Statistics Reveals Unfair Height Bias in One Olympic Event
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- Опубліковано 26 бер 2024
- Here we dive into a statistical analysis of height for one major olympic event, the hurdles. Our data and analysis reveals a significant height bias seen in the men's 110 m hurdles that is not found in the equivalent women's event. Here we explore with math, why these differences exist and how they could be remedied.
The data we used for our hurdler's heights came from the top 50 elite hurdlers, men and women, of which we could find their heights online.
Best Hurdler Country: • Which Country Produces...
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This video was a pleasant surprise! I've been preaching this for a couple of decades. I ran my first hurdle race at age 41 in a Master's track competition. The height and spacing is changed for Master's track on a decade age group basis. At age 40-49, the height went down to 39", but it was the spacing that prevented me from taking the proper 3 steps except for the first 3 or 4 hurdles. Then you must switch to an extra step (if you can jump on the "wrong" leg), or most commonly, two extra steps for a five step pattern.
At age 50, the hurdles went down to 36" (yea, but not a big deal), but the spacing went down to 8.5 meters - basically we ran the women's hurdles (100 m instead of 110 m). I was able to run the whole flight for a season or two, then the age factor drove me back to mixing 3, 4, and sometimes 5 steps. The elite Master's hurdlers could keep doing it in three strides until about their mid-fifties - by 58 years old nobody (even ex-Olympians) could do the whole flight in three steps. At the front of the age group, the hurdles are a blast to run. By the back of the age group, the fun is gone.
I didn't feel too put out about it as a decathlete, I wasn't as technical as the good hurdlers or as flexible or as fast. But the random powers that be could easily have just re-scheduled the height changes to mid-decade groups, and still protected the dominance of the best hurdlers.
As a USATF track official (retired), I can say any of the variable height/distance proposals is a non-starter. Bucking hurdles is a big burden in a track meet, and track meets run long enough as it is. Hurdlers are failed sprinters, and sprinters are pole vaulters that are afraid of heights, lol..
As I commented above, I'm in your boat. The hardest time is the older few years of an age group. Compensating for extra steps between ruins your speed. I'm still a senior official, might even know you. I was in some of those discussions about moving hurdle spacings but nothing has changed except the M60 start to first hurdle distance and changing women's age groups over decades.
A mistake to correct: at 6:44, the graphs suggest that sprinters are taller than hurdlers, but the transcript states that hurdlers are taller than sprinters.
Ah yes thank you! We labeled them incorrectly, thank you for pointing that out!
@@MathTheWorld maybe add this to video description? Came down to check this but found only in the comments
@@MathTheWorld Echoing the point from @maththeworld would be nice to see a pinned correction, or even something in the description perhaps
@@MathTheWorld yeah i noticed this too, would be good to put a disclaimer somewhere
As someone who's 6'3"-6'4", this would have been nice to know in High School! lol
Would still have to be an elite level flat sprinter 😅
@@JoeSmith-fi8ip I was in cross country! But yeah sprinting is different than long distance running (which I HATED, like, END ALREADY lol)
@@NickWrightDataYTthen why did you participated in it .
I was 6’3” in high school and ran half marathons, but I did high jump and pole vault because the height was so much more of an advantage for feild events than my endurance was for distance events lmao.
I'm 5'4 and grew up playing soccer and run a lot. I have the advantage of being shorter and more agile than taller players since I have a lower center of gravity. That's my guess anyway
Well I guess we soon will talk about Ice Hockey players birthday🤣
I’m curious-what about ice hockey players’ birthdays?0:
@@osoreo3697
It turns out that top players are more likely to be born in Q1 of a year than Q4.
It is a little hard to explain in an yt comment. But you can look up other yt videos about it.
A short video could be "Why Are So Many NHL Players Born In January?" it is 3 min. But I think "Malcolm Gladwell Explains Why Human Potential Is Being Squandered" is a better video and still only 11 min. But it is still not the full story.
You can also look up the stats, but they only tell you when fx NHL players are born, not why this is the case.
It is an interesting topic, but unlike hurdles it is not inherent to the sport, rather it is part of how we recognize young talent in the sport. Honestly this is something all youth sports with age categories based on birth years have. Even school can have this problem where the older kids for their year appear smarter, and hence receive more encouragement.
@@Petch85 Here's a short explanation based on my experience with the sport.
Ice hockey junios are put into "skill brackets" from a very young age. When you're only less than 10 years old, 12 months or even 6 months is a massive difference in physical development, hence kids born in January are more likely to be sorted into the "skilled kids" category. The "skilled kids" get higher quality training and a more challenging environment, which further increases the skill gap. It's very stupid.
@@t_kups8309
Yes. But i feel like this is only scratching the surface.
How if this different from starting in school.
I think the big picture here is that "talent" just means better than what we would expect. You need to work hard to succeed, but it is not enough there are also a lot of random factors that in the end will be a big part of whether you will succeed in the end.
I think idea of "capitalization rates" might be helpful to locate the problems, but trying to solve them will be very hard.Also note that it is much easier to study this in sports and what is why you see sports mention all the time, but the problem is everywhere.
I have also seen some studies on athletes that have changed sports later in there life and had more succes with the new sport than the old one.
And there are also some studies on half-time vs full-time athletes and the importance of quantity of training vs high quality training and similar things done with music students.
But understanding how to get the most out of a persons potential or knowing a persons potential in the first place is super hard.
