Why is the world in love with Christophe Lemaitre?
I hope it’s because he represents fresh, raw, young talent and not because of the colour of his skin. If you watch his Rome 100 meter race against Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell, Christophe Lemaitre actually stays beside Bolt up until the final 10 meters.
This guy is good.
In the video below, courtesy of Yahoo! Eurosport UK, he explains How to Run the 100 meters. It’s not the most technical explanation, but a good overview if you have 3 and half minutes to spare. Or, if you are simply a Christophe Lemaitre fan.
Notice he does NOT do the traditional pre-race routine with the leg kicking going-backwards into the blocks like the pre-race routine in most sprinters (including JW). He just steps over his blocks, and gets into the pedals.
You can watch the video from the Yahoo! Eurosport UK site, or click here.
Can’t deny that Christophe is a “Fresh young talent”……….
….but I dunno, methinks someone should be higher than 9th on the top times list, and have broken at least 9.90 let alone 9.8 before they’re spoken of in the same breath as Bolt, Asafa and Gay as far as challenging for the sprint crown.
At this point he’s tied for 9th in the world with two other athletes (if we ignore the injured Gay), and has a lot of work to do just to be sure he can make the final at worlds.
So, I think it’s in Christophe’s best interests if the media lays off the hype a bit and stops essentially putting in the same breath as athletes whose level he hasn’t reached yet.
See the alleged showdown between Christophe and Bolt in the 200m in Paris, when Bolt has the WR at 19.19 and Christophe hasn’t even run under 20.2 let alone 20 yet!
@Markham, I think the press is trying to say, on Bolt’s BAD day, and Lemaitre’s GOOD day, anything is possible, as we saw that last year with Tyson Gay.
@Jimson Lee, Limaitre is not Tyson! Bolt ran 19.93 in the 200 at the age of 16 while easing up at the end! Check out this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3-wG6z1uB0
So Bolt at his best at 16 would have destroyed Limaitre at his best right NOW! I am realizing that the all these Johnny-come-lately Lemaitre supporters have ALOT to learn about track.
@ Jimson: the thing I love about track is that it’s a fairly objective sport, you run your time and that’s it. You can argue that athletes from an earlier era would be faster if they had today’s training and nutrition, but that’s about it.
My point is that Christophe’s hype is disproportionate to his performances, since no on one is presenting athletes who run similar (not to mention faster) times as being challengers to Bolt.
It just bugs me to see a race between a guy with a PR of 19.19 racing against a guy who runs 20.21 as some sort of “showdown”, when in truth it was the usual we’ve seen with Bolt this year: “he races against a field we all know he can crush with ease, as he slowly ramps it up for worlds”.
I.e. it’s grossly unfair to Steve Mullings, Mike Rodgers and Frater and Makusha to ignore them and portray Christophe as the next challenger and he isn’t even in their league yet, let alone Bolt’s.
I agree with Markham on this, not that I’m an expert. The first I heard about Christophe on the news and all the hype, you would think he was the fastest or maybe the second? But I was disappointed at the Daegu Meet when Yohan Blake also a fresh face (unknown to me) beat him. There are other faster runners other than Christophe.. No disrespect to Christophe who is Fast no doubt…