The first task of the present study was to investigate the presence of a potentially underlying factor structure for ground-force application during the sprint start. The present NAS dataset was very well suited for such an analysis as it was sufficiently large and represented 100 m sprinters from all relevant performance categories, including even the highest level of performance. Although seven factors seem to be a good choice for proper representation of the variability contained in the ground-force application data set based on the Kaiser and elbow criteria, the results of the present study indicate that only five factors are needed to explain 86% of the variance observed in SP. The remaining two factors, which are related to force application in the mediolateral direction, did not significantly improve the predictive power of any of our multiple linear regression models. This suggests that no performance benefit would accrue from modifying a non-amputee’s starting-technique to minimize mediolateral-force application and achieve a straighter push-off in the forward direction.