But in some sports there are and optimal body shape and in others there is an optimal birthday.🤷♂
This isn’t about sport, but statistics also has evidence that a larger hand span makes piano playing much easier. (That’s why PASK has been advocating for narrow-sized piano keyboards for over 20 years)
Another great example of how our bodies give advantages to different activities! Hand size is important in a lot of instruments. Guitar also being one.
@@MathTheWorld But unlike other instruments like violin, guitar, or cello, which come in fractional sizes, the piano is one-size-fits-all, and it’s even an XL size. Over 85% of females and 25% of males have hands too small for the conventional keyboard. That’s why PASK has been advocating for fractional sized piano keyboards.
@@MathTheWorld
One of the reasons the women distributions are different is because women have more variations in leg lengths.
And also their hurdles are shorter relatively obviously.
But their body torso leg ratios can be more different.
@@stevebentley4516thats why they also analyze footage, among other things, in the video
Sounds like a hole in the market.
I am not a hurdler but love this analysis.
One suggestion for a reason the female hight distribution is larger is that female leg to torso ratio varies more than male. As we are just using hight as a determining factor for leg length this should be important.
Fantastic analysis. Is there a write up on this somewhere?
Another example of bias introduced by rules is figure skating. Almost a century prior to 1991 a core part of figure skating competitions was, well, skating figures. They were called compulsory figures. Figures were a core of this sport and what gave it a name. Success in figures depends mainly on the amount and quality of your practice regardless of your height or weight.
Figures were abolished in 1991 as they didn't sell well on TV. Main discipline now was subjective short/free skating - performing elements with music. Due to the scandals, a new judging system, IJS, was introduced in 2006, which placed scores to many elements progressively. "Easy" elements (like step sequence or single jumps) costs less, "hard" elements (like quad jumps) costs more. What could go wrong?
Obviously, Goodhart's effects kicked in, people started chasing points i.e. "hard elements" aka jumps. Few people care about working on actual skating skills nowadays. You win competitions by performing more multirotational jumps.
And you win in multi-rotational jumps by having smaller body, all other things being equal. Which created a bias towards pre-puberty girls being champions. Fifteen years old skater can't win over herself at 20 y.o - despite being 5 years more skillfull - because her body will grow up a bit and won't allow for the same performance anymore.
Naturally that exacerbated bias towards early specialisation and rush to learn triple and quadruple jumps before puberty. That led to a massive increase of overuse injuries in single skaters. But it also created this bias in self-selection for the sport - everyone who is not a pre-puberty girl is not considred a candidate for this sport anymore. International federation responded by increasing the age of "Senior" skaters from 15 to 17, but it doesn't solve the major reason of why the age/gender distribution for figure skating now looks like female-only gaussian with a mean at 8-9 y.o.
What I want to emphasize here is that "rotation in the air" which now brings most of the scores and introduced this bias is not even related to skill of figure skating. It was an unintentional consequence of a rule change. The age/gender distribution for this sport used to be very different for the past century until figures were abolished.
I completely agree..... in the past 20-ish years especially, figure skating has basically become jumping on ice. There are still aesthetic elements, but any skater worth their salt knows where the real points are- quads and triple axel, because that's what the judging system rewards. Art is subjective but number of rotations is a fixed value.
This basically means 16 year-olds with often subpar skating skills are doing triples 5 hours a day because their joints can still take it, and better skater who are often more fun to watch aren't even on the podium.
I see some hope for change with the point increase of Malinin's quad axel not being as high as the point increase for Trusova's quads..... the board is slowly showing that that jumps are not a cheat code. But there's still a lot to be done.
Increasing the senior season age further will basically make it so that junior skater (at least female ones) will be coring higher points than the adults, which would be quite embarrassing for FS as a sport.
This matches what I have analyzed. I've been hurdling for well over 50 years, meaning I have been through most of the age divisions. I'm short for a hurdler so as a teen I had to jump up. When I hit adult age, it was another 3 inches higher. I too had grown but never made it close to 6 feet. I was fast enough I could beat Olympic hurdlers over the first hurdle and scare the hell out of them, but I was nowhere to be seen in the finish photo because I couldn't maintain speed with all the extra jumping required. Now as an old man, my body is no longer as fast as it was, by a lot, but my hurdle form is actually better because the height has been lowered closer to my inseam and now is below the average height of my hips wile running. While I can't jump (much at all), I don't have to. Still I am fighting my limited stride length to stretch to the (arbitrary) distance between Masters hurdles. I will never be able to improve much, just chart the decay.
Great insight! Thank you for sharing your experience
I'm a high school hurdler, so to find out that my height of 181.61 cm comes in just above the cutoff is nice.
Only slightly taller than you and have only tried jumping over hurdles just for fun and really wasn't difficult without any practice. Never knew there's actually an optimal range. Guess you need enough height to get over without really jumping but if you are insanely tall, just can't move legs fast enough
This is so relatable. I loved doing the hurdles when I was younger, but as I grew older the hurdles got higher, but I didn't get taller anymore. Stuck at a body length of 178 cm with relatively short legs, I decided to call quits on my favourite track event when I turned 18
The athletes adjust the hurdles idea is kinda nice! It would make for horrorible logistics, but a greater competition.
I love this idea. As a spectator, you wouldn't be sure of the result until the very last hurdle. Thrilling
This is such a good video. Loved it. Please make more on athletics events
I do have some planned. Stay tuned!
