A trackside LED light system recently introduced in athletics is helping athletes keep a faster race pace and contributed to the improvement of three different records in a single evening at the Diamond League held last month in Paris.
The system, called WaveLight and produced by the company of the same name, consists of 400 LED lights spaced one metre apart around the ring of an athletics track, which light up intermittently marking a programmed pace before the race, usually the record time set in a certain speciality. The lights help runners keep a steady pace and remove some of the mental fatigue required to break records.
The president of World Athletics, the federation that regulates athletics worldwide, Sebastian Coe, said he was in favour of using WaveLight also because it allows spectators to be more involved in competitions: following the lights allows a non-expert audience to better understand how fast an athlete’s pace is in competition, something that may otherwise be difficult to assess, especially on television.
Sources: ilpost.it