Was there any relation between the theoretical team ranking – based on the cumulative PR’s – as published here on UltraNed on October 10, and the final team results after the 24 hours in Uden on October 12?
My exercise on paper on base of the individual Personal Records over 24 hours had attracted some attention by other websites – both national and worldwide. I had not expected that my theoretical play with these figures was taken so seriously ;-). Some of those personal bests were from relatively long ago – for example, the 261.475 km by Ron Teunisse dates from Apeldoorn 1990 (and is still the National Best over 24 hours for the Netherlands) and the 276.209 km by Wolfgang Schwerk dates from Köln 1987 (and is still the National Best over 24 hours for Germany).
But I rather doubted whether these very good runners from the recent past were still able to repeat such performances. Nevertheless, even I had some confidence in the validity of the figures as an index of relative strength of the participating teams. In fact, that very day October 10 that I published these cumulative results, I also made my own predictions for the top five teams in Uden. Unfortunately, I did not list my predictions as I thought that such nonsense would be regarded as idle pomposity ;-). Looking back, my predictions were no too bad, so I dare now to insert these in between the real and the theoretical results.
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Women teams World Challenge 24 hours
Final result top seven Martien’s prediction Theoretical top five (cumulative PR)
1 Russia 684.858 1 Russia 660.000 1 Russia 696.485
2 France 649.303 2 France 2 France 667.367
3 Japan 628.440 3 Germany 3 Japan 638.771
4 USA 597.038 4 Japan 4 Hungary 628.205
5 Germany 594.304 5 Italy 5 Germany 608.299
6 Hungary 591.237
7 Italy 565.751
{efixed}
The final ranking of the top five women teams was nearly conform their cumulative PR ranking,
except that the USA instead of Hungary reached the 4th position. In my personal prediction,
I ranked 4 of the 5 final top teams in my list. It is clear that I failed to insert the USA,
but credited Italy two places too high compared to the final result. Note that my prediction
of the winning team distance was a bit too low, the three Russian ladies came to a new record
high of 685 km! Irina Reutovich (1) and Irina Koval (7) were not so far from their PB’s, but
Galina Jerjomina (2), the surprising runner-up, smashed her own PB with more than 25 km.
{fixed}
Men teams World Challenge 24 hours
Final result top seven Martien’s prediction Theoretical top five (cumulative PR)
1 Belgium 791.901 1 France 740.000 1 Germany 792.917
2 Russia 739.569 2 Russia 2 Belgium 784.700
3 Japan 729.956 3 Japan 3 France 781.650
4 France 715.792 4 Belgium 4 Russia 771.370
5 Italy 713.362 5 USA 5 Japan 756.401
6 USA 688.413
7 Germany 685.205
{efixed}
The final ranking of the top men teams was a big surprise as Belgium was the very proud winner
and Germany only came 7th. The team result of nearly 792 km by the Belgians was record high –
as Ton Smeets already remarked in an earlier message – and both Paul Beckers and 51-year old
rookie Etienne van Acker improved their PB’s. The 270.087 by Paul is a new Belgian record, the
old one was 267.500 by Lucien Taelman. I guess that not many people in the world would have
expected such a dream team result of 792 km, at least my own prediction of the winning team result
was 50 km lower! It is clear that beforehand I was not convinced by the high theoretical cumulative
PR by Germany, so they were not in my own top five prediction. But instead of France, I ranked
Belgium just outside the podium, and I hope they will forgive my underestimate.
So what lesson can be learnt from this exercise? There is a lot of truth in the cumulative PR but one has to take into account the dates of the PR’s and the current form of the runners. Last but not least: team spirit must be high as well. Look at Lucien Taelman of the Belgium team: after about 18 hours he was relatively broke down and it became clear that he was out for the podium and even had no chance for improving his own PR. But he just hung on and made the final result an unprecedented 1-3-5 for Belgium!
Martien Baars
PS To make my own position and intentions clear: the above, and all other activities, are not to be ment as open ‘applications’ for formal jobs as team manager or as delegate in whatever international body. I am no candidate for such positions but just an ultralover, who very much appreciates the free role I have as one of the editors of our Dutch/Belgian website UltraNed.
PS2 In the 5 Hour message of our live report I listed some expectations:
“Ger Janssen, the chairman of the club De Keien has predicted the winning distances:
263,800 for the male and 247,300 m for the female winner.
The prediction by Henk van Kasteren, Technical delegate of the Royal Dutch Atletics Federation KNAU:
262,000 and 234,000 m
Marcel Bos, one of my helpers here in the technical centre of the club building:
258,700 and 242,300”
The sum of the male plus female winning distances was 507.139 km, and Ger Janssen was closest (511.100 km), compared to Marcel Bos (501.000) and Henk van Kasteren (496.000).