I would keep the hurdles the same or lower them 5 cm but I would give total freedom on how they are positioned on your lane, it would be more fun like that. What would you do? Spread them equally, put them all at the start and accelerate? It would create metas and weird strategies etc.
Hurdle size could be indexed to the hurdlers size, but then we would be back to favouring specific body proportions
Could be leg length or total height, but I think having multiple hurdle events at different hurdle heights is the best idea
Wild. This reminds me of my experience growing up. I’m a tad on the shorter side & was elite in my conference/region at the hurdles thru junior high where men & women’s hurdles were lower & the same size. When I moved up to high school, I was massively slowed down because I could no longer just glide over the barriers but had to jump. I ended up quitting the following year with among some other reasons, while being able to stride three steps smoothly, the height requirements meant I was never going to get near to breaking school & meet records like I did in junior high so it seemed like a waste.
As a 5'3 hurdler i feel this 😢, great video though!!
Respect bro! I'm slightly taller at 5'4 lmao
I would say an interesting thing you'll find is the height bias will change over time and often not upwards. One of the reasons there is a lack of distribution in men is that athletes used to be and still are today trainers would simply refuse to train someone who did not fit the height stats although less so as trainers are realising that it is St upid, and the interesting thing this has caused is heights in a number of sports has started to drop, this is also because of nations who's height is on average shorter.
I think allowing you to set where the hurdles are, within reason, is a good way to deal with this.
Within reason is a good caveat. I would stack all mine at the end otherwise, and just yolo towards the finish line
Have a variable distance between each hurdle. So it messes up everyone being able to take a natural stride to achieve a fixed number of steps. As an interesting math task, you should find an optimal distribution to kill any height bias.
optimizing the distance between jumps to be disavantages to taller sprints or sprints with 'longer strides' would be an interesting experiment to see if if it get more diversity in the sport.
Outstanding video. Even among the top hurdles its clear that the hurdle heights and spacing effect peoples races differently. Some athletes struggle over the first few hurdles. Other athletes struggle over the later hurdles because of their longer strides. Small changes would have a big difference on yhe winner.
I hope you dont mind me making a video on this topic as well.
Thank you! And yes feel free to use this topic! If you pull anything from our video just credit us please as we love sharing information!
Very interesting video! Makes me now wish there was a “free style” hurdle event. Where every runner has to have the same amount of hurdles but they could determine where to place them along the track
That's the only way to do it. The truth of the matter is that the height should be based on the height of the knees.
I think that if people were given complete control over their hurdles, then they could hurdle them near the beginning and then run the rest of the way.
there would have to be rules to where to place the hurdles, theres always gonna be one person to stack 8 hurdles in 2 feet and just leap over them
It's always nice to get good recommendation combining Sports and science, thanks youtube algorithm, I will subscribe.
I personally ran hurdles in high school and I did notice that as I got taller and hurdles got taller I got worse at them.
For example I ran 15.3 when I was 16-17 on 36" hurdles while being 6'-2"-6'-4 tall
But despite me being much faster and stronger when I was 18-19 I only managed to run 15.6 on 39" hurdles while being 6'-5-6'-6" tall.
I never ran a 42" hurdles race but I am sure it would be similar situation. My main events were long jump and triple jump.
Another clear example to me that men's hurdles are too tall comes from results distribution, for example there's only ~3400 men that ran sub 15.8 while there is ~4500 women that did the same.
Hurdles would probably need to be lowered to 39" range for distributions to be more similar.
I also like the idea of different lengths between the hurdles.
I don't think any of those would actually come into place but who knows, IAAF did announce possibility of long jump from the "Zone" instead of take off board.. we will see
very nice video!
This makes me think of two sports. Cycling and Counter-Strike.
Cycling:
There are many types of races, and the riders looks in some way very different, but also very similar.
There are 3 things I think have a big impact.
1. Some countries have better infrastructure, like roads and bicycle lanes.
2. Some countries have better economies, thus you can afford an expensive bike.
3. Some countries have cycling in there history and therefor have a good community where talents can practice.
There are not many Asiens and Africans in pro cycling, and I don't think it has anything to do with body type (genetics)
Counter-Strike:
There are no females on the top teams in Counter-Strike and tropic countries are underrepresented.
Here are some ideas, but....🤷♂
1. Females meets more resistance from friends, family, the game design and other players when they try to play the game competitively.
2. Tropic countries have good weather and you might play more outside, where as Scandinavia, Baltic States, Russia, Ukraine etc. have many days with "not the best weather".
3. Countries that do not have good internet connections or a lack of official servers might not be able to play the game with a low enough ping to be able to play the game competitively.
As a Scandinavian I am very disappointed that we have not produced a female player that could fit in on one of the top 20 teams in the world. I would argue we have super good female players but it looks like they never get to train and learn with and from the best players. They play in the top of the female scene, but they are never really able to make the move over the the absolut top. And I do not thing it has anything to do with there genetics😂
I love this topic, but sometimes I hate (just a little) the competitiveness aspect of it. You should be able to enjoy basket with your friends even if you are only 5 feet tall. In pursuit of talent and winning we sometimes exclude some people from the group. And we say it is fair cause they are not as good as the other kits, so they have to stay on the bench. But in realty they just don't have the body for the sport they would like to play, or the sport might not even be available to the where they live, cause sport are a big part of our culture.
Wow! Thank you for the detailed thoughts. I hadn't thought about video games, but you bring up some interesting points here.
