Usain Bolt

Could you be the next Usain Bolt?

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A winning blend of nature and nurture can help you win that Olympic gold medal.

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Rio 2016 is well under way and each day provides a fresh “but how can they do that?” moment for those of us watching from at home. Are these athletes’ abilities the result of nature hitting the sweet spot, or the fruits of hours of practice and nurturing at the hands of experts?

The short answer is both, according to the University of Bournemouth’s Professor of Sport, Tim Rees. “You must have the raw materials. For example, note UK Sport’s search [uksport.gov.uk/talent-apply] for ‘tall and talented’ athletes. But without the right conditions, training and coaching, those raw materials are unlikely to be realised in terms of potential.”

Usain Bolt is a living example of realised potential, and his success is the focus of ongoing study in fields such as biomechanics.

“Analysis has shown that Bolt has a stride length around 20cm longer than his peers, owing to his increased height and leg length, meaning that he takes fewer steps within a race,” says biomechanics specialist Dr Laurence Protheroe, senior lecturer in sports science at Hartpury College in Gloucester. “This alone points to nature being the predominant factor.”

However, the same research has identified that Bolt has a slower stride rate, so nurture can help level the playing field. “Athletes without Bolt’s natural advantages could train to maximise stride rate and learn how to make the best use of their ground contact,” says Protheroe.

Athletes’ minds must also be honed. “Olympic champions have high psychological resilience, permitting them to thrive in high-pressure situations,” says Dr Jamie Taylor, programme director for the MSc in sport and exercise psychology at the University of Central Lancashire. “Gold medal winners are highly motivated and goal-driven, able to focus in demanding situations.”

University research is helping athletes find extra performance from new places. At the University of Derby, for example, early results on a new delivery method for vitamin C and the use of elderberry are encouraging.

“Researchers in performance analysis, physiology, psychology, nutrition and strength and conditioning are consistently undertaking research projects in an attempt to find the one percent that may increase an athlete’s likelihood of success,” says Andrew Butterworth, lecturer in sports coaching and performance analysis.

Let’s get physio with a hands-on degree

Meanwhile, work at the University of Wolverhampton is looking at that other great factor in sport – handling the big occasions. “Our research is focused on developing interventions in areas such as self-control, coping and emotion-regulation,” says sport and exercise psychologist Dr Tracey Devonport.

The idea is to identify strategies to help athletes push the limits of performance, and to do so when it matters most. Perhaps that – a blend of nature, nurture and opportunity – is the key to winning a gold medal.

“You don’t necessarily need to be the best in the world to win Olympic gold,” argues Devonport. “Disasters can befall your competitors, such as technical failure or choking under pressure. But you do need to be at, or near your best on the day.”

Secret of Usain Bolt’s speed unveiled.

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Scientists say they can explain Usain Bolt‘s extraordinary speed with a mathematical model.

His 100m time of 9.58 seconds during the 2009 World Championships in Berlin is the current world record.

They say their model explains the power and energy he had to expend to overcome drag caused by air resistance, made stronger by his frame of 6ft 5in.

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Writing in the European Journal of Physics, the team hope to discover what makes extraordinary athletes so fast.

According to the mathematical model proposed, Bolt’s time of 9.58 seconds in Berlin was achieved by reaching a speed of 12.2 metres per second, equivalent to about 27mph.

Less dynamic

The team calculated that Bolt’s maximum power occurred when he was less than one second into the race and was only at half his maximum speed. This demonstrates the near immediate effect of drag, which is where air resistance slows moving objects.

They also discovered less than 8% of the energy his muscles produced was used for motion, with the rest absorbed by drag.

When comparing Bolt’s body mass, the altitude of the track and the air temperature, they found out that his drag coefficient – which is a measure of the drag per unit area of mass – was actually less aerodynamic than that of the average man.

Effects of drag

Jorge Hernandez of the the National Autonomous University of Mexico said: “Our calculated drag coefficient highlights the outstanding ability of Bolt. He has been able to break several records despite not being as aerodynamic as a human can be.

“The enormous amount of work that Bolt developed in 2009, and the amount that was absorbed by drag, is truly extraordinary.

“It is so hard to break records nowadays, even by hundredths of a second, as the runners must act very powerfully against a tremendous force which increases massively with each bit of additional speed they are able to develop.

“This is all because of the ‘physical barrier’ imposed by the conditions on Earth. Of course, if Bolt were to run on a planet with a much less dense atmosphere, he could achieve records of fantastic proportions.

“The accurate recording of Bolt’s position and speed during the race provided a splendid opportunity for us to study the effects of drag on a sprinter.

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“If more data become available in the future, it would be interesting to see what distinguishes one athlete from another,” added Mr Hernandez.

Bolt’s time in Berlin was the biggest increase in the record since electronic timing was introduced in 1968.

Large stride

John Barrow at Cambridge University who has previously analysed how Bolt could become even faster, explained that his speed came in part due his “extraordinary large stride length”, despite having such an initial slow reaction time to the starting gun.

