Let’s get one thing straight immediately. There is no shame in being an athletics geek. Indeed the sport, with its unique breadth of events and depth of information and statistics, almost demands such status from its serious observers.

It is not a status restricted to spectators. I remember well the scene in the Inter-Continental Hotel in Athens ahead of the 1997 IAAF World Championships when Ato Boldon, who was to win the 200 metre title a few days later, had reached the end of an exhausting series of interviews for newspapers, magazines, radio and television.

Settled for some reason on the stool of a grand piano, the heir apparent of world sprinting was relaxing with a good book: a biographical summary of the world's leading sprinters.

By his own admission, the alarmingly articulate 23-year-old was obsessive about his event, and he brings that attention to detail to bear nowadays as a reporter and observer of the sport.

It’s a fair guess that, if he hasn’t already, Boldon will soon be availing himself of the IAAF’s archive of New Studies in Athletics, which, as has been recently publicised, has been revised and enhanced on a site which now boasts far easier navigation. 

“Since the first issue of New Studies in Athletics (NSA) was published in 1986, the publication has established itself as a respected international technical journal for athletics,” said the recent IAAF news release.

“NSA continues to emphasize the importance of original scientific and technical research, within the framework of the sport, in an effort to amalgamate science with the art of coaching.

“Each issue of NSA has brought to a wider readership a series of new and thought-provoking ideas which, in turn, have paved the way for the creation and development of techniques and applications designed to maximise an athlete’s ability, in both training and competition.

“NSA continues to provide a crucial forum for dialogue concerning the future development of ideas and practical applications.

“In order to make the material contained in NSA available to as wide an audience as possible, the IAAF has revised and updated its archive with the aim of serving the athletic community at large.”

This is a treasure trove of knowledge, some of it apposite, some of it arcane.

Admittedly, hindsight is a wonderful thing to apply to some contributions. The very first, a 1986 study entitled Back to Basics – Getting Off to a Good Start in Athletics, by internationally known sports coach Vern Gambetta, had something to say about the system then operating within East Germany: “The very successful model utilized by the GDR is an example of a gradual progression that continually strives to select and match the young athlete to an event or sport that is suited to their body type and abilities.

“Their system is closely tied to the educational system through mandatory physical education taught by highly trained specialists. Their philosophy is that training will progress over a six to ten year period to achieve top results. Through a planned progression ultimate success will come in the adult years.”

At that time, of course, it was not public knowledge that the GDR Government had another mandatory element in the training of athletes, namely a systematic doping programme.

One of the most recent entries for this floating mass of knowledge is a piece by Zsolt Gyimes, PhD, an associate professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport Sciences at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary.

He is an athletics coach and his best athlete, Tamás Kazi, reached three 800m semi-finals of the IAAF World Championships, setting a national record of 1:45.37 in 2012.

Gyimes’s area of inquiry concerns “Race Tactic Differences Between Elite East African and Caucasian Male 800m Runners”.

The report goes on to note:  “In contrast to the longer distance races where male East African athletes have clearly dominated international-level competitions in recent decades, there has been a relatively high number of successful Caucasian 800m runners, providing enough data to draw valid conclusions.

“The author studied major event finals and other international 800m races to try to identify statistically verifiable ethno-typical differences in tactics. He found that on average East African runners are keener to make fast starts and get closer to the lead in both championship and record-attempt situations while Caucasian athletes are more aggressive in the 400 to 600m segment of the race.”

By way of evidence, a study was made of the performances of the men’s 800m medallists at 12 Olympic Games and 13 IAAF World Championships.

“A significantly faster mean split time at 200m was detected in the EA runners compared to the C athletes.

“The fastest first 200m in all subjects was performed by Wilson Kipketer (EA but representing Denmark) with a 23.47 sec time in the 1997 IAAF World Championships in Athletics.”

Among the other little nuggets of information was this, in reference to the famously fast-finishing Russian who won the Olympic 800m title in 2004: “The greatest negative split in all subjects was by Yuriy Borzakovskiy with a value of 4.07 sec (1st lap 55.78 sec, 2nd lap 51.71 sec) at the 2007 IAAF World Championships in Athletics.”

In one of the first pieces to become part of this body of work, a study into Human Limits in Sports by August Kirsch in 1986, a sensible point of view is voiced early in the section entitled Estimate of Future Developments – “The ultimate performance has yet to be attained”, followed by the slightly more contentious “and competitive sports shall lose none of their attraction.”

Kirsch adds: “Considerable improvements are a certainly in most of the women's track and field disciplines, particularly long-distance races.

"This year, Ingrid Kristiansen and Jackie Joyner have already given us a foretaste of future achievements.”

The previous year, Kristiansen had lowered the women’s marathon world record to 2hr 21min 06sec with her victory in London.  It was on those same streets 18 years later that Britain’s Paula Radcliffe set the current record of 2:15.25. And in 1986, the Norwegian had set a world 10,000m record of 30:13.74. Seven years later Wang Junxia took that down to 29:31.78 – a figure not even Radcliffe has since been able to approach.

