Technical developments on and off the track

The 110m hurdles featured on the athletics programme at the first Olympic Games of the modern era in Athens four years earlier, when the prevailing method for clearing the hurdles was to jump over them sideways. Today’s hurdlers lead with a straight leg and tuck the trail leg under their bodies, a technique that was first used at the Olympic Games at Paris 1900, by the US athlete Alvin Kraenzlein.

The development was significant in that it allowed athletes to clear hurdles without losing speed. It allowed Kraenzlein to set two world records in the event and to win gold in both the 110m and 200m hurdle events at Paris 1900. He also won the 60m dash and the long jump to become the first athlete to win four individual gold medals in the same discipline at the same Games. His haul also remains a record for a track and field athlete competing in individual events at a single Games.

Kraenzlein won the 110m hurdles in a time of 15.4 seconds, two seconds slower than the winning time of Jamaica’s Hansle Parchment in the Tokyo 2020 final.

A further innovation came in the incipient field of sports science, with the organisers of the International Universal Exhibition employing the scientist and photography pioneer Etienne Jules Marey to work with a team of doctors and researchers to study the biomechanics of athletes.

Marey and his team were tasked with capturing and assessing the physiological effects of competition on athletes in various events and identifying the techniques used in cycling and fencing, for example, and track and field events such as the pole vault and the high jump. They did so through chronophotography, which involved taking a series of still images over a specific period of time and arranging them into a single image that they could then analyse. It was an approach that provided the basis for the video analysis technique used by today’s sports coaches.