Broken Records!!!

Stop me if you think you've heard this one before

There I was just minding my own business the other evening whilst out for a drive when I heard Ms Hannah Cockroft on the old wireless.

Who she???

For those of you not up to date on the latest minority sport news, Ms Cockroft, who won gold medals at 100m & 200m at last years World Championships, has broken a 100m wheelchair world record at the new Lympik Stadium (T34 class). Her account of events interested me muchly.

On the morning of the event the competitors were to be bussed to the stadium, however the bus crashed on the way to the hotel to pick up the athletes. So taxi's were summoned. Alack, none of the taxi's were big enough to take Ms Cockroft's racing chair!!! Things began to get fraught. She was panicking that she wouldn't get there on time for what would be her only opportunity to race in the stadium before the Paralympics.

Eventually they managed to pack her and her chair off to the Olympic Park. On arrival the Jobsworths protecting our freedom wouldn't let her through the security cordon. Just in the nick of time she made it inside. Afterwards she said;

"I missed the warm up and had to just get my numbers on and go straight onto the track. It was the worst preparation I'd ever had before a race, my head wasn't in the right place at all,".

Regular readers will now see where I'm going with this. Here is the formula.

Fraught Preparation + No Warm-up = New World Record!!!

Would any sports scientists care to explain this to me.

Here is a report from the BBC. The actual radio broadcast I listened to mused somewhat further on how a world record could be set with basically the opposite of what is 'accepted' preparation for best performance.

When the Frazerio Spring finally happens, I shall outlaw this dangerous and counter-productive practice of 'warming-up' prior to partaking in activity.

And a wee bonus for the over 35's (99% of the club?) with this classic VT.