Has anyone broken a field event world record in practice?

Those Los Gatos meets were legendary. Some big performances over the years in all events. Tom Laris ran some amazing Masters times there back in the day. Those meets are still held during winter (weekends - during the day) and again in summer.

Definitely Sergey Bubka. His progression of the WR makes that pretty clear. He would break his own WR by one centimeter at a time to collect money bonuses. A quick wikipedia search says he did that 17 times indoor and 18 times outdoor collecting $40k every time he did it after 1992 at least. He had no interest in actually jumping to his limit at any meets because of that. I'm sure he broke the WR in practice all the time. The real question with him is how high his WR would be if he actually had jumped his best at every meet in his prime, rather than sandbagging for his own financial interest?

Yes of course it's happened. Haven't you ever meet a field event guy? They ALL set their PRs in practice or on a scratch.

"What's my PR? Well, I jumped 26-6 in practice one time, and I scratched on a 27 leap in a meet once. But technically, my PR is 19-3."

In 2016, Jenn Suhr set the current indoor pole vault world record at a small D3 meet at Brockport State after claiming she knew she was ready because she broke the record in practice three days earlier.

Dick Fosbury, of Fosbury Flop fame.

Debbie Brill, of Brill Bend, Canada, ey.

Ryun has the javelin record if you put the adjusted figures through Ventolins calculator

Gary Glitter wrote:

Yes of course it's happened. Haven't you ever meet a field event guy? They ALL set their PRs in practice or on a scratch.

"What's my PR? Well, I jumped 26-6 in practice one time, and I scratched on a 27 leap in a meet once. But technically, my PR is 19-3."

In my experience, it's usually the other way around. If they bother to tell you what they did in practice, it's always after they tell you their real PR. The reverse is bad form because literally every field athlete has exceeded their PR in practice, so it doesn't mean anything. You get so many repetitions in practice, and you don't need to worry about scratching. (Even if your "practice pr" wasn't a scratch, you were still able to be aggressive about the risk of scratching, which is a huge advantage.)

It's not like with running, where you might debate the legitimacy of claiming a PR from a team time trial, for instance. Sure, you wouldn't put it in a program, but I wouldn't really object to someone saying he's a 4:10 guy if his coach actually clocked him doing that. In running you have no advantages in practice that make the mark meaningless.

MeHereYouWhere?! wrote:

I jumped 2.46 in the high jump in October 2017.

No one was there to see it though. I claim I have the world record, much like UCF claims they are the national champions in college football this year.

A lot of people saw UCF beat the mighty SEC team from Auburn that beat the two SEC teams in the upcoming made for TV championship game. Sorry Paul FineBUM, but facts is facts.

hoo-ah wrote:

Debbie Brill, of Brill Bend, Canada, ey.

We spell it "eh", eh.

Canadian, eh wrote:

hoo-ah wrote:

Debbie Brill, of Brill Bend, Canada, ey.

We spell it "eh", eh.

... even though I will be the first to admit that "ey" makes far more phonetic sense.

Canadian, eh wrote:

We spell it "eh", eh.

Correction noted. Tx.

Started a thread on this last year, never caught much traction:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=7741053

My own personal best for Shotput I know is during practice, and is considerably better than my official competition PR. On the other hand, my High Jump PR from competition is 5 inches higher than anything I've cleared in practice.

Yes. And we don't need vento's calculator to compute.

Lynn Davies was being taped in 1967, monochrome cam, in Wales during training. Video evidence showed that he jumped ~8.40 in practice (contemporary WR shared by Boston and Ter-Ovanesyan @ 8.35). He also set his legitimate PR of 8.23 during that season. This was why he felt confident going into the Mexico OG. Davies said he was up for the challenge and that he felt he had the capacity not just to break the WR but to jump beyond 8.50 if required. Buuut, we all know what happened right away in that contest... Beamon destroyed him and every other LJ competitor totally, not just for that contest but basically for the rest of their careers. It wasn't worth training hard to jump PRs when they were so far behind the new WR.

THIS!

One interesting part of the field events is it isn't just measuring maximal ability like a 100m sprint, it is measuring the athlete's ability to hit maximal ability within a very narrow set of parameters. I am thinking of time controls, order of competition, ability to do warm-up attempts with the competition apparatus etc.

As well, in practice an athlete can take 10 flat-out attempts and mark the ones that aren't foul, a luxury that isn't there in a competition.

When do you think you'll hit your longest drive? When you hit a bucket of balls over the course of an hour (or as long as you like), with any effort and adjustments you want, or when someone puts you on the tee, hands you three balls, and says "This is it"?

The competition/adrenaline aspect could be missing, of course.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Ryun has the javelin record if you put the adjusted figures through Ventolins calculator

Nicely done.

I remember Ato Boldon in one of his IAAf Inside Athletics interviews joking with a retired field eventer-think it was long jump- that people think athletes PR or jump far in practice, because he said that nevers happens.The field eventer laughed too and agreed. Interestingly, I remember the athlete infamously had his PR- a big one to- with a headwind.

Dill Dickleson wrote:

Definitely Sergey Bubka. His progression of the WR makes that pretty clear. He would break his own WR by one centimeter at a time to collect money bonuses. A quick wikipedia search says he did that 17 times indoor and 18 times outdoor collecting $40k every time he did it after 1992 at least. He had no interest in actually jumping to his limit at any meets because of that. I'm sure he broke the WR in practice all the time. The real question with him is how high his WR would be if he actually had jumped his best at every meet in his prime, rather than sandbagging for his own financial interest?

Good example

2004 Olympic Trials - Women's PV.

Stacey Dragilia had won the event and requested the bar to be set at a new WR height. When the officials where setting the bar I went over to the meet director and asked him for a WR application. He asked "why?". I replied "because she is going to break the WR". He said "we will wait because she hadn't done it yet." I said " yes she did - two hours ago during her warm ups!"

Obviously it was not official but she cleared the bar with room to spare during the warm ups and the easily did it during the competition.

Martina Hellmann and Ilke Wyludda had a discus throw-off at an unofficial meet in Berlin to see who was going to nab a spot for the East German oly squad in '88.

Hellman threw 78.14 and Wyludda threw 75.36. The world record to this day is 76.80, and the next best throw after that is 74.56.