#610: Blowbalance

In olympic sprint events, the long jump and the triple jump a tailwind of greater than 2.1 meters per second (4.7 mph) will overturn an apparently record-breaking performance.

Today’s invention is a large fan which can be used to blast air towards the athletes, creating a synthetic headwind. This could be used to generate a uniform velocity profile across the track, by blasting turbulent air through a horizontal array of ducts.

Measurements, in realtime, of the natural local windspeed would be used to drive the fan speed so as to exactly counterbalance any tailwind at all times and thus render world records possible at every meet, irrespective of the weather conditions.