In this tactical analysis I will be using the vocabulary I developed in my guidebook to 1500m tactics, available here on thcson.com. This time I will analyze women’s round 1 and heat 1 at the London Olympics.
Since all races from London 2012 are available in high quality video on YouTube, I thought it would be fun to analyze them in more detail from a tactical perspective. Please note that I will be using the vocabulary I developed in my guidebook to 1500m tactics, which is available on this webpage. Let’s start with men’s 1500m, round 1 and heat 1:
I will use the simplest possibly method to assess the participants’ relative ability in the race: ranking by season bests (as reported in the start lists). This led me to the following classification for this heat.
Favorites: Kiprop, Gebremedhin, Makhloufi
Average contestants: Manzano, Rodriguez, Gregson, Murray, Mustaoui
Underdogs: Nikolaev, Al-Garni, Teweldebrhan, Carvalho
This heat also included three inferior runners who fell behind early. Their performances were clearly of no tactical interest.
This turned out to be a fast heat from start to finish, with split times 58,65 – 1.57,37 – 2.54,12.
Two underdogs, Carvalho and Nikolaev, are very keen on taking the lead. Carvalho starts from position 14 on the start line, very far out, and seems to accelerate into the curve in order to move ahead of Gebremedhin. This excessive reaction puts him in the lead, half a step ahead of others at the 100m mark. Nikolaev also starts on the outside, in position 9, and moves up from the middle of the group with a quick acceleration at 100m as a route opens up ahead of him.
One would have assumed that Carvalho and Nikolayev, as underdogs, should have taken care to avoid the yellow position at all costs. As outside starters it should not have been difficult for them. But it seems as if an aggressive start was a deliberate pre-race strategy at least on the part of Nikolayev.
Nikolaev volunteers for pacemaking duty and takes the lead at 250m. He stays there until the surge begins at 900m. The pace in the jog is about 95% pace for these men. With such a fast pace the other runners wisely keep their respective positions throughout the jog with almost no alterations.
Let’s recall how a fast jog stage should influence tactics in the surge.
Al-Garni takes the lead at 900m and runs a fast surge stage as he covers the third lap in about 57 seconds. The pace is so fast that the runners at the back begin to tire and fall behind. Clearly they’re not thinking about tactical moves anymore. Al-Garni’s fast surge to the front seeks very risky for an underdog.
As the surge ends at 1200m, the only runner who’s boxed in even a little bit is Kiprop, right behind the leader. All three favorites are in front and confident of qualification since the six first athletes will go through directly.
Makhloufi takes the lead into the final curve and the field lines up almost in one queue behind him. Clearly this race is purely about endurance. Al-Garni holds on impressively for direct qualification.
As it turned out, this heat was so much faster than the others that 11 runners, including Nikolayev, qualified. So in the end his pacemaking strategy paid dividends. It shows why not even the foremost principle of 1500m tactics, always avoid the lead, can be a general rule.
All in all heat 1 was so fast that it didn’t offer much material for a tactical analysis.
People aiming to study and understand some aspect of society from an objective perspective have to consider whether their subject is influenced by political power or not. The difference between political and non-political subjects is fundamental because political power usually has a strong influence which must be explicitly accounted for. For the purposes of this essay and the following ones I will think of social studies (social science, theory and philosophy) as being divided into two subcategories: a political and a non-political (or apolitical) one.
Starting from this twofold division, I intend to examine two things. The first is the basic categorization of political studies into political science, political theory and political philosophy. What separates and links these three fields from and to each other? The second is how they compare with a similar division in apolitical studies: apolitical science, apolitical theory and apolitical philosophy.
The word “apolitical” may seem awkward, but I will use it simply to avoid the misleading use of “social science” and “social theory” as parallel alternatives to “political science” and “political theory”. In my usage the word “social” designates the general category and “political” and apolitical” are its two subcategories.
I discussed two benefits of government in the previous essay. These benefits and the drawback I discuss in this essay are all concomitants of government – they exist wherever there’s political authority of some kind. They are not opposites that can be weighted against each other on a scale of good vs bad government. In fact it might be arguable that the one drawback I discuss in this essay, secrecy, is more extensive under democratic governments than under a dictatorial ones. Every manifestation of government will exhibit its own specific blend of mutual trust, shared resources and secrecy. Only practical experience can show if a specific combination of them is good or bad.
In order to judge if government works well or badly, it’s useful to begin by considering why government is needed in the first place. This essay began with the working title three tasks of government, then three functions of government. This choice of words presumed a very active role for elected and selected government officials as public problem-solvers. As I thought about it some more I concluded active intervention is just one side of justification for government. The other side is the mutually beneficient interaction between citizens that good government passively enables.
That’s why I write about the benefits of government. Government officials don’t necessarily need to know and nurture the benefits of their work as they go about their tasks and functions. In fact some benefits of government arise merely from its founding (especially from foundational laws), others from stability. So in principle we don’t have to assume that the government is elected or even approved by the people. The two benefits I present in this essay will in any case be the same, even though their scope would certainly be greater under democratic government. I will in the following refer to the governing authority interchangeably as “the state” or “the government” or “the authorities”. Continue reading
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