Olympic Trials Day Five:


Tonight I want to talk about the technology aspects of an event like this. If any of you have ever been to a high school or college track meet, you are used to seeing very long tape measures used to measure distances.  The most accurate meathod would be to use metal tapes. Well this method is old-school for a meet of this caliber and way too slow. As with a lot of other activities that require precise measurements, the field events have gone to lasers. They are used in all the throwing events, and in the horizontal jumps. In the discus, hammer, javelin and shot put the laser tripods are set up just to the side of the throwing areas. They look and use the same technology as a surveyor uses. They have to be precisely set up since they aren't directly in line with the throwing pit or foul line in the javelin. The person marking the throw has a metal rod with a reflector on the top. They place the rod in the ground were the implement landed and the laser reflects off the reflector to measure the distance. These are all double checked with a steel tape to make sure they are calibrated correctly. This is much faster than dragging a tape out each time. In the horizontal jumps, (long jump and triple jump) they use lasers as well but these are mounted on a long bar that look like a very tall and wide hurdle. The bar is placed parallel to the sand pit. The laser is mounted on a sliding holder on this bar. The laser shoots at a 90 degree angle from the bar. After a jump the laser is slid along the bar until the beam lines up with the imprint the athlete made in the sand. They also have to do some math to set this up to account for the distance from the board they take off from and the sand pit. This system is also calibrated using a metal tape measure, but just like in the throws it is much faster. Another interesting piece of technology used in the discus is remote-controlled trucks with trailers. They are use to run the discus from the field back to the athlete. This would be a fun job to have, running a remote-controlled truck back and forth across the field.  I've talked the the two young ladies who have this job at the trials and they are having some fun but they said the batteries run down quickly and there have been a few other problem getting them to work correctly. I don't expect to see this method used at the Olympics, but who knows, maybe the Chinese will come up with something similar. I'm off to bed, I have to be at the start of the Butte to Butte tomorrow morning to shuttle cloths for the runners and walkers.

Joseph Calbreath