion, and world record holder Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia. Bekele is known for his deadly final kick and for any runner intending on defeating him there's only one option: punish him from the start and pray he's dead at the end (and most importantly that you are still alive).
It's a gamble to see who the best runner really is, not just the guy with the best finish. If everything goes well, every runner will drop off the pace and there'll be only one left at the finish line. Misjudge your hand though and you'll end up dead on the track, defeated. And unlike the comfy seat of a poker game there's only one word to describe this gamble: pain.
That's what Tadesse bravely (some would've said insanely) set out to do on a hot evening in Osaka yesterday. He took the lead and set a torrid pace for the race. In a slow-paced race, contenders run in a packed group, some going wide on lanes 2 and 3. Not here. The contenders quickly spread out in a long line with runners struggling to keep in touch with the leaders.
Tadesse (in light blue shirt) kept pushing and one by one runners started to drop off the pace. Some would just slow down feeling the race was too fast for them. Others simply walked off the track unable to keep going while others still lied on the track in pain. They passed the 5K mark in 13:42 (27:24s pace) with only 10 runners in the leading group (from the initial 24). Tadesse's gamble was paying off.
Bekele, in the meantime, looked comfortable running always in third place. A group of Ethiopians, Kenyans and other African runners followed. Tadesse kept punishing the field lap after lap. Slower runners were overlapped (supreme humiliation for a distance runner).
After a little more than 8km only four runners remained in contention: Tadesse, still in the lead, Bekele, countryman Silesh Sihine, and Kenyan Martin Irungu Mathathi.
But then Mathathi made his move. Everybody went along but Tadesse. Having set the pace for most of the race he paid the price for his gamble and would struggle to the end. Suddenly there were only three runners fighting for the victory and the chase was on. They were sprinting down the backstretch with about 600 m to go and for a moment Bekele seemed to be losing touch as the other two left a 2m gap.
But he soon got in contact again and with 300m to go he was right behind his countryman Sihine as Mathathi fell to third. The race would be decided between the two Ethiopians. They were going on an all-out sprint, incredibly fast for athletes who had already run more than 9K.
Then with 150m to go Bekele hit another gear and, amazingly, unleashed what seemed an impossible last kick. Sprinting furiously, he went around Sihine as they came from the last curve into the homestretch and it was arrivederci! Take a look at the sequence below.

Bekele goes around Sihine and prepares to overtake his countryman

Bekele now leads with a little more than 100m to the finish line.

Arrivederci!

Does it look like the face of a man who just ran 10K?

Bekele smiles just before crossing the finish line

In the end there was only one runner left: Bekele. World champion for the third time. His time of 27:05:90 is incredibly fast for the conditions. Sihine got the silver and Kenyan Mathathi got bronze. Tadesse bravely hung on to finish fourth, 15s behind Bekele.
What a race! I can't put into words how amazing it is for a human being to be able to run that fast under such hot and humid conditions. Let alone unleash that kind of kick in the last lap (under 56s). It's amazing. Man, do I love this.

gay beats powell

The "World Championship in Athletics" is in full swing at Osaka's Nagai Stadium. Last Monday, in the 100m final, American Tyson Gay defeated world record holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica.
It was a thrilling race, one that reminded me how difficult this event is.
The race was being trumpeted as a showdown between Gay, who ran the world's fastest time this year, 9.84s at the American Trials, and Powell, who holds the world record with a time of 9.77s (respectively in lanes 5 and 4 below, taken from TBS Channel broadcast).Powell got off to a tremendous start and 30 meters into the race held a clear lead over the field. The race seemed his to lose.The 100 m, despite looking like an all-out effort, sheer power and adrenaline, is actually a very technical and mental race though. And here some technical explanation is needed. There's no acceleration after about 50 m. The human body just can't produce that amount of power. Sprinters can only hope to maintain or not lose much speed at the end. A sprinter needs to stay relaxed and focused in his own race if he wants to avoid tightening up and losing more speed than he normally does at the end of the race. And that is very, very difficult to do. Especially when you're sprinting for your country, for glory, for your life ("for god's sake"), against seven other guys who are breathing "on your neck". It requires an amount of confidence bordering on arrogance, a belief that whatever happens during the short time span of the first half of the race (little more than 5 sec.), he will eventually come up as the winner in the end. "I will win, I will win", that's what sprinters need to have in mind.
If you don't stay relaxed, you'll eventually end up trying a bit too hard and all will be lost. You'll tighten up. Your stride will get shorter. You'll lose more speed than others.
And that's where Powell failed. He didn't focus on his own race and tightens up, badly. He loses speed. Gay overtakes him swiftly and opens a decisive gap between them.
The race is over.Gay starts to celebrate even before crossing the finish line. His time, 9.85s, is not a world record, but it's a fast time nonetheless. And all it matters is the championship. Powell sees he had lost the race and gives up. Bahamian Derrick Atkins takes the silver. Powell is third.PS: I couldn't go to Osaka (damn...) so I took pictures from the excellent TBS Channel broadcast. For the IAAF official coverage of the event go here.

