The fastest race ever run

The fastest race ever runAug 7th 2012, 16:46 by J.P.∙∙THE final of the 100-metre dash at the London Olympics alwayspromised to be snappy. Besides Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man, it featured the three next-zippiest men on record. Even so, the race on the evening of August 5th exceeded expectations. Most obviously, Mr Bolt dispelled any lingering doubts about his form by setting a new Olympic best of 9.63 seconds—0.06 seconds quicker than his mark in Beijing four years ago (though still 0.05 seconds slower than his world-record performance in Berlin in 2009). Even moreremarkably, Mr Bolt appeared to be making an effort, actually dipping his head as he hurtled across the finish line.But Mr Bolt was not the only star performer on Sunday night. Seven competitors came in under ten seconds, and Asafa Powe ll, Mr Bolt’s Jamaican teammate, would doubtless have done so, too, were he not hobbled by an injury that caused him to limp across the finish line two seconds behind the rest of the field. Mr Powell has broken the ten-second barrier on 79 occasions, more than any other sprinter. All three men on the podium—Mr Bolt; a fellow Jamaican, Yohan Blake; and Justin Gatlin, from the United States—clocked less than 9.80 seconds. The times for the runners who came in third through seventh were the best ever recorded for each of those places. The average time of the seven uninjured participants was 9.82 seconds, 0.1 seconds quicker than in both the Beijing and Berlin finals. This makes it the fastest race ever run, according to Infostrada Sports, a sports data company.There are reasons to think that the London race might retain the title for the foreseeable future. Athletes seem invariably to be edging towards the limits of what is humanly possible—at least on paper. This appears to be especially true of athletics: Mr Bolt’s Olympic record was just the third set so far in track and field.Nate Silver, a blogger for the New York Times and sports statistician, points out that only five world records in track and field were broken in Beijing out of 47 events. Even that was a decent tally: the previous four Olympics saw a total of just seven new world bests, compared with a whopping 22 world records in swimming. Mr Silver atrributes this disparity to economic inequality. “An athlete with the perfect swimmer’s build,” he writes, “and a world-class work ethic would still stand little chance of competing in this year’s games if he happened to be born in a poor nation like Cameroon or Panama—he might never have gotten into a pool, let alone an Olympic-size one.”Running, in contrast, is more democratic. As a consequence, the worldwide pool (if you will) of talent has been tapped longer than it has in swimming, and many of the gifted outliers have been identified. This leads to smaller deviations from the historical trend, since the field is already dominated by exceptional individuals. It might help explain why a single track-and-field world record has yet to fall in London (and why performance dipped during the two world wars, when fewer competitors took part in fewer competitions, see chart). Meanwhile, eight have already tumbled in aquatic events, despite the ban since 2010 on the tight-fitting, full-body swimsuits widely cited as the main reason for Beijing’s record haul. Anothereight world records have been set in weightlifting, mostly in women’s events, which only debuted in the Olympics in 2000, and where envelope-pushing outliers are still in plentiful supply.Can anything be done to spur more world-beating results on the track? Technology is no panacea. The last truly big innovation in sprinters’ garb was the introduction of the running spikes, which date back to the 1860s (though steel spikes were replaced with lighter, ceramic ones in the 1990s). Moving from cinder to rubberised “tartan” tracks in the late 1960s also prompted faster speeds. (Some athletes have claimed that the London track is bouncier than others, but it meets the stringent criteria set by the IAAF, the sport’s go verning body.) The introduction of fully automated timing in the mid-1970s, in contrast, added on average 0.2 seconds to running times, by eliminating the reaction lag between the gun going off and officials starting the stopwatch.Times might edge down and distances jumped edge up in propitious atmospheric conditions. For instance, sprinters and jumpers tend to do better at higher altitudes or in warmer climes, both of which cause the air to be less dense, leading to reduced drag. In that regard, London, which is practically at sea level and unseasonably chilly to boot, is not the ideal venue for ground-breaking feats of athleticism. (The matter is somewhat more complicated for throws, in which rarer air means less drag but also less lift.)That leaves the influence exceptional individuals exert on rivals. Steve Haake, from Sheffield Hallam University in Britain, has looked at the performance of the top 25 athletes across a range of Olympic disciplines, some going back to 1891. He points to a notable improvement in the average times for the 100 metres since Mr Bolt burst onto the scene in 2008. These are not merely being flattered by the Jamaican’s stunning sprints; the blip persists even when his results are removed from the sample.Nor is it a matter of at hletes with Mr Bolt’s hitherto unusual, “linear” body type suddenly coming to the fore. His rivals in London were considerably shorter and stockier than he is. Aping his technique is unlikely to be the reason either. The three podium finishers in London all ran very different races. The 196cm (6'5'') Mr Bolt covered the distance in 41 strides. Mr Blake, who is 16cmshorter, needed 46, while Mr Gatlin, who is only 3cm taller than Mr Blake needed 42.5. In effect, Mr Bolt seems to be pulling the rest of the field behind him, if not literally in his slipstream. Precisely how or why this happens remains a mystery.Clearly, Mr Bolt cannot keep on acting as pacesetter for ever. Mr Haake could not identify other similar individual-induced bumps in his historical data, suggesting that such individuals are exceedingly rare. When—or indeed if—a successor emerges is anyone’s guess. Impatient fans of Olympic one-upmanship might want to turn their attention to swimming pools and weighlifting platforms.。