Pittman and Freeman, the post-race scenario

Sydney, AustraliaJana Pittman’s emphatic 50.43 400m win over Olympic champion Cathy Freeman on Saturday in Sydney,** the latter’s first defeat by an Australian at her specialist distance since 1992, will have obvious benefits for the confidence of the 20 year-old Pittman, just as it will have motivational benefits for the loser too. Further detailed analysis of Pittman’s run in particular also helps define the present physical limits of the young stars’ ambitions.

Our Sydney correspondent Mike Hurst gives his personal analysis of the post-race scenario for both Pittman and Freeman -
 
You're only as good as your last race and on Saturday (22 March) in Sydney, the Olympic 400m champion ran 51.81 in the Telstra A-series meeting and lost by 10m to the rampaging Commonwealth 400m Hurdles champion Jana Pittman who won in a personal best of 50.43.

Nothing will ever detract from what Freeman has achieved in her career, two World 400m titles (1997 & 1999) and her historic Sydney Olympic win, but her bubble has been burst and, for her own sake, none too soon.

Freeman has plenty of time and the goodwill and support of everyone in the sport, including Pittman and her coach Phil King, to get her track act back together in time to do something significant again at the Olympics in Athens next year.

It depends on whether she really is still as hungry as she keeps saying she is to win again and to make all the sacrifices again.

But as her own coach Peter Fortune lamented last week she's had a fair bit of time off for one reason or another and “you can't just wave a magic wand” to restore the fitness which has ebbed away since she ran 49.11 to win Olympic gold on September 25, 2000.
 
As for the IAAF World Championships in Paris this August, Freeman is now definitely on the team with her B-qualifying time on the weekend, but 50.71 was the slowest into the 400m final at the last World Championships two years ago.

Freeman is capable of bridging that substantial gap which would justify her Paris campaign. If she does, then look out Athens!

The result of Saturday’s 400m race in Sydney confirmed Pittman's new found status as Australia's top athlete but just as it also revealed Freeman present competitive flaws, so it also exposed the present limits of Pittman's own physical development.
 
Based on all the technical models extrapolated from Pittman’s hurdles times and her sprint training, she ran to the fastest extremity of the theoretical predictions in Sydney.
 
The fact she actually broke her national 300m record with a 36.30 split in transit to beating Freeman indicates the Sydney race was a true test of her capacities.

Therefore, when the euphoria surrounding her historic win subsides, the issue for Pittman is the concept of strength-through-speed, with the conclusion that unless she can reduce her 200m best from 23.5 her improvement over 400m will be marginal, and that would have implications limiting her ability to improve over 400m hurdles.
 
She may find 0.2sec in the last 100m on the already excellent 14.06 she ran against Freeman, but that suggests any significant improvement over the hurdles will necessarily come from technical efficiencies in clearing the 10 barriers and in her stride pattern.
 
These matters alone will not be sufficient for her to challenge the World one lap hurdles record.

For Freeman, her 300m split time of 36.73 was still fast enough for her to break 50 for 400m if she could summon her old home straight finish. In her 49.11 Olympic gold medal run - the last time she competed in Sydney - Freeman ran 36.14 at 300m.
 
But then she split 12.97sec for the final 100m. Against Pittman, her last 100m of 15.08 showed her exactly what she has lost.

Mike Hurst (Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Australia) for the IAAF

**Saturday’s race report from Sydney –
http://www.iaaf.org/news/Kind=2/newsId=20864.html