The track and field events of the XXIX Olympiad concluded on Saturday. Here are the results:

The American women took the Gold Medal in the women’s 4×400m relay, with anchor Sanya Richards passing Russian, Anastasia Kapachinskaya in the final meters. The Russian women took the Silver Medal and the Jamaican team earned the Bronze. In addition to Richards, the US team included Allyson Felix, Monique Henderson, and Mary Weinberg.

Nancy Langat of Kenya took the Gold Medal in the women’s 1500m event, followed by Iryna Lishchynskia and Nataliya Tobias of Ukraine for the Silver and Bronze Medals, respectively. American Shannon Rowbury finished …read more

The woman to beat in the women’s high jump competition is not from the US or Russia or China. She’s a 24-year-old Croatian woman, Blanka Vlasic. Vlasic is named for the Moroccan port city of Casablanca, where her father competed in the 1983 Mediterranean Games at the time of her birth. She’s the current World Champion and 2008 World Indoor Champion.
Vlasic, 24, competed in the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games, but failed to medal.

A Quick Look on the Athletics Discipline, High Jump
An athletics discipline since the 1896 Games, there are several high-jump techniques: scissors, western roll and straddle. All attack the bar from the side or face on and use the inner foot to take off.
Conversely, in the Fosbury flop, the athlete runs up in a curve, jumps by taking off from his outer foot and twists his body to clear the bar with his back. He finishes the movement by lifting his legs over the bar and landing on a mattress.
The back-first jump offers many improvements compared to traditional techniques: the curved …read more