Next weeks video will be about different countries and their ability to produce good hurdlers, and your thoughts about economy and history are right on.
csgo is not a sport nerd
Yes, But a guy from Argentina is now in Cycling tour majors who started in 2000's on a crappy old used steel frame touring bike, bike that can have heavy loads on it while going long distances where old handlebars broke before he got bike so upright handlebars were put on as was all they had.
Everything you said for cycling is pretty much true for any sport out there.
And I would add that one of the reasons that there are no women on the top teams is because women are generally less interested in gaming which reduces the talent pool.
@@tijgertjekonijnwordopgegeten I would assume the largest factor in females being less interested in games is the encouragement by friends and family to play games. It’s seen as outside of the social norms and video games has been a male dominated space for years so it’s not surprising that females trying to enter have a hard time.
As a boy, I used to be a good sprinter, but not good enough to be projected as worldclass. Attending training was logistically difficult for our family, so we gave it up. It was twenty years ago. Turns out, as a 191 cm dude with a long neck (the only deadweight), maybe I should have continued athletics and transition to hurdles. Damn.
There definitely need to lower the hurdles for these events. Short people literally cannot compete with high hurdles, but tall people can compete with short hurdles.
no, the solution is to raise womens hurdles because your not supposed to be able to walk bover it like the women are
Yeah the issue becomes that it becomes increasingly easier for them to go over them. Literally could become jump normal running at a point
No. Let's make hurdles proportional in height to athletes leg length. Me as a not so tall person would jump over the same hard or easy hurdle as you tall people!😎
@@joneinarmattiasvisser6113 eh this is a questionable method as lowering them makes it FAR easier to get over. As shorter people can general jump higher than tall people
@@matyaskovecses4404 Women’s steeplechase has absurdly low barriers.
In highschool I think most of our female hurdlers had to 4 step between the hurdles. I really liked the 300 because I was able to run over them hurdle height where I could barely clear the 110 hurdles my senior year.
Open question: why is making a sport into something more people can be competitive at a good thing? (To be clear, I'm not saying it it's a bad thing or even a neutral thing, just that I don't see it as trivial following from universally accepted premises.)
Fundamentally, most athletics are comparing to some standard. That standard end up being more or less arbitrary deepening on the sport, but the fact it is a standard is kinda the point. An interesting point is that a lot of sports derive from some sort of real world activity (often military in nature) and that activity isn't necessarily "fair" to the general population (and in some cases it even motivates making it unfair).
I think the point here is slightly different. In this case, arbitrary rules have made this sport accessible on a competitive level for very few people. Unlike shotput where the very activity itself has done the same thing.
All implement decisions are arbitrary. The shot would allow for more body types (and more strategies) if it wasn't 16#. It would not be a better event, though.
Interestingly, even after taking out the 5'6"Levy from the pool of the 2020 Olympics, the javelin finals had less height variation than the hurdles.
A wider range of athletes means we're more likely to see the best human hurdler running hurdles, which is what spectators want. Now we only have "the best hurdler who happens to be within a certain height range"
@@ninjalectualx But that presupposes that "the best human hurdler" isn't defined by the ability to do the sport _as it's currently defined._ Why is some new definition for the sport (or alternatively; some different sport) more valid or any less arbitrary than the current one? (I'm not saying the current definition is perfect or even best, but rather that "allows to most people to be competitive" is neither desirable nor undesirable when considering what the sport should be.)
When you get right down to it, at a world championship level, every definition is going to exclude something like 99.99999% of all humans, and that's kinda the point. And most of those excluded will be a result of physical attribute outside their control.
If hurdles *were* to be changed, I'd propose switching to a non uniform spacing specifically chosen to be pathological. Ensure that basically every competitor has no more than one pair of hurdles that they have an ideal stride length for. Make it a contest about being able to quickly run where you are forced to change your stride length every few steps.
@@benjaminshropshire2900 because the current definition is arbitrary, and changing it allows for more competitors.
Need the same video and analysis on the height bias for basketball
Yes! I assume it’s an even clearer correlation, there’s only like a handful nba players under 6‘1. On the other hand I’ve read that 7ft males born in the US have like a 16% chance of making the nba 😂
@@yaab4845 it’s true, it’s crazy if you think about it
2012 Olympic Champion and 2 time World Champ Sally Pearson (AUS) is 5foot6!!!!
This was very interesting. I wonder if part of the discrepancy between the male and female athlete body types can be explained by more barriers existing for women to get into athletics. Because there are generally fewer opportunities for female athletes - the people who are perceived to be more "generally athletic" at an early age, to which height would be a predicting factor, are probably much more likely to get athletic scholarships, top coaching, family support etc.
Of course I subscribed. Thanks.
Thank you!
I’m a collegiate 110m hurdler, and I LOVE it. I’m 6’3 but I’m just not exactly fast on foot so although I run decent times, some of my teammates who are shorter than 6’ but much faster than me in the hurdles partially due to footspeed
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed the video. It is similar experience in college, but I was a discus thrower, but pretty lanky and not nearly as strong as the other throwers. I was still competitive because of my technique, but never could get the bulk and power needed to excel. Good Luck!
@@MathTheWorld I actually used to compete in the decathlon, but the discus is the one event I just could not get the hang of. I liked the dec but just was competitive in the hurdles, noticeably better in the high jump (those event I did in high school) and far behind in everything else
Interesting. I wouldn't mind a change but it would be impossible to do since all athletes would be against it
In my opinion, there are even sadder biases: the biases in favor of anorexia. They are evident in gymnastics, and they are not due to physics, but due to human factors aside the jury.
