USA Sprint Nationals –video
With many young teenage sprinters starting to skate “man-fast”, US sprint nationals in the men’s category was incredibly competitive. And in the women’s racing, if you wanted to win, you would have had to beat Elli Ochowicz, who was ON, skating several PB’s that weekend.
You can see the Men’s results here, and here are the women’s.
The soundtrack I chose is a song by the Black Crowes, “Twice as Hard”. It fits.
It was a rough competion, as I was warming down after my last race, I saw some spots of blood on the warmup track, the fact that it could have been from quite a few different people gave me pause.
Click here for the high quality quicktime, or press play for the YouTube.
When I see friends crash, in pain, or have bad races, I often question if I should publish the footage I have.
Kip Carpenter opened nationals up with quite a horrifying crash, and Richard Gregersen got a GREAT video angle of from the stands. Kip didn’t mind it being published, so it leads off the video. Thanks Richard!
Jessica also added some clips here as well.
Kip cut his ankle pretty badly in the crash, and had to have stitches. When I mentioned that I had this pic, people wanted to see it, so here it is, with the expert hands of Dr. Eric Heiden sewing & stapling it up.
Kip raced all 4 events of nationals on it. Ouch. Thanks to his fiancé Inge for the photo.
p.s. is there a YouTube samurai out there that can give me compression/upading/quality hints? I’ve tried MANY differnent formats, read endless forums, and it’s not as good as I wish it could be, slo-mo looks great, but the normal shots are often fuzzy
p.p.s anyone have a copy of Final Cut Pro (for an intel-mac) they could share with me? I think it’s compression methods are better than iMovie.
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12 Responses to “USA Sprint Nationals –video”
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I love all the shots of starts- they really show how it’s done. you can really see all the leaping going on, even having two feet off the ice at once. I have my work cut out for me to attempt that kind of spring in my step!
Hey Andrew,
I love the “Dolly Shots”…they work well. About the Youtube mystery, I have had the same problems in the past. I have to export a really low quality video, due to size. Otherwise, they take like 10 hours to upload. Makes me wonder if it’s really worth it. How long does it normally take for your videos to upload, and about how big are they?
Thanks!
Melissa,
yes, in that slow-mo start of Mike Blumel & Tyler Goff, Mike is CLEARLY off the ice for split seconds until 13 or 14 steps into his race.
I don’t think that’s a necessity of great technique, I don’t see that “air-time” in other very fast sprinters. it’s probably more just Mike’s style, but on this 500m in the video, he did open in 9.99 seconds!!
to have spring in your step like Mike has, I hope you picked your parents right! Whereas endurance capacity, strength & the anaerobic thresholds is tremendously trainable, Fast-twitch fibers are inherited. (thanks mom & dad for what I have!)
Ian,
ice speedskates work GREAT for “dolly-shots”, although one of the refs almost kicked me out of the competition when I was taping 1000m races. It pissed me off…. I am damm careful when I tape during races, out of respect for the other athletes and my own safety.
as for quality, I mostly export my videos in 480 X 360, or 640 X 480, 30 frames a second, mono mp3 sound, I restrict the data rate to 850kps, and I use quicktime’s .MOV format H.264 Decoder.
This movie was 29mb, most of them seem to end up about this size..
Jumping = Losing speed. Need to keep my hips down and have a smaller knee angle.
thanks for the comment mike…. interesting…
Well, jumping in the air you are losing speed, since you are going up and not forward
The blood on the ice was Maurice. When he fell in his thousand meter he stabbed himself pretty good.
That phrase “blood on the ice” is so chilling…
Andrew, your videos are amazing. Someone almost kicked you out?! You are never dangerous while videoing…and I would know, I skate so many laps for warmup and cooldown!
well, I certainly have no problem jumping up off the starting line…moving forward is indeed the trick…unfortunately, my dad’s wonderful start technique and explosiveness bypassed me and my twin and went straight to my brother. will even the weight-lifting I do actually help at all?
Andrew-awesome and inspiring video as usual. Mike-I wish I had the technique problem of too much air time! My slow twitch body is envious.
Whatsup with the penguins on the podium? I thought that clip was hilarious!
Ooh, yeah, glad you captured the penguins! My husband and I were wondering about them all weekend… do they have some mystical significance? Was there a “March of the Penguins” clearance at KMart? (it was pretty funny to see some of the winners walking around later cuddling their penguins, though–especially the guys!)