February 19, 2003

Just How FAST Is Your Start?

Nike Sprint Summit offers athletes an opportunity to learn how quick they are out of the blocks.

The presenters of the Nike Indoor Championships promised earlier this year that their inaugural Nike Sprint Summit would be the benchmark of sprint clinics for the future. Today, they made good on that promise with the announcement that FinishLynx™ System Developers, Inc. will not only showcase its ReacTime™ system at the Summit but will also devote approximately an hour to testing the reaction time of clinic participants!

In making the announcement, Clinic Coordinator, Cedric Walker, said that the ReacTime™ system is one of the most critical pieces of technology available to coaches today. “The sprint start makes or breaks the race,” he said. “How often have you seen athletes lose because they were left in the blocks? It’s the first thing we look for when there is an unexpected result at the finish line. Over the shorter distances, especially indoors, getting out can mean the difference between first and second.”

Giles Norton, Director of Corporate Communication at FinishLynx Developers, Inc. will be on hand to first demonstrate the inner workings of the system. “I'm bringing a two lane training system,” he said. “That’s two ReacTime™ units with built in audio, two sets of photo-eyes for measuring time-to-distance, and a computer projection unit so that we can display the graphs on a projection screen for people to look at.”

Following the initial demonstration, Norton and assistants will put as many sprint athletes through the system as possible producing a graph showing their reaction time. “They’ll be able to see the drive off of both legs and learn whether they’re driving straight out with a single push or two,” Norton continued. “This one push or two is referred to as having one hump or two based on the graph drawn by the computer attached to the blocks.”

But does the data produced by ReacTime™ actually help an athlete produce the ideal fast start? Norton says it can. “Athletes using the system to train can definitely improve their start,” he said. “An individual ReacTime™ module can be used to record and display an athlete’s gun-to-motion times to an accuracy of 1/1000th of a second.”

FinishLynx defines FAST as:

· Fast initial reaction time.

· Acceleration that is explosive.

· Short time in contact with the blocks

· Transitioning rapidly into running phase

Just how FAST are you? If you are an athlete registered for the Nike Indoor Championships your admission to the Nike Sprint Summit is free! To have your reaction time tested, however, you must be accompanied by your coach. Admission to the Nike Sprint Summit for coaches, parents and athletes not registered to compete at the NIC is just $10.00.! The Summit starts at 6:30p.m. on Friday, March 14, 2003 on the track at the Prince George Sports and Learning Center, Landover, Maryland. Plan on arriving on time as ReacTime™ testing will be done only until 7:30 p.m. and so will be available to a limited number of athletes. Competition in the Nike Indoor Championships will start on Saturday, March 15th at 9:00 a.m. and run until Sunday afternoon.

If you’d like to learn more information about the ReacTime™ system go to http://www.finishlynx.com/common/navigation/products/main_page/reactime_main.htm

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