You are egregiously misusing the term anorexia. What you mean is that they have to be skinny. Anorexia is a mental illness and it usually presents in patients who are far thinner than any elite athlete. No gymnast looks anywhere close to anorexic. There's no compelling evidence that gymnasts even have unhealthy bodyweights.
3 of the ten fastest all time are between 69 and 70 inches. They represent 2 Olympic GOLD 1 silver and 9 world golds. One is the first and maybe only man to go sub 10 100m and sub 13 110mh. Allen Johnson, Colin Jackson and Omar McLeod
Ralph Mann has done all the science you bring up here…. Stride rates, stride lengths, comparison of hurdle height to leg length for males/females, COG vertical force requirements, horizontal force requirements, everything.
Males & females both get to 9m/s, the determining factor is hurdle height. I would also be interested in this data for BF%. Just like height, having 7% BF is a key performance descriptor.
If you are interested in this I encourage reading “The Mechanics of Sprinting and Hurdling” Ralph Mann 2022 edition.
Thanks for bringing this up. I will look into his analysis. I know his name because I saw it on the Track&Field record board at BYU almost everyday when I was on the team there. His name stood out because he was the only male BYU athlete to ever break a world record while he was in college! (400M Hurdles, or maybe back then it was the 440 Yard hurdles). A female athlete broke a world record in the indoor high hurdles in the late 90's, I believe.
@@MathTheWorld very cool. As an engineer turned track coach all this is right down my alley! Thanks for getting this track/science overlap out there.
Very interesting and acute vid! Any thoughts on horse jockeys? Lol
The same thing goes for any sport with weight classes:
If your ideal weight does not match a weight class, you either have to compete in a higher or lower weight class than would be ideal for you. The effect is probably less strong, and ideal weight is harder to define but ultimate it's arbitrarily advantaging some over others
Nice point! I hadn't thought about variations within weight classes. I had just thought about weight classes being a strategy to reduce bias and allow more people to compete in certain sports.
Enjoyed this analysis! (Though was confused by the women's graph - until I saw your comment below about mislabelling.)
The greater standard deviation in the curves for women was intriguing. Is it just a consequence of the lower hurdle height? Probably not the hurdle rpacing, since as you calculated that's not so different from the men's.
But I did wonder, whether there might be different relationships between height and stride length between populations. What exactly is that relationship, and do women show greater variability thus broadening the curve?
Maybe more flexible individuals can adjust their strides more easily? Or maybe there's a greater window of optimal take off points when the hurdles are relatively lower? So many questions...
It's so long since I hurdled, I've almost forgotten the feel of it. Thanks for the memories, and thanks for the video!
The hurdle spacing to elite height ratio being close to the same for men and women is highly suggestive. Give the other assertion being made, it would suggest that the ratio compared to the *average* population height is significantly more different.
I would set the height as a specific percentage of the athlete’s height and let the athletes choose the spacing with the requirement they take x number of steps between hurdles.
4:11 What you're talking about is D2F.
I wonder if there is a similar disparity for the distance events. For example how do 5k/10k athletes compare in height to steeplechase athletes? And is there a diminished gender effect there too. Also, same question for the 400m dash and 400m hurdles.
For what it’s worth, elite steeplers hurdle the steeples like the sprint hurdlers do-for the most part, but they can’t knock them over like the sprint hurdlers.
Olympic target shooting also have some very arbitrary rules imo. Especially the 10m air rifle event.
Some bullet points are:
- mens top level results are probably a little better than top womens results, but the depth of the field is much bigger on the women's side.
- the target is at a set height of 140cm +/- 5cm
- the adjustments of the rifle are limited in such a way that you hit those linitation the taller you are.
I don't understand you. I am tall. Why am I missing the target because of that?
You can see the body type optimization in disc golf pretty clearly. Even though it isn't a "money" sport, it's pretty clear that being very long and lean provides an advantage. like, no coach is grabbing those players. They just simply are the best in the game.
Is the advantage you can throw from closer to the hole when "putting"? Otherwise shouldn't it just be who can throw a disc the furthest and/or most accurately which shouldn't match the best with tall and lean.
Have you ever watched a Decathlon hurdle race? The correlation to success is much more related 100m times than height.
Are there short decathletes?
Brian Clay
Being taller certainly is not a bad thing in the Deca. HJ, PV, Disc and Javelin
I’m 5’4” and I relate to that Corgi.
The problem with letting everyone place the hurdles where they want is logistics. For that to make sense at the Olympic level, you'd have to do it at the collegiate, and youth level. Otherwise you'd select for height before people could get to the pro-level anyway. A high school meet where every hurdler could se their hurdle spacing would take forever! And World Athletics is trying to reduce meet time so it's more appealing to more people, so they won't change that rule at the pro level because of the additional time. And could you imagine if some poor official put the hurdles they were in charge of at the wrong spot? I do think lowering the men's height to 39" would be a great change though, because 42" is just ridiculous and limits not just the number of pure hurdlers, but decathletes as well.
Plenty of height bias in the high jump. The problem is, basically, how much distance you must raise your center of gravity. A taller person must raise their center of gravity less distance to get over the bar. Given equal jumping ability the taller person always wins.
