Zacharias nearing 6 feet at age 60

[TrackCEO]

Thomas Zacharias of Germany (a 2.22 jumper and two-time Olympian) has upped the M60 age-group world record twice in recent weeks to 5-10 (1.78).

Details here:
http://masterstrack.com/blog/001369.html

K E N

[mrbowie]

This is obscene.

[TrackCEO]

This is obscene.

Hope you mean this in a nice way!

K E N

[Dietmar239]

And I thought I was doing fairly well having cleared 6'2" last year. At 60, I'll barely be able to clear a toilet rim.

[gh]

you usually don't hit it you swallow your pride and sit

[tafnut]

If I train really, REALLY hard over the next 4 years, I'm sure I can increase my current best a foot and jump 6' also!! Since a recent thread talked about how pathetic a 56-year-old's body is at producing testosterone, I'm sure that me taking testosterone replacement therapy will be considered 'natural', so I'll have no problem doubling my current squat PRs. That should do the trick . . .

[SQUACKEE]

If I train really, REALLY hard over the next 4 years, I'm sure I can increase my current best a foot and jump 6' also!! Since a recent thread talked about how pathetic a 56-year-old's body is at producing testosterone, I'm sure that me taking testosterone replacement therapy will be considered 'natural', so I'll have no problem doubling my current squat PRs. That should do the trick . . .

Serious question, if you could replace the exact same amount of testo you had at 20 would that be "cheating"?

[Atanvarno]

Zacharias did it again - 1,80m (~5'11) yesterday in Arrecife. Seems like 6' is definitely possible.
And he is involved in a heated discussion at leichtathletik.de (http://tinyurl.com/3ysfsy) purporting the superiority of the straddle over the flop.

[bambam]

you usually don't hit it you swallow your pride and sit

I swallow my pride and shit.

[jhc68]

Atanvarno... can you give us a brief summary of the straddle-flop viewpoints on the German site? Google translations are worse than nothing.

6 feet at 60 is really something but it might be a full-time occupation for Zacharias. Here (http://www.atleticanet.it/master/notizia.asp?id=6764) is a photo of him jumping in what appears to be someone's back yard!

Interesting website is linked to Ken's Master's article. It is an all-time age HJ WR graph by age, female and male (http://www.antenna.nl/weia/RecPyrEng.html) . I note that the WR for a 10 and 1/2 year old boy is by someone named Russel White achieved at San Fernando, CA, in 1981. Is this the same Russell White who later was a big-time HS athlete and D1 running back at Cal? Anyone know? Anyone? Anyone?

[Atanvarno]

If I can find some time later in the day I'll try to translate some excerpts. In the meantime you can watch a video

http://www.thomas-zacharias.de/zacharias_hochsprung.html

and some photos

http://www.thomas-zacharias.de/zacharias_hochsprung.html#weltrekord1

of his 1,79m jump.

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edit
I got Thomas' permission to translate his complete article "Reviving the flop/straddle debate" but that will take more than a day or a week, I'll post it here, when the translation is finished.