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| Wednesday March 15, 7:22 PM |
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LONDON (Reuters) - The difference between 100 metres world champion Maurice Greene and distance- king Haile Gebrselassie is the way they use oxygen, according to Italian scientists.
By plotting graphs of the speed of runners against time, Sandra Savaglio and Vincenzo Carbone were able to show that for distances below about 1,000 metres, the average speed of world record performance drops sharply as the distance increases. Above 1,000 metres the decline is more gentle.
"The transition between the two...corresponds to the switch from the anaerobic metabolism that is needed for short sprints to the aerobic metabolism used to supply energy for long distance races," the scientists said in the journal Nature.
For shorter running events athletes relied on anaerobic metabolism -- metabolism in the absence of oxygen -- which provides explosive short bursts of power.
For longer events aerobic -- oxygen dependent -- metabolism which only produces a slow, steady amount of energy takes over almost entirely, the researchers said.
The scientists said their research disproved theories that women were more efficient than men over long distances.
"In running, men and women show comparable efficiency: the commonly held belief that women are better than men in long distance races is not confirmed by our analysis," Savaglio and Carbone said.
In swimming events the change over between aerobic and anaerobic metabolism takes place at around 400 metres.
However women were better at swimming long distances -- perhaps because they were naturally more buoyant than men, the scientists said.
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