Height is also great in pole vault. Make DuPlantis 6” shorter and he becomes physically unable to make the bar because the distance from his hands to his hips is too small. Also, taller people are heavier and thus can use a stiffer pole, returning more energy to their jump than a lighter athlete would get.
Pole Vault can have small guys with coordination who use speed and are basically sprint launching using a pole a size or two bigger then they normally would or have people who have great coordination who have slightly blocky or mass on a shorter body for events as well. In high jump you see a body from about 6 foot 2 inch/188 cm to about 6 foot 8 inch/203.25 cm maybe a bit taller usually much more then 7 feet/213.3 cm and are really skinny yet muscular looking really similar to some taller distance runners in 1/2 marathon or under events. Why such a range? Well, being much taller your body will struggle to get in position for a high jump.
Yeah, Stefan Holm was a fantastic high jumper who cleared 2.40 iirc, despite being only 1.81 or something, while most of his competitors were 1.90+. If the high jump was judged on how much higher than your own height you jumped, he'd probably have taken the gold every time! That said, I think even he would agree that using absolute measurements is the way to go, because it gets too convoluted and messy otherwise. It's never gonna be completely fair anyway, so why not let genetic freaks win gold medals and get some compensation for being too tall, short, wide etc for most infrastructure they come across... 😄
@@korganrocks39951.81cm is still fairly tall. I suspect he would be outclassed by shorter jumpers in this updated metric. Much like the best shooters in the NBA are far and away the best shooters in the world since they would be selected out for other reasons.
@@AnyVideo999 It's above average height for the general population by a couple of inches, but it's 11 cm shorter than anyone else I saw on a list of men who had jumped 2.40 and above.
Although I doubt sportive governing bodies would approve, having multiple classes, like the weight classes in martial arts and rowing or age classes in master sports, would be the best solution.
In hockey, taller players get a special rule allowing them longer hockey sticks. If another player uses it, it’s a penalty, but if a taller player uses a shorter stick, it isn’t. So, it’s clear that there can be adjustments made in sports.
Wow, I didn't know that. That is a good example of adjustments in sports.
I shoulda known sooner. I was 6'0" since highschool, which would make me perfect for hurdles.
Doesn't Femke Bol switch legs on hurdles?
Motor Racing favours shorter lighter athletes are faster
For example
I’m 6’2” and 62kg (which is extremely underweight)
My teammates 5’6” and 45kg
Each few kgs are tenths of seconds and when your trying as hard as you can to beat smaller racers you’ll always have a disadvantage
If I hurtled, my form would be the same as the person at 3:21. I assume someone invented the hurtles to alleviate the boredom of running in circles, and somehow it caught on.
You didnt mention the 3000 steeplechase... Also i tennis a service called let should be fault
Seems like there are more hurdles to become a hurdler than I first thought.
Is it plausible for an athlete to have a natural stride length fit two steps neatly between each hurdle?
Not for a human athlete. Wouldn't that make you about 3 meters tall?
Ideal world: Hurdles must be set to 1.25× the inside leg measurement of the athlete, measured before the race. That is, hurdle height is different in each lane. The distance run and distance between hurdles must be relative to 10 hurdles' distance based on leg length too. That means different start lines in each lane. Basically _scale the entire race by athlete size._
Downside: Track officials and coaches have to manually adjust and verify 80 hurdles before each race... avoiding this is partly why a fixed value exists. Stride length / inside leg length may also be too simplistic for "fair" measurements.
Horrible outcome: I can already imagine the controversies where athletes' lanes are changed last minute for some reason and two athletes accidentally race with the wrong hurdles from the wrong start, or simply that one or more hurdles in a lane is set wrong and then a complaint snowballs out of control because some track official or another refuses to accept there was an error.
Still not completely fair as shorter people can usually jump higher than tall people.
Did you color the graphs incorrectly for the female heights?
Yes, nice catch.
I mean this isn’t an exact formula. You also have to be very flexible to be able to bend your body like that. I’m 6’5” and when I try to go over hurdles it does not feel natural with my stride at all and I have to jump quite a bit
Definitely true about the flexibility! Though that is something you can improve with strength training and stretching! Height is a little more challenging to change haha
@@MathTheWorld yeah but a lot of people are just genetically more flexible
I enjoyed the concept of the video though I think there are a couple flaws with your analysis and interpretation.
Whilst I don’t have exact figures, around 20% of the male US population is 6 foot and above with around 2% over 6 foot 3. In your sample, having 5 athletes above 6’3 out of the 46 above 6’ is what you would expect in the general population. Based on the observed data I don’t think there is any evidence to conclude that there is an upper bound to the optimal height range. Also, anecdotally, the reigning Olympic champion is 6’5.
True, the lack of top 110m hurdlers above 6'5" may be because there are so few men above that height in the population, combined with basketball being more lucrative for men 6'6" and taller. Back in the 1990s there was a German hurdler Florian Schwarthoff who was 6'7" and won an Olympic bronze medal in 1996, so it is possible to be elite at that height.
3:50 The inches in the histogram are so awkward, and I stopped watching when he continued to force using inches when the data he was using was in cm.
Track coach at HS always wanted me to do hurdles. Tried all year to get me join track in the spring. I think I now know why.
There are a ton of sports where the rules dictate who has the advantage. I'd dare say all of them. That's what makes it a game. If you stripped away all the rules that favour a particular biological trait you'd have nothing left. In fact, I challenge you to come up with a game that doesn't favour something beyond our control. If there is a challenge, there is bias, for we have differing mental and physical capacities.
