The World Indoor Championships are right around the corner – and relatively speaking so are the Olympic Games. With so many top athletes not performing indoors, focusing instead of preparing for the outdoor season and ultimately the Games, it made me wonder which was more beneficial: using the indoor season to prepare, or continuing to train through the indoor season and opening in March/April instead.

Without undertaking a full scientific study on the subject, a quick and easy way to look at the matter would be to compare medalists from Indoor Worlds to those from the Olympics to see how well indoor success transferred to Olympic success. So here are the Olympic medalists from Valencia and Beijing.

2008 World Indoor Championships Medalists

2008 Olympic Medalists

The first thing that stands out, is that only three individual gold medalists were able to repeat their indoor performances outdoors:  Bryan Clay winning both multis; Valerie Vili the shot put; and Yelena Isinbayeva the pole vault. Coincidentally two of those runner ups also repeated outdoors: Andrey Kravchenko in the multis and Jenn Stuckzynski in the pole vault.

As a matter of fact, the field events saw several individiuals win medals indoors and out – especially on the men’s side, with nine athletes medaling in both events. On the track however, the indoor results could not have been more different as not a single individuals medalist indoors managed to pick up hardware in Beijing. The greatest irony being in the women’s 1500 where all three indoor medalists ran under 4:00, yet couldn’t medal in an Olympic final won in 4:00.23 – as a matter of fact none of the indoor medalists even made the Olympic final!

So it would seem that indoors seems to work in the preparation of the field eventers, but may not be that beneficial on the track. Something to think about while watching the upcoming Indoor Championships in Istanbul. I’ll be curious to compare charts again in September.

Tags: Olympics