• Two of the oldest athletics world records were broken at the Tokyo Olympics.

  • Tuesday, the first three of the 400m hurdles exploded the time of Kevin Young, a feat. 

  • More than the manufacturing process of the track, it is the new shoes now generalized that would allow these gun times. 

From our special correspondent,

There was no need to even run after him.

Grizzled goatee and apparent marcel, Kevin Young felt the earth shaking as far as Paris, from where he follows the Olympics in dotted lines.

"I went from world record holder to 4th on the all-time list in one race, but saved $ 150 on insurance for my car," jokes on Facebook the former owner of one of the oldest world records in athletics in the 400m hurdles.

Record that shattered this morning, not once, but three times, in the podium order Warholm, Rai, Dos Santos.

The lightning of the 400m hurdles

Yet another explosion in the sky over Tokyo since athletics entered the track, with truly astounding performances: Rojas at the end of the world in triple jump, Thompson not far from breaking the most lunar records in sport (the 10'49 and Griffith-Joyner's 21.34 over 100 and 200m), and an unknown Italian who set the European record in the 100m at the nearest motorway rest area. The succession of miracles questions the specialists, who leave doping aside, for once.

The speed of the Tokyo track, unrolled like a silk carpet in November 2019 was anticipated by the athletes. We spare you the specific process of "specially designed three-dimensional rubber granules with a polymer system" to listen to its "inventor". Andrea Vallauri, dug up by the

New York Times

, works for the Italian company Mondo, which claims more than half of the world records broken on a home track for 20 years. "The surface of the coating in Tokyo allows us to absorb shocks and restore energy, as if it were a trampoline."

🚨 New world record in the 400m hurdles final 🚨



Karsten Warholm and Rai Benjamin both beat the world record with stratospheric lap times, 45''94 for the Norwegian and 46''17 for the American 🎉 # Tokyo2020



Follow the Olympics live â–¶ https: //t.co/oQuEFfAwUc pic.twitter.com/euXphCyq8I

- francetvsport (@francetvsport) August 3, 2021

"The feeling of walking on a cloud"

An impression that matches the pretty metaphor of American sprinter Ronnie Baker. “I have the feeling of walking on clouds. It's very smooth when you're on it. It's a really great track, one of the best I've been able to run on ”. That is. But can the magic pellets explain such chronometric gains, when Vallauri himself estimates that this $ 1.5 million track offers at best a profit of 2% to the athletes entered in the Games? According to Stéphane Diagana, interviewed by the

Team

, we must look elsewhere:

“When you go from a world record that lasts 29 years to such a surge in performance in a few weeks, with three people under Young's old record, there has to be something. The track is fast, but there haven't been any major recent developments in this area. So there are the tips. We have seen it for several months, this should favor athletes receiving hurdles, with more energy recovery, more ease in the interval, more economy of race.

The famous tips popularized by the Nike Vaporfly, which distort the perception of competition as the wetsuits in their time in swimming.

Their secret?

Ultralight shoes, equipped with a carbon blade in the sole which, associated with a fine foam, returns energy to the support ”.

A trampoline on a trampoline, in a way, which most athletes recognize the bullish effect on the lap times, even if Benjamin Rai assures us “that he would always run so fast with other shoes, it didn't really matter. 'important'.

Bolt's records threatened?

It has to do with Warholm, who doesn't eat that bread. The new Norwegian world record holder spent a long time on the question in the mixed zone: 

“ 

I have great shoes that we developed with my coach thanks to the collaboration of Puma and the Mercedes F1 team, but it was important for me to keep the credibility of the result. Yes, there is a carbon blade, which I like, but I don't understand why you should put something else under a sprint sole, because you're just looking for energy return in it but not creating it. It's bullshit and it takes away credibility from my sport. We tried to keep the sole as thin as possible. The technology will always be there, but I want us to be able to compare the results. "

The international federation has tried to put some order in the mess of authorized soles, but the list validated before the Olympics is more fearful of a headlong rush than anything else: 201 different models are registered on the World compliance list. Athletics (20mm max thickness in sprint, 25 in long distance and middle distance), which promises faster and faster races, and more and more illegible.

In Tokyo, some even wonder if King Bolt's recors, which were thought to be untouchable for decades, will not fall in the months to come.

"What can I do if the international federation decides it's legal?"

The rules are the rules, even if I am not very happy about it "recently expressed the Jamaican in the English press, immediately overtaken by his pride:" I do not know exactly how much I could have run with these points, but faster than 9.50, that's for sure ”.

We would almost prefer it to be left there.

Sport

Olympic Games Tokyo 2021: "A good thing that they are there", the success of Russian athletes is hardly debated (except in the USA)

Sport

Olympic Games Tokyo 2021: "When it starts badly ...", why French boxing is missed

  • Sprint

  • Usain bolt

  • Athletics

  • Tokyo Olympics 2021

  • Japan

  • Sport

  • Olympic Games