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Comment by Clewza313 | Hacker News Reader

Javelin is a bit of an outlier in the Olympics in that throws today are nowhere near the records, even after the changes discussed in the article. The winning throw this year was 87.58m, with only one other competitor managing even 86m. The world record, dating from 1996, is 98.48m, a full 10 meters and then some longer. Germany's Vetter, the one modern javelin thrower who has come within striking distance of that (96m), was off his game and couldn't even get over 85m.

So why are we so much worse than 25 years ago? The obvious explanation would doping.

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From TFA: “ Also, javelins were increasingly landing flat, instead of poking upright into the turf, making distance-marking difficult, so in 1986 the International Association of Athletics Federations' technical committee authorized a new javelin design. The center of gravity was moved 1.6 inches forward, the tip was modified to make the javelin less aerodynamic, meaning it would nose down earlier and land sooner, reducing average flight distance by about 10 percent.”

That doesn't explain why a WR from 10 years after those changes hasn't been even close to beaten recently.

But it has been close? Johannes Vetter got a result of 97.76m under a year ago, that is only 0.72m shy of the world record. Also the reason he was underperforming in the olympics was that the surface of the run-up track was not able to take his weight on the final step and he would slip, making it impossible to perform on his normal high level.

Source for the reason Johannes Vetter failed? Does not look like this was covered well in the press.

I think the throwing surface had poorer grip than standard for various reasons. So Vetter couldn't use his typical speed without slipping.

In german news it was quite widely reported that he had problems with the surface of the runway

My source for this was watching the final myself. When I watched the broadcast myself it was clear to me that this was the problem. Also the (Finnish) commentators were very knowledgeable in the sport and pointed out the problem many times.

I was unable to find a clip of his throws in YouTube, but here's a Google Translated article from a Finnish newspaper: https://bit.ly/3xvZWMk.

Vetter's official performances and progressions can be found on the World Athletics (formerly IAAF) website: https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes/_/14408144

His 97.76 was in 2020 in Poland.

That's some high-quality journalism. Matter-of-fact, primary sources, asks illuminating questions.

Thanks. Seems like a technical problem on his throw then? I'm not aware of the intricacies of surface and I assumed it was a standardized setup.

OP was talking about a record set 10 years after that change.

I suggest avoiding terms like "TFA", which can be taken to insult someone's reading comprehension. I'm sure that's not what you intended but it can easily be misinterpreted.

> Javelin is a bit of an outlier in the Olympics in that throws today are nowhere near the records, even after the changes discussed in the article.

This isn't true.

There are 10 different athletes who have thrown within 7m of the world record[1] and Johannes Vetter has thrown over 94m 4 times[2].

> So why are we so much worse than 25 years ago?

We aren't

> The obvious explanation would doping.

Zelezy was a freak - as can be seen by his progression[3].

That kind of long-lived high performance (82m in 1986, 86m in 2006) is rarely because of doping - there are too many chances to get caught, and it's too hard to transition between doping types (eg steroids to HGH), and historical testing catches out too many people.

The Men's discuss OTOH... This is what a suspicious progression looks like[4].

[1] https://www.worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/thr...

[2] https://www.worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/thr...

[3] https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes/czech-republic/jan-z...

[4] https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes/germany/jurgen-schul...

Železný had a completely different revolutionary technique, hence his success.

It's more than that though. Others have emulated his technique but he's still better.

One day his record will be broken. But the density of his high performing throws will always be amazing.

Sergey Bubbka is perhaps the closest analogy, although his record was recently - finally - broken.

Specifically what do you think was Zelezny's completely different revolutionary technique? Because if you're talking about "wrapping", it was not new. Zelezny did not radically change the technique of the event. I'm very curious to know what you think Zelezny did that was something like what Fosbury did... I can tell you what I think Zelezny did better but that's not the same as what he did completely differently.