But few sports arbitrarily choose a narrow range of body types like this. The rules could arbitrarily be slightly different, it would still be hurdles, but different (shorter or taller) people would be olympic champions. That is very different from the 100 m sprint, where the very act of accelerating and running fast by itself selects a wider range of body sizes, about 1.6-2.0 m height for men as a guestimate.
Isn’t hurdling all about inseam not height?
Yes but as he said, there isn't much information on inseam lengths
Is this Dr Eric Helm’s nerdier channel?
I don't understand how it's more unfair than anything else.
I think the word unfair in the thumbnail probably should be "arbitrary". One of the points of the video is just helping people realize that a certain group of world-class athletes was decided by a committee many years ago when they decided the height of, and distance between, hurdles.
So many other sports, are not so arbitrary. Changing the weight of the shot put by 10%, is still going to favor a similar build, but change the hurdles by 10% and you have a very different set of people excelling.
The other obvious genetic bias that came to me was Right handed infielders in baseball. It’s totally because of the direction we run the bases. Assuming handed-ness is genetic…
As opposed to what, an arbitrary choice as babies? I assumed handed-ness being genetic was pretty set in stone, so I'm a bit confused here.
A quick google search says you assumed wrong, and scientists don’t really know what causes hand dominance. They think there’s a genetic component, but it’s not like height. Left-handed people aren’t more likely to have left-handed children as far as we know.
So… now we learned something!
@@jccalhoun4972Sorry, I thought you meant hardwired at birth, not hereditary. Yeah, my parents are right-handed and right-footed, while my brother is left-handed and right-footed, while I'm right-handed and left-footed, so it has always seemed really random to me.
Michael Fassbender. 110m hurdler.
Removing the hurdles would work
I think that the most unfair sport in the world is basketball. Someone with a height below 6 feet is nothing in this game.
I have to admit I expected the one Olympic event to be basketball
Let me tell you about them hurdles - who cares about hurdles? They tried to make me run hurdles in high school, I hated running hurdles.
6:40 “hurdlers are still taller than sprinters”
Are they? It looks like sprinters are taller than
On average the hurdlers are still taller, but I think the visual is messed up and gets them switched.
What about high jump?
I think being taller gives you a slight advantage.... But I have seen a relatively small gymnast easily breaking the world record by using illegal techniques.
Hurdles should be removed from the olympics
It's 4 steps between the hurdles.
I take comfort that there is one sport where my bodily dimensions are ideally suited to it: chess.
Men are applying more force so the stride is greater.
Every sport has arbitrary things that cause it to be interesting, I dont think it would make sense to say who can throw the shotput the furthest that weighs under 200lbs (which decathalon dies a decent job at) or who can run the fastest 100M at 260lb body weight (which American football and rugby already do a decent job at).
Wait until this guy hears about high jump…
My experience is that the distance between hurdles isn't what keeps hurdlers short. Changing the stride length doesn't change your speed much. It's that tall people are generally worse at sprinting. That trades off with needing to be tall to go over the hurdle more easily.
I was a very good but not elite men's 110 m hurdler. My teammates and I did a few fun races on the women's height and distance. I was the mean height, but the other two were 3 inches taller and 3 inches shorter. We all had no problem adjusting to a shorter stride and our relative times were the same as with the men's height and distance.
At the elite level, some men do 7 or 8 steps to the first hurdle 45 feet from the start. I have done both. It was easy to change the stride length to do either. I chose 8 because of my preferred starting stance and lead leg. I tried 7 steps and did it on my first try.
Modulating your stride length is a key skill for hurdlers. It is especially important for 400 m hurdlers where there are many steps between hurdles and your legs turn to jelly at the end.
Your own data shows that men's hurdlers are tall for sprinters and that the taller hurdlers are very tall for sprinters. For women, hurdler height is closer to sprinter height because the women's hurdles are shorter compared to the average woman sprinter.
The rules for hurdle height could be normalized to a certain height bar on the runner's height from ground to hip or something. That's a lot of work to set up the race though, setting the height individually for each runner .
Do swimming!!!!
Do women have greater variation in leg length vs body height than men do? They sure do have more variation in pants sizes and shapes...
There is also a skill bias I guess
There appears to be an error in your conclusion as you show female sprinters are actually taller than hurdlers but say the opposite
Yes, the audio is correct. Hurdlers are taller than sprinters.
well thats what makes this sport difficult . tests your raw human abilities . whatever phisique you might possess , you have to beat the same human in order to gain the top spot
Beating competitors that are in the height range that have an advantage by the arbitrary rules is what makes this sport difficult? Well sure, that's difficult. But if you are in the ideal height range, this is what makes this sport easy, I guess. Less competition from those short sprinters who have to jump over the hurdles or those leggy guys you can't match up their stride for the next hurdle. Easy win. Thank you random specific rules.
@@geirmyrvagnes8718 well you wont make it into an nba team either , even if you are close to 6 feet . hurdles is atleast more forgiving than that . every sport has some flaw if you look at it this way
Should we remove all weight requirements in combat sports and see how Naohisa Takato fares against Teddy Riner ? Would it make for a more interesting competition ? Or would we just end up with the overwhelming majority of the competitors being current 100kg+ fighters, with the lighter ones losing against less skilled, but heavier opponents ?
