A Tale of Two Shot-Putters

A Tale of Two Shot-Putters Currently, New Zealand has two world-class senior men shot putters. Tomas Walsh (pb 22.21m in 2016) was ranked 4th in the World in 2017 with a throw of 22.14m. His colleague, Jacko Gill (pb 21.01m) was ranked 22nd in the World in 2017 with that throw. Both men have a rich pedigree in the event. Although their careers are far from over, it is interesting to see how each of them, from a performance perspective, have attained these lofty heights. Below are each of Jacko’s and Tom’s progression profiles. These profiles have been posted with the permission of Tom and Jacko and their respective coach/manager. First, an explanation of the general concept of the progression profiles (Hollings, Hume, & Hopkins, 2012): The performance trajectory for each athlete was constructed by plotting each competition performance against the exact age of the athlete on the day of the competition. A polynomial/quadratic trajectory was drawn through all the data points (black dots as shown for Jacko and Tom). All known performances for each athlete throughout his/her career were used, rather than using the single best performance in any one year. Athletes and their trajectory were grouped into three categories; athletes who were medallists (1st – 3rd); finalists (4th – 8th); finished in 9th – 12th place in a field event, at a World Athletics Championships or an Olympic Games between 2000 and 2009. Each of the trajectories in the respective categories were then colour coded, medallists – red lines; finalists – blue lines; 9th to 12th – mauve lines. A total of 168,576 competition performances by 2,017 athletes across 19 men’s and 19 women’s track and field events were used in the construction of performance trajectories. All known published career competition performances for 1,026 male and 991 female track and field athletes who finished in the top 16 (track events and combined events) or top 12 (field events) of their event at an Olympic Games or an IAAF World Championships between 2000 and 2009 was used for the construction of individual performance trajectories. Finally, I was able superimpose a New Zealand athlete’s performance trajectory onto the appropriate event trajectories. Note; The trajectories developed for all athletes and for those of Jacko and Tom are based on performances using only the senior shot implement (7.26kg). Specifically, looking at Tom and Jacko’s trajectories compared to the other Olympic, and World Championship medallists and finalist, it can be concluded that each of them have the potential to join their World Championship and Olympic Games colleagues at the very top. Each of Tom and Jacko have arrived at their current point through entirely distinct pathways (trajectories. Looking at each of their trajectories shows that age for age, Jacko was in a superior position: Distance thrown (m) (as performance trajectory Age (yrs) distance) Tom Jacko 16- 18 - 18.25 – 19.10 18 - 20 15.90 – 18.00 19.10 – 19.90 20 - 22 18.00 – 19.75 19.90 – 20.50 22 - 24 19.75 – 20.95 20.50 - 24 - 26 20.95 – 21.90 - The mean peak age for male shot putters is 27.6 ± 1.8 years (Hollings, Hopkins, & Hume, 2014) meaning that both Tom (currently 26 years old) and Jacko (currently 23 years old) still have a few years of competitive throwing ahead of them. The window of peak performance of 5.3 ± 1.8 years is predicted for both Tom and Jacko. (A window of peak performance was defined as the period of time around the age of peak performance when performance predicted by each quadratic trend was within the smallest worthwhile change in performance from the peak. The smallest worthwhile effects were calculated as 0.3 of the within-athlete variation between competitive events at international level). Looking specifically at each of Tom’s and Jacko’s trajectories, shows that Jacko’s trajectory closely resembles that of other World Championship and Olympic Games medallists and finalists. Infact Jacko’s trajectory closely resembles that of John Godina (USA) who was World Champion in 1995, 1997 and 2001 and was Olympic Silver medallist in 1996. By way of contrast, Tom’s trajectory is much “steeper” than Jacko’s. Tom came from a much lower base, but has made strong progress and improvements over the years. Tom’s trajectory is similar to that of Christian Cantwell (USA) who was World Champion in 2009, World Indoor Champion in 2004, 2008 and 2010 and the Olympic Silver medallist in 2008. Unfortunately, as we now know, Jacko is experiencing some health issues which will affect his future trajectory path, but if he can retain and build upon his past attributes there is no reason to doubt that he will regain his place amongst the top shot putters in the next 4 – 6 years. Tom, being slightly older ( 3 years) than Jacko may see his trajectory “flatten” over the next 2 – 4 years, but having said that, he will still hold a dominant position over his rivals and will I expect be consistently in the 22.00 – 22.20m range with a number of throws above the highpoint of his trajectory. Finally looking forward and looking at the trajectories of the other shot putters it is not unconceivable, and given no health/injury issues arise, that Tom could be around and amongst the best in the world for another 4 – 6 years, whilst Jacko could be in a comparable situation for the next 6 – 8 years! The advantage of using trajectories to quantifying performances and observing how New Zealand athletes stand in relation to their world peers is shown. References Hollings, S. C., Hopkins, W. G., & Hume, P. A. (2014). Age at peak performance of successful track & field athletes. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 9(4), 651-661. Hollings, S. C., Hume, P. A., & Hopkins, W. G. (2012). Performance progression of successful athletes: The CD performance progression tool. New Studies in Athletics, 27(3), 71-79. .

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