Mike Rowbottom: New research confirms Lomu car-crash rugby

It was, in retrospect, akin to the feeling inspired by watching Usain Bolt run away from fields of top class athletes over the 100 and 200 metres in recent years, Bolt being simply bigger, stronger and faster to the point where it seems almost unfair.

Back in 1995, the same sense of injustice was aroused as the sporting world watched and wondered at a 20-year-old bulldozer of a New Zealand rugby union player named Jonah Lomu who turned the Rugby World Cup in South Africa into an exhibition of man-against-boys.

The All Blacks eventually ran up against Will Carling's men of England in the semi-final at Cape Town, and I recall being despatched, bizarrely, just down the road from my home to watch the match on television. Reason being, Bishop's Stortford Rugby Club old boy Ben Clarke had recently established himself in the England team. Colour piece therefore required from the clubhouse.

Within three minutes of the start, Jonah Lomu had done serious damage to the atmosphere of excited anticipation within Bishop's Stortford Rugby Club and also, a little more importantly, to a succession of bold, doomed Englishmen, all built on human scale, who had attempted to prevent him scoring the opening try. It would prove to be one of four he contributed to New Zealand's 45-29 win. Colour piece? Colour it black. Or rather, All Black.

I recall the stunned silence brought about by Lomu's first flourish after he had had to double back and pick up a misfired pass from a colleague. Despite losing all momentum at that point, once he started to roll towards the England line his progress became inexorable as white shirts flew at him like so many pieces of paper in a high wind.

Tony Underwood's attempt to come to grips was brutally severed. An attempted tap-tackle by Carling, never a lissom player at the best of times, proved entirely futile as Lomu moved through the gears, with only one man between him and a score - full back Mike Catt.

All Black Jonah Lomu has shrugged off Tony Underwood and is evading Will Carling's tap tackle, which means that England full back Mike Catt is about to get run over as the New Zealander scores the first of four tries in his side's semi-final win at the 1995 Rugby World Cup ©Getty Images

Catt, who would have his moment of World Cup glory eight years later when his kick to touch concluded England's victory over Australia in the final, squared up to the oncoming black mass, legs apart, arms awaiting, and was simply run over, ending up doubled over on his back.

For England followers, it was car-crash TV. Lomu being the car.

This image of England players as so much roadkill came back to mind this week as I was introduced to a recent piece of research led by the University of Derby in a collaborative project with the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

Over a period of two years, Professor Nick Draper, head of Life Sciences at the University of Derby, and PhD student Angus Lindsay have working with researchers at the New Zealand Rugby Union and the Canterbury Health laboratories in monitoring the physical impact on the University of Canterbury's rugby players as if they were victims of a car crash.

Steve Gieseg, Associate Professor of Biological Studies at the University of Canterbury, who led the New Zealand branch of research, said: "Our team found levels of damage occurring in Canterbury rugby players after games which were in the ranges expected from serious trauma.

"The level of damage was greater than could be predicted from GPS (global positioning system) or video analysis. The measurements also show that some players could heal from this damage remarkably quickly."

Stress levels rising - Italy's Sandro Ceppolino faces the oncoming Lomu during his side's 101-3 defeat in the first round of the 1999 Rugby World Cup ©AFP/Getty Images

The researchers developed a set of non-invasive and stress-free biochemical tests to measure the level of damage occurring in rugby players using only urine and saliva, enabling them to investigate 44 samples per game (before and after the game for each player), without the need to draw large amounts of blood for tests.

The team optimised and refined proven measurements of stress-load while treating the players' data as if they were car accident victims.

Professor Draper said: "Our research measured several bio-chemicals in the urine and saliva to gain a global view of how players responded to the physical stress of an individual game.

"For instance, when a player damages a muscle, a bio-chemical marker of this damage can be traced in the urine using high-performance liquid chromatography. We can then interpret this to examine the extent of such damage for an individual player.

"During the research, the measurements tested the level of muscle damage, inflammation, immune resistance and mental stress. The measurements can be used to assist coaches and medical staff to manage players' recovery and training during different phases of competition."

Usain Bolt leaves the rest of the world's 100m runners for dead in the final of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, clocking a world record of 9.69sec. Easily ©AFP/Getty Images

Sadly for Underwood, Carling and Catt, the recovery package has come almost 20 years too late.
Meanwhile, as the Zurich Weltkasse meeting prepares to do its best to do without the aforementioned Bolt, who announced earlier this week that he was bringing his stop-start, but mostly stop season to a final halt, there is news of further medical research clarifying just why it is that the best sprinters are so fast - faster even than the most fleet of performers in other sports, such as, well, Jonah Lomu.

New data from the Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, concludes that the world's fastest sprinters have a distinctive ability unlike other runners to attack the ground and attain faster speeds, indicating there's only one way to sprint really fast.

The sprinters tested by researchers, more than half of whom had international experience at Olympic or World Championship level, all used this same mechanism for maximizing force application and sprinting performance, unlike other athletes who were tested - those playing competitive soccer, lacrosse and football.

"Our new studies show that these elite sprinters don't use their legs to just bounce off the ground as most other runners do," said human biomechanics expert and lead author on the studies Ken Clark, a researcher in the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory. "The top sprinters have developed a wind-up and delivery mechanism to augment impact forces. Other runners do not do so."

Elite sprinters do things differently to even the fleetest of competitors in other sports, according to recent research from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas ©Getty Images

Previous studies had established that faster runners attain faster speeds by hitting the ground more forcefully than other runners do in relation to their body weight. However, how faster runners are able to do this was fully unknown. That sparked considerable debate and uncertainty about the best strategies for athletes to enhance ground-force application and speed.

The critical and distinctive gait features identified by the study's authors occur as the lower limb approaches and impacts the ground, said study co-author and running mechanics expert Peter Weyand, director of the SMU Locomotor Performance Lab.

"We found that the fastest athletes all do the same thing to apply the greater forces needed to attain faster speeds," Weyand said. "They cock the knee high before driving the foot into the ground, while maintaining a stiff ankle. These actions elevate ground forces by stopping the lower leg abruptly upon impact."

The new research also indicates that the fastest runners decelerate their foot and ankle in just over two-hundredths of a second after initial contact with the ground.

"Elite speed athletes have a running pattern that is distinct," Clark said. "Our data indicate the fastest sprinters each have identified the same solution for maximizing speed, which strongly implies that when you put the physics and the biology together, there's only one way to sprint really fast."

Interesting. Then again, if you're Jonah Lomu, you don't need to be fast to be effective.

When Catt finally ended his playing career in 2010, after 76 England caps and a World Cup winners' medal, one Australian newspaper's headline read: "Jonah Lomu's speedbump retires."

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £8.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.