Forecast 100m Final Men
IAAF World Championships in London 2017, and again one big question is who will be the fastest man on earth. It seems that there are the same protagonists as last year in Rio. Usain Bolt on his last big event and his challenger Justin Gatlin. The third man on the podium in Rio, Andre De Grasse, is injured, so there is room for new faces. One could be Christian Coleman who ran to a seasonal best this year, or Julian Forte with the fastest time in the heats. To get an impression of which athletes have good chances to qualify for the final and what time they will run, we take a closer look at the data (www.iaaf.org). For each athlete we analyzed his historical marks to predict his time for the final. We used machine learning methods for the prediction – specifically a smooth trend over time, wind speed during the competition and some indicator variables as explanatory variables. These indicator variables capture whether the competition was a final or not and whether it took place at a World Championships (WC) or Olympic Games.
Estimated Time for Usain Bolt
Let us take a look at Usain Bolt’s data. The yellow line represents an average smooth trend over time. The blue points are the times of the heats at WC or Olympic Games – those are usually higher than the yellow average, which indicates that he has not run at full speed in the heats (as you can see at the last few meters when he turns his head and smiles at his challengers). The orange points reflect the times at the semi finals and are usually a little bit lower than the yellow average line. The golden points are the times of the finals, and here it gets clear that at the finals he is considerably faster than usual. Therefore his predicted time for the final is 9.82 (red point). The horizontal red lines represent a 95% prediction interval for this estimated time.
Prediction for Qualified Athletes
If we analyze the data from the other athletes in the same way – assuming there is enough data available – we get a predicted time with a 95% prediction interval for each athlete. The results are shown in the figure below. This figure shows that Usain Bolt again has the best preconditions to win the final. Justin Gatlin seems to be his closest challenger, and Christian Coleman and Yohan Blake will fight for third place. Then there is a small gap, followed by eight athletes (Ben Youssef Miete – Andrew Fisher) who have a good chance to qualify for the final. After a second gap, all athletes with an estimated time slower than 10.06 will have to give their best to make the final.
Forecast after Semi Finals
Update: 5.8. 21:20
After the semi finals it looks like Usain Bolt is again the favourite for gold, but he has a new young challenger in Christian Coleman. Justin Gatlin did not have a great semi final, but history shows that he can push harder in the final. The fourth medal contender is Yohan Blake. At 22:45 CET we will see who wins gold at the IAAF World Championships in London 2017.