“He has lots of fast twitch muscle fibres that can respond quickly, coupled with his fast stride is what gives him such an extraordinary fast time.”

He said Bolt has lots of scope to break his record if he responded faster at the start, ran with a slightly stronger tail-wind and at a higher altitude, where there was less drag.

Bolt’s Berlin record was won with a tail wind of only 0.9m per second, which didn’t give him “the advantage of helpful wind assistance”, he added.

“You’re allowed to have a wind no greater than 2m per second to count for record purposes, so without becoming any faster he has huge scope to improve,” Prof Barrow told BBC News.

Source: BBC

Cheetah tracking study reveals incredible acceleration.

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The fastest animal on land rarely uses its top speed to capture prey, according to a new analysis.

A study of cheetahs has shown that instead, the animal uses incredible acceleration and rapid changes in speed when hunting.

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The animals get this acceleration by exerting nearly five times more power than that of famed sprinter Usain Bolt during his record-breaking 100m run.

The results are published in the journal Nature.

The findings amazed the scientist who led the research, Prof Alan Wilson of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, UK.

“They are remarkable athletes – not just in terms of their speed, but also with their ability to accelerate and manoeuvre in capturing the prey,” he told BBC News.

The top speed for a cheetah is often quoted is 65mph (105km/h) – a result measured in 1965 and published in the Journal of Zoologythree decades later by a scientist in Kenya. He was timing the run of a semi-domesticated cheetah running in a straight line on a firm dirt track.

But a well-fed zoo cheetah is not accustomed to running very fast – it does not need to. As a result, few measurements of zoo cheetahs found speeds greater than that of a greyhound, about 40mph (64km/h).

So for years, researchers wondered whether cheetahs might run much faster than 65mph in the wild in order to capture prey.

Rapid acceleration

Prof Wilson and his team at the college’s Structure and Motion Laboratory decided to find out by following five animals in the wild for a year using tracking collars fitted with movement detectors and GPS systems.

They found that the cheetahs did indeed run very fast at times – close to 60mph – but only occasionally. On most hunts they attained about 30 to 35 mph but they were accelerating and changing direction much more rapidly than has been seen in any other land animal.

For sprinters and predators, speed is not the only variable for success – acceleration counts

They found that cheetahs could increase their speed by nearly 7mph (10km/h) in a single stride.

“They’ve arranged to have a low gear so they can accelerate very rapidly up to their top speed,” said Prof Wilson.

Short bursts of speed can be quantified in power per kilogramme of the animal’s weight. Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt exerted 25 W/kg during his record-breaking run in 2009.

A horse used in a polo match exerts slightly more power per kg, around 30 W/kg, and a greyhound’s is double that at 60 W/kg. But a cheetah can reach 120 W/kg.

The researchers also found that cheetahs also have a very strong grip, so much so that they rip up the ground as they run. They found it was the use of the animals’ claws that enabled them to turn very sharply and to accelerate and decelerate very quickly.

The measurements have only been made possible because of the collars that have been developed by Prof Wilson specifically for the experiment.

“It is very hard for GPS to work on an animal that is ducking and diving, so the collar is an innovation in its own right,” he said.

“We’ve been working on GPS for 12 years and the collars are the result of those labours. They are not your typical GPS tracking system that you get in the car or phone.

“The GPS is far more accurate we are getting positions and speeds five times a second. We combine those with readings from other instruments and we finish up with something that is very much more accurate both in terms of speed and position and very much more robust,” Prof Wilson explained.

The team are currently using the collars to track lions and African wild dogs to obtain comparative measurements.

Source:BBC

�h0t���  � ily:”Arial”,”sans-serif”;color:#333333′>”We are in a different era; quite frankly the bees haven’t got the resistance and reserves that they once did because of various illnesses and viruses,” said Mr Davies, who himself lost around a quarter of his 25 colonies.

 

The weather also posed problems for newly emerged queen bees – “virgin queens”. The growth of colonies depends on these bees being able to mate properly so they can lay fertilised eggs. But the poor weather hampered these activities as well.

If the weather is changeable, a queen may not execute her mating flight properly, Tim Lovett from the British Beekeepers Association told BBC News.

“If she doesn’t get properly mated she can only lay drones, and if she is doing that, that’s the death knell for the hive.”

A colony that has only drones and no workers will not survive.

Another weather-related factor that has worked against the bees is what is called isolation starvation. Because of the cold, the bees cluster very closely together to maintain hive temperature and consume the stores of honey closest to them.

If the weather is so cold that they can’t actually move, the bees will starve – although there may be plenty of food sources nearby.

Beekeepers say that is very bad news for honey supplies in the coming months. Late last year, the British Beekeepers’ Association reported that the honey crop was down by over 70% compared to 2011. They do not have great hopes for a recovery this year.

“It’s disastrous for honey production,” said Mr Lovett. “There is a cumulative effect because you have got to replace those hives. That is something the beekeeper now has to do.

“This loss of bees was in effect far more dramatic than foot-and-mouth was on the national beef herd. It means a great deal of work ahead for beekeepers to get back to where they were.”

Source: BBC