The Lemaitre Effect

[mattgianone]

I used to think watching Jason Sehorn star in the late 90's at conerback would make white kids want to stick up for themselves and try and stay at cb before they are racially slotted by their coaches. I dubbed it the Sehorn effect. I assume slotting is still in full effect but I naively thought we would see a lot more white corners in college because of what Sehorn proved all to briefly in the NFL.
So does anyone think here if Lemaitre continues his success especially going into an Olympic year, would there be a chance he inspires a whole generation of kids to take it up and maybe we get a whole bunch of sub 10 guys out there?

 

[white lightning]

In my honest opinion, yes he is already having an effect. It will grow more as he continues to become a household name. How much is hard to say as whites don't gravitate towards athletics too much. I have always believed that the sub 10 thing was more of a mental than physical barrier. Lemaitre has already run sub 10 seven times and he is only 21! If that doesn't prove it can be done then what will? I think we need to get more tall athletic guys into the sprints. Just watch Rytis Sakaluskas. He is very similar in his build. Long legs with a short torso. He doesn't have the talent of Lemaitre but he isn't too far off. He recently ran a 10.14 into a negative wind. We need to see more tall european guys in the sprints.

Lemaitre will really have an effect if he can get on the podium at the world champs or olympic games. The goal this year is to finish in the top 5 but he just may suprise some people. I see him medaling in the 200 and possibly the 100 as well in Daegu! I want to see him doing some commercials and acutally be known in America by even non track fans. I'm probably expecting too much with the US Media. As far as how he will affect the future generations, we will just have to wait and see. Let's give it 5-10 years and then see where we are at. I do think we will see a couple more guys go sub 10 by next year.

 

[mastermulti]

I pretty much concur with WL.

The big drawback is that very few white kids do track now. In Australia we have fewer weekend warriors than in the mid 70s while our population had grown 50%

After Darren Clark we had lots of promising 400 metre runners. We still do rather well in that event and the 4 x 4 mens even 25 years down the track. When we had Shirvo we had a four guys who ran sub 10.20 in a season but where are they now?.
Rouge-Serret can sometimes do high 10.20s and he's our best, which is a bit average. We get a few runty little guys who might do 10.40s but in the 90s we had Damian Marsh, Tim Jackson and Paul Henderson as part of our still record holding relay team (38.17) and all were above 1.83cms.!

So I'll also go with the proposition we need to get some long legs relative to torsos back into the mix. Many of us cite the west African blacks as more likely to have the physical tools to sprint. Stands to reason we have to select/encourage athletic whites of that ilk into sprinting

 

[greyghost]

psuedoscience

dont agree, sprinters come in all packages , its alot more intrinsic then the size of limbs or torsos:thumbdown::thumbdown::dizzy::dizzy:. there were tall sprinters as far back as the 50s white and black , dave sime , herbmckinley bobby morrow was 1.83

 

[greyghost]

media

dont agree, sprinters come in all packages , its alot more intrinsic then the size of limbs or torsos:thumbdown::thumbdown::dizzy::dizzy:. there were tall sprinters as far back as the 50s white and black , dave sime , herbmckinley bobby morrow was 1.83

yep and the us media is rubbish, and havent a clue when it comes to athletics:usa::thumbdown::rip:

 

[mastermulti]

dont agree, sprinters come in all packages , its alot more intrinsic then the size of limbs or torsos:thumbdown::thumbdown::dizzy::dizzy:. there were tall sprinters as far back as the 50s white and black , dave sime , herbmckinley bobby morrow was 1.83

I certainly agree it's more intrinsic than that. But my take is that these tools are a great start if not prerequisites to success. What can tend to happen is we get little guys who muscle up (witness Mancini, the Swiss) and become useless after 50/60m after which power to weight, short levers with bulging muscles don't account for much.

And those 50s guys you mention were among the greats of their times at 6' or more and not hugely muscled.
I guess if there are trends in sprinting we'll see what happens over the next 1/2 decade or so. It'll be interesting info to log.

 

[greyghost]

multi

I certainly agree it's more intrinsic than that. But my take is that these tools are a great start if not prerequisites to success. What can tend to happen is we get little guys who muscle up (witness Mancini, the Swiss) and become useless after 50/60m after which power to weight, short levers with bulging muscles don't account for much.

And those 50s guys you mention were among the greats of their times at 6' or more and not hugely muscled.
I guess if there are trends in sprinting we'll see what happens over the next 1/2 decade or so. It'll be interesting info to log.

good points multi , cant argue with that{too much}. and it will definitely be interesting to see the trends , still amazed no aussie has stepped up to shirvos high levels ,as there has to be talent. and does anybody know what happened to john woods? also i believe from a mental perspective that white athletes are beginning to understand they can challenge black sprinters, and break the caste systems in place

 

[swampfox]

I definitely think LeMaitre can have a positive effect in drawing more whites in the short sprints. The string has got ot start somewhere, but thats the thing there's got to be a string otherwise it will just be an abheration, an odd outlier on the bell curve of White performance. No one followed Seahorn and his best performance was for too short of a period of time to have enough kids and coaches to question whether they were looking at the position from too narrow a view. They could keep their prejudice and they would prove themselves right because there weren't enough examples to make them say "wait a minute" to themselves. So either LeMaitre has to have some success for some time or someone has to follow in his footsteps real soon. Good thing is that this kid is so young. Another thing that might not hurt is a little insulation. He'll have his greatest influence on French kids, if france could produce another top flight white sprinter, or just several good competitors to follow CL it could produce an enclave something that says we French compete amongst the worlds best with success we take pride in it. And then white kids seeing no obvious genetic difference between the french and themselves would rightly ask why not me the door isn't shut before I even dream it. I think of Livio Berutti and Armin Hary. Berutti begat Mennea, and Mennea begat a generation of Italian sprinters where if nothing else we are not suprised to see a Simone Colio. Hary probably begat all the eastern Euro sprinters from the 70's and 80's and it didn't hurt that they had the insulation from the rest of the world saying it can't be done. I've already begun to see a Wariner effect in the Quarter their are now coaches in high school and college saying why not and if the momentum continues say with the borlee brothers it will continue to grow.

 

[mastermulti]

I saw the girls (i.e. the ones competing at the time) running over to him after his 9.92. He also showed more elation there than I've seen before.

This is a key I think. His English will improve, his expectations and confidence will grow as his good performances pile up and his profile will then rise astronomically. In the end it will just be expected that he'll perform.
We all expect sub 10 from him whenever conditions are benign so it's developing already.

That's when all the little white kids will want to be Christophe Lemaitre

 

[LoLy]

here are the numbers for the french athletic federation , about the increase/decrease of people that get a licence for Athletic. It was almost stable between 160 000 and 180 000 before 2009, when Lemaitre got known. It then increase a lot. I'm sure lost of the new commers are white. A new genereation will rise in the next year.

Evolution du nombre de licenciés par saison
	Femmes	Hommes	Total
22 juillet 2011	95 432	124 560	219 992
31 août 2010	88 155	120 459	208 614
31 août 2009	81 753	111 701	193 454
31 août 2008	76 305	104 811	181 116
31 août 2007	72 114	102 452	174 566
31 août 2006	68 748	103 350	172 198
31 août 2005	65 308	101 699	167 007
31 août 2004	62 993	100 253	162 946
31 octobre 2003	65 030	112 479	177 509
31 octobre 2002	59 330	106 527	165 857
31 octobre 2001	63 322	111 421	174 743
31 octobre 2000	66 202	112 641	178 843
31 octobre 1999	60 902	100 500	161 402