200m in 19.62s

American sprinter Tyson Gay ran the second fastest 200m in history, at the U.S. Championship held in Indianapolis, behind only Michael Johnson's phenomenal 19.32s world record from the 1996 Olympics.
That in itself would've been a fantastic performance but given the wet conditions and a 0.3m/s headwind, we can only be left to wonder what Gay (photo below) would've done were conditions optimal.
But I have to say I can't help to be kind of wary now, given all the doping cases that sprung recently in the sport, and it's really sad that we get suspicious every time an athlete comes up with a world-class performance. Hopefully this is not the case. But I'm an incorrigible 'track nut' and can't wait for the Osaka World Championship.

pattern recognition in movies

Just a quick follow-up on the previous post.
Perhaps it's not a coincidence that the same director who gave us "Any Given Sunday" also gave us "Platoon". Just a thought.

daisuke matsuzaka's impact

In reference to this post about the state-owned TV channels, somebody asked me "why do you need to tune in to NHK to know about the latest on Daisuke? Why don't you simply watch ESPN?". Well, take a look at the pictures below.
They're from the Red Sox spring training in Florida, where 120 credentialed reporters, mostly Japanese, squeezed themselves in for a special press conference organized only for Matsuzaka (they actually don't seem to care too much about the rest of the team). And that's for spring training! They follow his every footsteps (the third picture is the NHK correspondent reporting live from Florida), so if you want to know what Dice-K had for breakfast, for example, you have to rely on the Japanese media.
Boston Red Sox's COO Mike Dee, on a Sports Business Radio interview, mentioned:
"When we announced we signed Daisuke, there weren't direct flights, believe it or not, from Tokyo to Boston. Now I know two or three airlines are in the process of adding direct flights during the baseball season. That's a clear and measurable impact of what we'll see."
I guess those extra routes must be just for the Japanese reporters then.

eugene, oregon

I've never been to the city of Eugene, in Oregon. But a place that: is known as the "Track Capital, USA", holds the Prefontaine Classic every year, has held many Olympic Track Trials, will hold the 2008 Trials as well,...... and has a restaurant called "Track Town Pizza", gotta be a nice place to visit.

bowerman and the men of oregon

He closed great, calloused hands around my throat. He did not lift me off the ground. He did relieve my feet of much of their burden. He brought my forehead to his. "I'm going to ask you to take part in an experiment," he said with menacing calm. People five yards away thought we were sharing a tidbit of gossip. "For three weeks, you are not going to run a yard except in my sight. You will do a three-mile jog here every morning, and our regular afternoon workouts. If I or any of my spies sees you trotting another step, you will never run for the University of Oregon again."
"Bill..."
"Are we agreed?"
"Bill..."
"Agreed?"As I was feeling faint, I submitted.

And so starts Kenny Moore's recount of the life of famed Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman.
Bowerman is a legend among track fans, having coached the University of Oregon for 24 years, winning the NCAA four times, coaching several Olympians, and being the US Head Coach in the Munich Olympics in 1972.
His most famous athlete was Steve Prefontaine, who died prematurely in a car accident in 1975, and whose life made to the big screen not only in one, but in two movies, "Without Limits" and "Prefontaine". Bowerman's character is played respectively by Donald Suthlerland and R. Lee Ermey in those movies. See "Without Limits" trailer on YouTube here.But Bowerman went on to be much more than a track coach. He went on to shape part of our lifestyle and our culture.
In the early '60s, after witnessing the work of another legendary coach, Arthur Lydiard, in New Zealand, he wrote a booklet about the positive effects of long-distance running for the average person. The book was entitled "Jogging". It went on to sell more than 1 million copies and helped ignite the running boom.
He was obsessed with improving the shoes his athletes used for running, and made many experiments in his garage workshop. The story about how he put foam rubber on his wife's waffle iron is already stuff of legend. The "waffle" sole and his association with Phil Knight, another one of his former athletes, gave birth to Nike. He stayed on Nike's Board of Directors until June 1999, a few months before he passed away on Christmas Eve that year. He is held in such stature at Nike that the eleventh of the company's "11 sacred rules" is simply, "Remember the man".
All these fascinating events are narrated by Kenny Moore. Moore, a former University of Oregon athlete himself, running under Bowerman, was one of America's best marathoners, having competed in two Olympics, his best result being a fourth place finish, in Munich, behind teammate Frank Shorter's gold. When his athletic career was over, Moore became one of the best sports writers in America. He was a senior writer for "Sports Illustrated", where he worked for 25 years. He also co-wrote the script for the movie "Without Limits" (he even plays a part in the movie).
Moore therefore writes about Bowerman with the reverence and love of a disciple writing about his master. His firsthand account of the stories, many in which he was an actor himself, such as in the opening paragraph above, gives an invaluable insight into the man behind the legend.
My own copy came with a few initial pages roughly cut (see photo below). I almost returned the book right away, but then I noticed Phil Knight's foreword was missing. Found out that because of a last-minute legal tangle between Knight and Rodale, Rodale decided to go ahead without Knight's foreword. However the first edition was already printed. Somebody at Rodale must've spent many long hours cutting those pages from the thousands of books already printed. Knight later published his foreword in the May/2006 issue of Playboy magazine. You can read it here. I decided to keep the book. And I don't regret it a bit.

"Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon's Legendary Coach and Nike's Co-Founder", available at amazon.com

nike's new basketball uniforms

Nike has unveiled its new college basketball uniforms, to be worn by four college teams, Arizona, Florida, Ohio State, and Syracuse, and which they have named "System of Dress". It is comprised by a tight top (similar to those used by track athletes), and a loose bottom (very, very loose, where do you think they got the 'dress' name from).
The other novelty is that players will be able to customize their uniform to a certain extent, using long or short sleeves tops and Dwayne Wade-style leg wraps.
Nike designer Hans George says that the change was the result of "athlete feedback and cultural insight... the desire among players to personalize their look while still looking part of the team".
It's already producing what some reporters are calling "a dramatic" new look in sports. Take a look below.

water cube

The spectacular "Water Cube", venue of the swimming and diving competitions in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, had its outside membrane structure completed last December.
Of all the new stadiums being built for the Games, I personally find this the most striking one.
Below, a view of the project...
... and the actual building below.
522 days to go.

ali rap on espn

Watched "Ali Rap" on ESPN, a documentary based on the George Lois' book I blogged about the other day. It's a fitting tribute to Ali's verbal punching power, featuring some of his classic moments, as well as some famous guests such as Sylvester Stallone, James Earl Jones, Sidney Poitier, Ludacris, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Diane Sawyer, Angelo Dundee, and George Lois.
The documentary has been released on DVD as well, including the entire 1974 Ali vs. Foreman fight in Zaire.
You might be led to think I'm a big boxing fan, which I'm not. Actually I rarely watch boxing matches. Having said that, there are 4 fights that every sports fan should watch: the three Ali vs. Frazier clashes, and of course, Ali vs. Foreman, a master class on how strategy and finesse (if you could say so about a heavyweight boxer) can triumph over brute force.

ali rap

Read 'Ali Rap', a book edited and beautifully designed by George Lois, and published by Taschen and ESPN. Actually I flipped through it in less than one hour, so fascinating the book is. But more than just a book about Ali's famous wisecracks and rhymes, which are geniuses by themselves, the book takes the reader to a journey through America's recent history. And all that designed by George Lois. It doesn't get any better than this.
Some excerpts from the book:

"This is the legend of Muhammad Ali,
The greatest fighter that ever will be.
He talks a great deal and brags, indeed,
Of a powerful punch and blinding speed.
Ali's got a left, Ali's got a right,
If he hits you once, you're asleep for the night."

"I'm so fast that last night I turned the light switch off in my bedroom... and I was in bed before the room was dark."

On a return to a young, terminally ill cancer patient:
Ali: "I told you I was gonna whup George Foreman. Well, I'm back from Zaire and I did whup George Foreman, and now you're gonna whup cancer".
Boy: "No, Muhammad. I'm going to meet God. And I'm going to tell Him I know you."

of olympics, video-games, and pitches

Writing the last post about Wii vs. PS3, it reminded me of the impressive presentation that won London the bid for the Olympic Games of 2012. It must seem like something totally unrelated, but those who saw Sebastian Coe's presentation here in Singapore, in July last year, can understand. In his speech, which some considered the performance of his life, Coe mentioned the diminishing role of sports for today's youth, in a world so full of "conflicting messages and competing distractions" (video-games, for example), and how London could help in bringing sports back to the center stage. It was a clever strategy, touching on the emotional role of sports much more than on any other rational argument. And it was delivered brilliantly by Sebastian Coe, in a speech that watching today still gives me chills. You can watch it here (click on "London's presentation). It's 45min long, but if you want to learn how you win an Olympic bid (or any business pitch, for that matter), that's the way you do it.

world's largest mega ramp

Well, it was just a matter of time before somebody uploaded it to YouTube. Check it out, Bob Burnquist and his backyard mega ramp. (here)

Agassi in Adidas

So Andre Agassi has retired. Many people have written about his career, his achievements, but one aspect in particular has called my attention. It’s the story of his transformation, from the young punk, a "rock and roll” tennis player to the bald statesman of the sport. Gary Smith, of Sports Illustrated, wrote a wonderful piece about it.
I love these stories of redemption, of people growing up, facing difficulties, but coming out better persons, with a broader perspective and reach.
Some examples come to mind. Tom Hanks, from teen comedy actor in “Big” to award-winning actor in “Philadelphia”, George Foreman from the fierce-looking boxer who lost to Muhammad Ali to the big-hearted, grill-selling grandaddy, "The Beatles" of “She Loves You” to "The Beatles" of “In My Life”.
For marketers and branding practitioners, Agassi’s transformation is even more interesting given the fact that he changed from Nike to Adidas late in his career, the change in sponsor seeming to highlight the person’s transformation. It’s as if the Nike brand (and the whole set of meanings conveyed by it) couldn’t fit with this new Agassi anymore.

Obviously there must’ve been very strong financial reasons behind this decision, not to say the family arguments over which brand his kids would use (the latter was his ultimate excuse to switch to Adidas given his wife’s long association with the German brand).
For me though, it still feels weird to see him wearing Adidas. Just a thought.