Editorial | Dodgy Olympics women’s 100m plan

World Athletics’ decision to schedule the three rounds of the women’s 100 metres race for the opening day of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics is a coup for marketers.

For, as Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, framed the development, it means that the Olympics will start with a ‘bang’, to the satisfaction of his organisation, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and, critically of course, the local organisers, LA28, and “NBC and the host broadcaster”.

This newspaper clearly appreciates the additional attention that this scheduling might give the women’s sprinting.

However, beyond the hoopla, there are questions about the broader implications of the move which deserve answers and which we hope were raised with World Athletics and the IOC by the relevant Jamaican sporting bodies, specifically, the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) and the Jamaica Olympics Association (JOA). These include what were the considerations for athletes’ health in this compressed format for the women’s 100 metres sprint in Los Angeles; the expectations of performance at these games (and at future competitions if the initiative becomes locked in); and what are the prospects of sprinters breaking world records at events where the preliminary rounds and the final take place within hours, on the same day.

Elite sprinting is a physiologically gruelling endeavour. Athletes place their bodies – particularly the legs and, most critically, the hamstrings – under tremendous stress. These muscles rapidly contract to drive the leg backward, propelling the body forward with explosive force. At the end of each stride, the muscles must reverse course, decelerating the limb, preparing it to repeat the cycle. That happens in milliseconds.

SUSCEPTIBLE TO INJURY

This dual demand – forceful propulsion and precise braking – makes the hamstrings both the engine and the safeguard of the sprint. This stress makes these muscles susceptible to injury during races.

But while the hamstrings bear the major burden of the explosion required in sprinting, the entire musculoskeletal system – from the lower back to the tips of the toes – is engaged and strained. Every stride taken by an athlete transmits force through the spine, hips, knees, ankles, and feet. This brings a wide range of muscles and joints into play. All of them suffer fatigue and are vulnerable to injury.

If not given sufficient time to recover from one race, the more susceptible they will be to injury in the next. Or, the less likely it is that an athlete will deliver her peak performance.

It is, in part, against this backdrop that there are questions about the rigour with which the organisers of the LA Games, World Athletics and the IOC, considered their initiative for the women’s 100 metre sprint, and the position of the Jamaican authorities on the matter. As a global athletic power whose athletes hold the world records for the male 100 and 200 metre sprints, and whose females also boast the unclouded ‘records’ in the same events (Elaine Thompson-Herah, 10.54 seconds for the 100 metres; Shericka Jackson, 21.41 seconds over 200 metres), it would be unfathomable if Jamaica, via its sporting bodies, wasn’t asked for its input.

The JAAA and the JOA must speak urgently, saying what, if any, was their advice on the matter.

With their modern support systems, elite athletes can, through a range of interventions, achieve muscle recovery within 30 minutes to an hour of a race. However, full neuromuscular recovery (where the operations centre in the brain and the spinal cord transmits messages to functional muscles) can take between 24 and 48 hours.

This matters.

ELEMENTS OF FATIGUE

If an athlete is not fully recovered from the stressful pounding of the body, and still carries elements of fatigue, electromechanical misfiring, leading to the most minuscule amount of delay in the transmission of messages from brain to muscle, this can be the difference between winning a race and being pipped by a hundredth of a second. And pushing hard in a state of fatigue can cause injury.

There is logic, therefore, in the current system in global athletics of running the heats of the sprints on one day and giving the athletes a day’s respite before having to come back for the semi-finals and final. Running two strenuous races in one day obviously causes less fatigue, thus lessening the possibility of muscle and other injuries, than if the athlete had to run three.

While having the entirety of the women’s 100 metres on a single day in Los Angeles might provide the hoped-for spectacle, it wouldn’t be surprising if the final didn't produce super-fast times.

Neither is this format conducive to the breaking or making of world records. Fatigued bodies don’t deliver peak performance.

Sprint athletes tend to produce world records when they are in top physical condition and their neuromuscular factors are in alignment: reaction time is optimal, and their form/technique during all the phases of the race is close to perfect. Even minor fatigue can affect rhythm, power and propulsion.

A once-in-a-lifetime athlete – perhaps a Usain Bolt – blessed with exceptional powers of recovery, capable of defeating the demon build-up of lactic acid and other inhibitors of prime performance, may overcome these constraints. There aren’t any of those around in the sprints.

In the circumstances, if what is proposed for Los Angeles survives, it is to further lock in Florence Griffith-Joyner’s controversial pre-WADA world record of 10.49 seconds for the women’s 100 metres.