Joyner set successive heptathlon world records of 7148 and 7161 in 1986, since when only one athlete has managed to better her – Jackie Joyner-Kersee, her married self, who extended the record to 7215 and then 7291 in 1988.

“In the case of men's performances,” Kirsch continues, “the margin for improvements is on the whole probably lower, even though it varies quite a lot from one discipline lo the other. For instance, when Jurgen Schult set a new world record in the discus this year, he achieved the most considerable improvement ever registered in the 74 years of the history of world records.”

History has since decreed that the men’s discus, held up by Kirsch as an exception to the rule, has become the rule – Schult’s world record remains the longest standing within men’s Olympic events.

Also in 1986, Lothar Pöhlitz offers his thoughts on the Practical Experiences of Altitude Training with Female Middle Distance Runners.

Pöhlitz, who prepared female West German middle distance runners at altitude in St Moritz between 1982-84, recalls: “In these years I repeatedly met there the successful Swiss runners Markus Ryffel and Pierre Deleze as well as the Austrian runners Millonig and Nemeth. In 1985 the Norwegian female runner Kristiansen prepared herself for her 10,000m-world record (30:59.42) at St. Moritz.”

He adds: “If the altitude training in these phases is optimally done, it will be as effective as a considerably longer training phase (4 to 5 weeks) at sea-level.”

Pöhlitz concludes: “The stay at altitude should be followed by a three to four week phase of systematic intensification according to the principles of preparation for a competitive peak. This phase is also divided into three parts: — three to four days of reacclimatisation/ regeneration; — 10 to 12 days of high training loads; — eight to 10 days of developing a high level of performance.

 “Up to the 28th day after the retun to sea-level very good performances in peak-competitions could be observed. The high performance-level could be maintained for several weeks.”

By way of evidence, he cites the achievements of two of his athletes, Margrit Klinger and Brigitte Kraus, who finished respectively fourth in the 800m and second in the 3000m at the inaugural IAAF World Championships at Helsinki in 1983. Klinger ran on the 24th, and Kraus the 25th day after returning to sea-level.

The following year, 28 days after returning to sea-level, another of Pöhlitz’s athletes, Roswitha Gerdes, finished fourth in the Olympic 1500m final in Los Angeles.

Among the top 30 most-read articles is The Sprints, a 2009 piece contributed by Jürgen Schiffer, the Vice-Director of the Central Library of the German Sport University in Cologne and the Documentation Editor of NSA.

Schiffer’s wide-ranging piece includes an intriguing discussion about finishing techniques, crediting Arthur Duffy of Great Britain as the originator of the “lunge” finish by 1900.

American Bernie Wefers tried to improve Duffy’s method and developed the ‘shrug’. This was accomplished by throwing one side of the body into the string with one hand held high, and the other held back behind the body. The forward lean of the ‘lunge’ was maintained but the tape could be broken roughly 12cm sooner, since the side of the body could be brought that much nearer the string than the chest. As far back as 1904, J. W. Morton attempted a "throw" at the finish.

About 20 yards from the tape he took a long breath, pulling himself together for a final effort. In the case of a close finish, at about eight feet from the tape he threw himself off the right leg, striking the tape with the left breast and saving himself from collapsing with the left leg. During the 1920s, Charley Paddock of the USA made occasional and successful use of a full jump at the finish.

There was an echo of the Wefers technique more than 90 years later when the women’s world 100m title went to fellow American Gail Devers after she had recorded the same time – 10.82 – as Merlene Ottey of Jamaica. While Ottey made a more conventional lunge for the line, Devers crossed it a matter of a few thousandths of a second earlier by twisting her body at the finish.

If I am correctly interpreting the method of selection offered, the three most-read articles since the first pieces were requested in 1986, in reverse order, were these:

Bubbling under at number three, The Systematic Development of Talent for Heptathlon, a paper presented by Lyle Sanderson to the International Congress on Youth Athletics at Mainz in 1987.

Flying high at number two, NSA Photosequences 6 and 7 of Italian 3000m steeplechaser Francesco Panetta, which shows him clearing the water jump on one of the last laps at the 1986 European Championships in Stuttgart, where he finished second.

And top of the pops, No1, geek-pleaser par excellence, is…wait for it….Biomechanical Characteristics of Sprint Running during maximal and supra-maximal speed. Yes, the old favourite…

Supported by a grant from the Italian Olympic Committee, Carmelo Bosco and Carlo Vittori concluded after a very methodical and mathematical investigation into the subject: “Running speed is influenced by two mechanical parameters: stride length and stride rate. These two parameters have a different evolution during running. At higher running velocities, stride length levels off whereas stride rate continues to increase.

“This study demonstrates how, at supra-maximal velocity (created artificially by means of a "towing" System), these two parameters evolve differently from what could be expected on the basis of theoretical calculations. In fact, while stride length increases in a specific way, stride rate surprisingly increases less than what is expected.”

It’s tempting at this point to hazard a guess as to what might happen to the sprint “guinea pigs” who have been “towed” to facilitate this research. Up the speed, and I bet you’ll find the stride rate picks up again. Up it more, and both stride rate and length will revert to zero…