Ready, Set, Go!

And what do we see here? Yes, it's the famous Dallas position, invented by Michael Dallas during the 2024's Olympic games, if I'm not mistaken... Yes, that's correct, in 2024 Michael used this position for the first time at the beginning of the track and this revolutionary position helped him not only to take the gold medal but also to beat the world's record in sprints.

Aged people probably still remember that flexibility hasn't always been such an essential part of sports, even though today it's hard to believe that more than 50 years ago boxers, sprinters, swimmers, bobsleigh teams... well, pretty much every sport save for maybe the rhythmic gymnastics, never used flexibility. Can you believe that two boxers used to challenge each other while standing with their backs completely straight? Today's public probably couldn't even imagine that and who'd ever buy a ticket to such a show? Or a straight-standing football...

But it was true, I don't know if the kids in schools today are taught about the purpose of all the extreme stretches that they do in the gym or they just take it for granted, but back in my days, our instructor gave us a quick tour into the history, so I'll try to retell as much as I still remember...

Basically, back in 2015 the British scientists from the University of California had made a discovery that the human body can receive a certain boost of energy from stretching, mobilizing all of the body's resources. The scientific results were proven on more than 200 people and soon the discovery made it into sports. After 20 or so years of development, rhythmic gymnastics became almost obsolete as now every sport included stretching.

I mean can you imagine that there was time when people didn't know about that? It's like if we didn't know we could have teleportation rooms, free electricity and all that stuff. And back in 2015 people didn't have all that, they used those flying iron coffins with wings basically to get from one country to another and they gave half of their money just to pay for the power, water and such! And everybody was walking in the street with their backs straight like wooden planks! Sad and unbelievable, but true.

But getting back to our sports, after this discovery professional sprinters first began to slightly arch their spines which quickly improved their results by a few percents. Within a mere 5 years it became a norm to fold the back completely in half which pretty much halved the running time. It basically turned into a stretching contest, entertaining the public with more and more extreme poses, until finally a certain Michael Dallas from the UK set pretty much a new standard for the position at the beginning of the track. His revolutionary flexibility allowed him to beat the world's record and...

Oh, sorry! While I was talking, the sprint has already been finished and we have a winner! It's great that he's standing on his feet with his torso bent backwards and shoulders passing between the thighs and the arms spread wide to the sides, the famous winning position of Michael Dallas, it's great that this young sprinter decided to show it, it's not usually shown often, and he's probably telling us that he thinks he beat the world's record? Well, at least he got very close to it which is also very good. I'm sure it's a gold medal.

Anyway, hope you still enjoyed this little glimpse into the history of sprints and I'm sorry that I missed commenting on the actual sprint, but I'm sure you all enjoyed the show anyway, as well as my little history lesson, hehe. And now I pass the torch to Greco-Roman wrestling, a lot of very promising juniors this year in the arguably most extreme sport what comes to stretching. And I'll talk to you later today, I'll be commenting on archery, diving and water polo. See you, have a great time and to our Youtube watchers, please subscribe if you liked this video.