It's not really an outlier, there are plenty of sports where there are long standing world records, some of them have been broken recently but stood for a long time. It's just the nature of having so many sports, not every sport will attract as much talent resulting in having a much bigger impact when that world class talent appears (Zelezny). Usually these sports are technical in nature and thus harder to dominate through sheer improvement in nutrition and muscle power.

Take for example Usain Bolt, he competed in the sprint but if he focused his career on some other less popular athletic sport he probably could have been WR holder there as well.

If you combine this with the fact that it's possible there was more doping in the past (especially 80s), you can get these incredible world records that stand for decades.

> So why are we so much worse than 25 years ago? The obvious explanation would doping.

Looking at the list of furthest throws[1] this doesn't really seem that obvious at all.

The top two are quite large outliers, with a 4 metre gap to #3, and people in general don't seem to have been throwing much further in the past. Indeed, the difference between #1 and #25 is almost 10 metres, or 10% of the record. That's quite the difference!

Johannes Vetter seems to be in the same league as Jan Železný; Vetter is 28, Železný established his record at the age of 30. It's entirely possible that Vetter will manage to break the record in the future.

So either both Železný and Vetter are exceptionally talented athletes in their field, or they're both doped to the gills without being caught. It's not like there wasn't any attention to this in the past, see e.g. [2] from 1989. There sure is more attention to this now and I suppose it's possible that Železný used doping, but that Vetter exists in the same league as Železný demonstrates that Železný didn't have to be a doping user to be so good at it.

So in short: it's not all that obvious to me looking at the data. It's not like cycling/Tour de France with a long history of doping use (which is partly, I suspect, because what's being asked of riders borders on the inhuman).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelin_throw#All-time_top_25_...

[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1989/06/18/in-...

I think you deeply misunderstand the statistical nature of a world record. there is a piece out there somewhere about zelezney's record being a more significant outlier than Bolt's. But to be clear, you're insinuating that Jan was a cheat? I had training sessions with the former AR holder and numerous conversations with a former WR holder and threw at a high level. I'm quite familiar with the sport and I'm truly curious as to whether you're making this claim about JZ and if you could name 10 throwers without Googling it.

> I'm quite familiar with the sport and I'm truly curious as to whether you're making this claim about JZ and if you could name 10 throwers without Googling it.

What does his claim[1] have to do with knowing who the throwers are?

FWIW, I think that, if you look at a sport and find that the performance of athletes in that sport decreased significantly after the introduction of more comprehensive drug testing, then it is not unreasonable to assume the higher performance was due to drug-related enhancements.

[1] He's just making a point about the statistics. We don't need to know the name of the data points.

"FWIW, I think that, if you look at a sport and find that the performance of athletes in that sport decreased significantly after the introduction of more comprehensive drug testing"

The issue is the premise is incorrect. 11 of the top 20 throws ever happened since 2015:

https://www.worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/thr...

I think you should spend some time plotting throws of the last 20 years using performances from top athletes the worldathletics website. You'll discover that you are mistaken.

This suggestion is related to to for why the claim matters, which is familiarity with the sport (as represented by the ability to name its participants). As a longtime participant in track and field, athlete, coach, and fan, I have invariably found that people reduce perceived phenomena to doping usually have no idea what's actually going on in the sport and aren't involved in it in any substantive way. So, "show your familiarity" is a jabby heuristic to prove the point.

> You'll discover that you are mistaken.

Mistaken about what? That the assumption of doping is not unreasonable? After all, I didn't say the assumption of drug-use was likely correct, I said that the assumption itself is not unreasonable.

> So, "show your familiarity" is a jabby heuristic to prove the point.

Being involved in the subjects (say, by following their career?) is evidence of bias when drawing conclusions from data points.

In other words, the heuristic is actually the other way around - if you're "familiar" with the subjects you're the wrong person to be drawing conclusions from the statistics.

It's why we insist on double-blind trials for some things - the researcher has to be ignorant of the subjects involved. Being familiar with them means the conclusions are invalid.

It is quite possible that compounds that were legal back then are no longer legal. So someone could have legally used them and therefore would not be considered a "cheat".

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