Gatorade Bolt Race: Lachie Turner Became the Fastest Footballer in Australia

Forget about your instincts on Cristiano Ronaldo’s 100 metres time. He has never done or tested on the neither time trial nor real race of the 100 metres.

At least the renowned rugby player, Jonah Lomu of New Zealand has run the 100 metres and recorded 10.8s but it was achieved during the high school time. But I definitely doubt about the accuracy of the time as it raised questions like “was it an official time from an official 100 m race?...”

Since myself an athletics statistician, I would put this kind of unofficial timing just outside of my “annual performance lists,” and not even under the “doubtful timing” section. Because in the statistics, the precise measure of performances are the fundamental criteria to ratified the records.

However, the “Gatorade Bolt Race” that was held on the 15th September, 2010 at Sydney Olympic Park in Australia was excellent. They have chosen the eight identified-fastest footballers from Soccer, Australian Rugby Union (ARU), National Rugby League (NRL) and Australian Football League (AFL) in Australia to compete in the 100 metres sprint.

The race was conducted on the synthetic running track by equipped with the auto-timing system (fully electronic time), used the standard starting blocks and all the players worn the sprint spike shoes and running vests. Unfortunately, i didn't see any wind gauge instrument at the 50m mark from the video?

Usain Bolt with Lachie Turner after the 100m race

Lachlan 'Lachie' David Turner emerged as the Australia’s fastest footballer and bagged AUD 20,000 prize money home. Turner, the winger of the NSW Waratahs (and Eastwood Rugby Club) clocked a time of 11.10s, and perhaps became the fastest footballer in the world!? Why not, I haven't seen any other faster race to test the 100m times among the football players like this?

There is no official analysis about the race, but as you can see, Turner has a better top end speed and he covered the whole distance in 48 strides, the same number of strides with Tim Montgomery when he broke the 100 metres’ World record (9.78s) in 2002.

Second place went to Turner’s teammate John Grant in 11.15s, while Jarryd Hayne of Parramatta Eels third in 11.20s. Without proper practice on the blocks and accelerations, those times are respectable especially the times should be on the top 40 fastest in the “2010 Malaysia’s Top Performers" for 100 metres.

Following are the full results and video.

1, Lachie Turner, 11.10s
2, John Grant, 11.15s
3, Jarryd Hayne, 11.20s
4, Josh Morris, 11.44s
5, Ben Barba, 11.45s
6, Nathan Gardner, 11.77s
7, Matthew Lewis, 11.99s
8, Greg Inglis, 12.48s





Video courtesy of TeamDump (linked from youtube.com)