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luglio 08, 2016 - Nike

Signs of flight

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. 

Renaud Lavillenie has the hollow cheeks of a man who doesn't weigh an ounce more than he needs. He puffs them gently before each vault attempt, as if the extra breath could make him lighter, as if the little air could lift him higher. Then he takes the end of the pole in his hands, raises it high, rocks on his heels and runs.
The run is what lets him fly. By the last five meters of his approach, Lavillenie is at full sprint, generating energy. When he set the world record, in 2015, he was clocked at about 19 miles per hour — around the top speed of a roadrunner. It is not enough just to run hard, of course. Lavillenie is fast, but so are others. A pole vaulter has to have perfect timing to know when to let the pole fall toward the box, so that he can carry it with less stress. He has to know what length to stride, so that his final step lands just below his top hand when the pole slides into the box and abruptly stops. Too far in, and his arm would yank; too far out, and he'd have to jump on the pole. Lavillenie knows exactly where to put his feet.
Lavillenie, a 29-year-old from France, is the best in the world, in history; in 2015, he vaulted 6.16 meters to break a world record that had stood for 21 years. At 5 feet 9 inches, he is much shorter than most elite vaulters — but he makes up for it with his speed, consistency and technique. Peter McGinnis, a SUNY Cortland professor of kinesiology who consults with the U.S. Track and Field team, has studied a few of his vaults and noticed something interesting: Most pole vaulters have a takeoff angle around 18 degrees. Lavillenie’s is lower. At the instant he leaves the ground, he has a higher velocity than everyone else. He also has an even step rate over his last two steps, and he almost runs straight off the ground. Then, Lavillenie manages to stay behind the pole for longer. “That means he has more kinetic energy at take off than everyone else, and he uses it better,” McGinnis explains.