@@filiaaut boy combat sport and hurdles are completely different . you cannot be " less skilled" and taller and would take the win . plus , that is why there are 25 different events to choose from in T and F which favours different body types . not everyone is made for every event
. combat sports are highly grouped , to the point where people mostly care about the heavyweight champions and dont know much about the bantam/lightweight fighters . That is important , im just saying the openness of the category in Track makes it interesting
Kind of weird to call it unfair. All the athletes play under the same condition. The only thing unfair is genetics.
I guess it's unfair in an arbitrary way, unlike most sports where the ideal body type will get the best result. For example, if the 100 meter sprint was changed into the 100 step sprint, we wouldn't have had thrilling finals between Usain Bolt and Powell, Blake, Gatlin etc, it'd just be Bolt vs a bunch of other tall guys who weren't nearly as fast as those I just mentioned.
I agree. I think the ideal body type is just so much more narrow. Sports will always favor one body type over another. Even positions in sports will favor one body type over another. Maybe they should make adjustments as to hurdle height and distance. But, some people are suggesting to optimize these factors based on the athlete. I disagree with that. It should still be uniform amongst all athletes.
Completely weird. Every other sport described in this video optimizes the athlete's genetically defined attributes to some standard. "Fair" is a human invention, and a very recent one, at that. Nature doesn't give a flying fig about human inventions.
In hockey, taller players get a special rule allowing them longer hockey sticks. If another player uses it, it’s a penalty, but if a taller player uses a shorter stick, it isn’t. So, it’s clear that there can be adjustments made in sports.
@@WowOafus who said shit about hockey?
No sport is fair… there will always be some gene that make someone better at some sport.
Randomly distribute where the hurdles are, with a minimum distance between hurdles of some given number. The hurdles are set while the runners get into their marks.
That’s a terrible idea 😭
@@DylpiqkleSTier Come on, it would be good entertainment! Random heights, too. I am not being very serious, but for a game show or something?
@@geirmyrvagnes8718 haha tracj game dhpw
But there are more sports that favour tall people instead of short people?
In track and field, probably. In gymnastics, maybe not. Some team sports have different positions; soccer players are taller than average, but if you're really fast or really technical you can still become world class in positions that don't demand aerial duels. Hell, the best player in history is either Messi or Maradona, both left-footed Argentinian attackers who were under 5'7 and could only win aerial duels by using their hand and hoping the ref didn't notice. Before them it was Pelé, who was 5'8.
Depends how you count sports. But sports where the rules arbitrarily select a random narrow height range like this are rare.
You don't throw a shot put. Put is the action, shot is the object. So you PUT THE SHOT.
If you're over 6'4", you have ZERO chance of being a pro surfer, and for the most part, no one over 6'2" has much of a chance...and you don't see many over 6'.
As for the hurdles, they should make it 120m with the hurdlers allowed to place the same # of hurdles at any distances they like and at any height not below 2" above their hips. Same for the 400m hurdles pushed to 420m.
Very interesting about surfers. Do you have an idea why? Is it the low center of gravity? Or is it the light body? Something else?
@@MathTheWorld Low center of gravity and, on some breaks, GREAT difficulty for very tall people fitting into the wave/tube thing that happens when the wave breaks. So, nature seems to have made this decision. Tall people have a harder time hugging the board. There are great videos of pro surfers. Watch them, Google the surfer's height, then picture in your mind Kevin Durant trying the same wave...it's immediately evident how absurd the idea is.
What are they gonna do? Tear down all athletics stadiums just to extend the track by 20m and the straight by an extra 10m? And by doing that ruin the simplicity of all other running events? 800m is no longer 2 laps, it's 1 lap and 380m 💀
It's a race not a time trial. Everybody gets the same hurdles with the same track length with the same markings, so results and records can be comparable and legit. And ain't no organiser going to bother setting the hurdles differently for each athlete on each lane in each heat.
@@wss33 You don't need to do any of those things. The athletes could easily arrange the hurdles themselves. For the 420m hurdles, just start 20m back down the straightaway. For the 120m hurdles, most of the serious track setups already have the straightaway setup with extra straightaway sections at both ends and most could be easily retrofitted. So, you need little/no extension. Since you didn't know this, it's obvious you either don't follow track and field or have no space reasoning. So....why did you feel the need to offer such an obviously uninformed opinion on something you either don't care about and/or don't have the ability to understand?
You also don't seem to understand what "time trial" is, as it has no meaning in this context. All athletes would be running the same distance over the same number of hurdles. It would be a pretty obviously fair race. All you'd be doing is pushing the bounds of which athletes are reasonably permitted to be elite by the dimensions.
There's also the fact that you could do this with 100/110 and 400m distance by just letting the athletes arrange the hurdles within those distances and just have shorter...or longer...free running sections at the beginning and end. Your inability to comprehend these changes and the "ain't no" seems to indicated you're a pretty low comprehending individual. So, again...why are you babbling incoherently about this? Isn't there a NASCAR race you could be watching in your double wide or something?
@@wss33 Yeesh, just reread your silly screed again, and man...are you ever a supremely uncomprehending individual. Absolutely none of what you're imagining would even be necessary, much less was even vaguely implied by what I wrote. You receive no points and may "god" have mercy on your soul. Yikes...
Vote 4 Height 2 Height ratio Now!
Determine stride length for enough athletes. Average stride length and distance between hurdles should indicate something, just don’t ask me what.
Platform shoes for increased hight. 😂
Platform shoes is easier logistically than adjusting hurdle heights, that's for sure.
colin jackson wasnt that tall i dont think