The 2010 European Athlete of the Year Christophe Lemaître is currently training in Miami, Florida, until 29 January as the 20-year-old Frenchman prepares for the indoor season.
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| French sprint sensation Christophe Lemaitre. |
In March, he will be attempting to add the 2011 European Athletics Indoor Championships 60m crown to the three gold medals he won at last summer’s European Athletics Championships.
En-route to Miami, and accompanied by his coach Pierre Carraz, the European 100m, 200m and 4x100m champion stopped off at the research and development centre of his equipment manufacturer Asics in Kobe, Japan, for six days to get fitted up with a new custom-made pair of sprint shoes which he hopes will propel him to faster times.
His first day was devoted to taking measurements, of the various parts of his body, both manually and electronically, with a special focus on the feet, calves, thighs and pelvis.
During following days, he had a chance to test the shoes prepared for him along a 300m track assembled within the company’s research centre itself, while fitted with sensors and filmed by a bank of cameras under the watchful eye of Carraz.
The first proper prototypes of his new shoes will be delivered in the coming weeks while a refined version will then be supplied for the upcoming outdoor season, as Lemaître prepares for this summer’s World Championships in Daegu, South Korea.
Q: Can a sprinter improve his performance with a pair of custom-made shoes?
Christophe Lemaître: It’s impossible to reply to that question with any degree of certainty, but it can certainly have an effect. Clearly it’s a bonus, and if a new pair of shoes can enable me to gain one or several hundredths of a second, I won’t deprive myself of that, even though I’m aware that however good a material is, it will never replace a good training session.
Q: What do you expect from the material you’ll soon have at your disposal in competition?
CL: My new shoes will be more rigid. I’m going to have to get used to them, as ever, and that will take a bit of time. However, I’m very optimistic. The models I tested in Kobe were only prototypes, but they felt good.
Q: Did you enjoy the experience in Japan with two long days spent working with technicians in a research laboratory?
CL: I found the time there and the experience very interesting and highly instructive. I’d never had an opportunity to undergo a series of tests before. I discovered a whole heap of things about my body and my morphology. They’re all details of course, but I had no idea about them before. Asics’ technicians measured my segments and the diameter of my muscles and they were even capable of reproducing a 3D image of my body.
Q: What do you think of Japan?
CL: It was my second visit to the country and I feel at ease there. I particularly like the people; their politeness and the care they bestow on us. It’s quite incredible. However, my favourite thing of all in Japan is the manga cartoon work. I’m a huge fan.
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| Lemaitre won the men's 100m final at the European Athletics Championships in Barcelona in a photofinish. |
Q: Your next training session should now take you to Florida?
CL: Yes, I’m heading out there with part of the French team for a training session in Miami. It will involve a big work session, overseen by Renaud Longuevre, where I’ll have to concentrate all my efforts on the training, in the sunshine, so as to prepare as best I can for the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Bercy. Before that though, I must fully recover from my trip to Japan.
Q: With the eye of a coach, what have you learnt and retained from the long days Christophe spent in the research centre in Kobe?
Pierre Carraz: At the time I was very impressed by the means placed at our disposal, the computer equipment, the video, the sensors. I was also very taken by the expertise and enthusiasm of the researchers. On a technical level, these tests and measurements will be very useful once we have all the results in a few weeks’ time. However, they’ve already confirmed certain sentiments that I had in the field. Christophe has one flaw: both his feet fall inwards. We knew about the problem. A chiropodist monitored him for a long period, but it’s not enough. The images taken in Kobe clearly demonstrate the distortion on the ground.
Q: Could a new pair of custom-made shoes help him to correct this flaw?
PC: Certainly. Christophe already wears custom-made spikes when he runs. However, Asics’ technicians are going to make him some shoes which are even more well-designed. They want to get right to the core of the problem. Notably, the sole will be more rigid and the resulting performance is likely to be even better.
Q: Did these measurements reveal any other technical flaws?
PC: No. Christophe was scanned from head-to-toe. He ran with sensors placed just about everywhere. Times were then recorded in five-metre sections during a series of runs. The technicians boxed up nearly twenty videos. The work was very in-depth and the measurements were extremely advanced. They revealed that Christophe was pretty consistent and symmetrical.
Q: Previously, had you made use of video for training?
PC: Yes, sometimes. It’s always useful so I’ve already done it, but never with such sophisticated equipment. Added to that, the coach can’t hold the camera during a session. He has to watch the athlete through his own eyes. That’s why I’m very happy to have all the images taken in Kobe. By studying them in detail, in a quiet environment, I’ll be able to pick up a lot and use this to further improve his running technique.
The 2011 European Athletics Indoor Championships will be held in Paris at the Palais Omnisport Paris-Bercy between 4-6 March.