by Mike Rowbottom
Grant Holloway, photo by Getty Images for World Athletics
This is a piece by one of my favorite writers, Mike Rowbottom. Mike has been writing about our sport for a long time. His writing is thoughtful, incredibly thorough, and with a developed sense of humor. If Mike writes it, I read it. Mike’s work can be seen at one of my favorite sites, www.insidethegames.biz.
Grant Holloway’s decision to withdraw from Saturday (April 9) evening’s USA Track & Field (USATF) Bermuda Games 110 metres hurdles due to high winds was hardly a surprise given that he had been tweeting about the conditions in the hour before the opening World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting of the season got underway.
“Flip the track. Please & thank you”, Holloway wrote. “It’s possible. The wind is -4.6 right now. Please. Think about the athletes & not the viewers.””
Could high hurdlers and 100m runners – with the latter also getting driving rain at the end of the programme – have had a different experience at the Flora Duffy Stadium in Devonshire as the palm trees around the arena began to thresh and sway in worsening conditions?
Instead of getting what Teahna Daniels, who narrowly beat fellow American Gabby Thomas in a women’s 100m run into a 5.2 metres per second headwind, described as “a smack in the face” upon rising from the blocks, the sprinters might have been super-powered to incredible times.
Even more so in the case of the men’s 100m runners, who concluded the programme running into a headwind of -5.6mps.
Certainly, flipping the track so that they ran with the wind at their backs would have done the sprinters no harm – assuming the wind levels didn’t rise to the point where they were lifted off the track towards the Gulf of Mexico.
But as Holloway told a trackside interviewer shortly before the men’s 110m hurdles got underway with his lane empty: “It’s as high as -4.6mps – I don’t think that is great for the hurdle event. I’m trying to do consistency, that is the main cue for this season, so I decided to pull out of this race.”
To read the entire story in its original form, please click here: https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1121749/wind-readings-records-holloway-edwards
Mike Rowbottom, the author, photo courtesy of Inside the Games
