Athletics at the Beijing Olympics: how much faster can anyone run?

Athletics at the Beijing Olympics: how much faster can anyone run? Record after record was broken at the Beijing Olympic Games. Some were truly shattered. But how much faster can a man or a woman run and swim? How much further can a human being jump? Joseph Hilbe examines the forecasts. The recent Olympics were thrilling. We saw dozens of world record performances in swimming as well as in track and field athletics. Nearly every time Michael Phelps swam, the result was a new world and/or Olympic record. Usain Bolt ran 100m and 200m faster than any human has run in history. And it appeared that he will be able to run faster yet. Compare that with older records, hand-timed and over distances measured in yards. Timing with stopwatches is generally accepted to give a faster figure than electronic timings. International rules stipulate that 0.24 s be added to any hand-timed mark in the 100m or 200m event when converting between the two. For those who are old enough to recall the time when sprinters ran 100 yards, Bolt s electronic time of 9.69 s converts to hand time 100 yards of 8.7 s. As a comparison, 50 years ago, at the 1948 London Olympic Games, the 100m was won in 10.3 s, a 100 yards equivalent of 9.4/9.5 s. In half a century the record has been shaved by three-quarters of a second. Not much? Call it 7% and it sounds rather more impressive. How fast will men and women ultimately be able to run and swim? How fast for a 100m race? How fast for 1500m or a mile? Will humans be able to long jump 10m, triple jump 20m, put the shot 30m, or swim 100m freestyle in less than 40 s? Can they achieve these performances unassisted by chemicals or physiological enhancements? A number of studies have appeared in applied statistical journals, including journals devoted to sports statistics, in which the authors construct complicated mathematical formulae aimed at the prediciton of ultimate performances. Most authors use some type of nonlinear regression algorithm to justify their predictions, but others have tried a variety of more or less complex alternatives, including differential equations methodology. I will not, however, discuss these formulae in this venue the reason being that I will argue that such endeavours are, for the most part, worthless. Can meaningful comparisons be made of performances achieved 40 or 50 years ago to those of the present? It is a question worth asking of sports statisticians. Back then, records were set on dirt tracks. We now have artificial surfaces. How much difference, if any, has that made to performances? Do modern track shoes assist in achieving better performances than older types of shoes? If so, how much? Or is it that contemporary athletes are simply better than the athletes of a half century ago? Predictions and reality First, what are some of the predictions that have been made for track events? Kuper and Sterken, who authored a recent noteworthy study 1, used one of the above-mentioned complex formulae, a Gompertz distribution, to model previous performances up to and Usain Bolt ran 100 metres faster than any human has run in history. How much faster can anyone go? 153

Table 1. 2008 and ultimate performance times predicted by Kruper and Sterken 1 for track athletic events, compared with actual performance times (times given in seconds or minutes:seconds) Distance (m) Predicted for 2008 Predicted ultimate limit including the year 2005. Their conclusions are represented in Table 1. The predictions made by their model for best times, for various running distances, that would be achieved by 2008 are given in column 1, and their predicted ultimate human limits are displayed in column 2. As a guide to how accurate their predictions have proven to be or to how kind or unkind time has been to them I also provide the actual best performance for 2008 (column 3) and the current world record (column 4) for each distance. The year the world record was achieved is placed in parentheses. There are several points that can be made from a brief look at Table 1. First is the huge discrepancy for many of the predictions for 2008. Looking first at the men s events, we find that the only event in which a prediction was achieved (in fact bettered) is the men s 100m, asterisked in the table. Usain Bolt s 9.69 s was set at the 2008 Olympic Games and, at the time, was 0.05 s faster than any other human has legally run for the distance. The fact that he slowed down in the last 20m while prematurely celebrating his victory indicates that he may well be able to someday approach Kruper and Sterken s ultimate limit of 9.55 s. With a good start, maximum allowable wind of 2m/s (his record was run in zero wind) and excellent conditions, such a time appears to be possible. 2008 actual best World record (year) Men 100 9.71 9.55 9.69* 9.69 (2008) 200 18.94 18.54 19.30 19.30 (2008) 400 42.51 42.42 43.75 43.18 (1999) 800 1:39.08 1:39.01 1:42.69 1:41.11 (1997) 1500 3:20.64 3:10.98 3:31.49 3:26.00 (1998) 5000 12:26.76 12:13.60 12:50.18 12:37.35 (2004) 10 000 25:53.15 25:44.48 26:25.97 26:17.53 (2005) Marathon 2:01:11 2:00:56 2:04:53 2:04:53 (2008) Women 100 10.17 9.88 10.78 10.49 (1988) 200 20.34 20.30 21.74 21.34 (1988) 400 46.67 46.67 49.62 47.60 (1985) 800 1:50.42 1:50.42 1:54.01 1:53.28 (1983) 1500 3:47.87 3:47.87 3:56.59 3:50.46 (1993) 5000 14:19.27 14:19.17 14:11.15* 14:11.15 (2008) 10 000 29:04.97 29:04.23 29:54.66 29:31.78 (1993) Marathon 2:13:02 2:13:02 2:22:38 2:15:25 (2003) *2008 actual best times outperform the model predictions. However, ultimate implies that no-one will ever be able to run faster. Ever does not mean by 2015, or even by 2100 but by 10 000 AD as well, or at any time in the whole future history of mankind. I doubt that any knowledgeable athletic aficionado would seriously consider 9.55 s an ultimate. On the other hand, as shall be discussed later, I doubt that anyone will ever run faster than 9.40 s, unless the conditions of competition are changed. Several days afer his 100m world mark Bolt broke the 200m world record as well. His time of 19.30 s was run into a 0.9m/s wind, indicating a likelihood that he can run a faster time with superior conditions. I suspect that he will be able to run close to 19 s if all conditions are optimal. But Kruper and Sterken s predicted 200m limit of 18.54 s appears to be of a different quality to their predicted 100m limit. For one thing, it is 0.76 s faster than Bolt s current world record, whereas their 100m figure was just 0.14 s faster. More importantly, though, compare Bolt s 19.30 s record with the previous 19.32 s record set by Michael Johnson in 1996. Many track experts considered Johnson s record to be unbeatable, at least within the foreseeable future. At the time Johnson s time was considerably better than the next fastest human, Pietro Minnea, the Italian 1980 Olympic champion who ran 200m in 19.72 s, 17 years earlier, in 1979. Minnea had run his record performance at the high altitude of Mexico City, which, because of the thinner air, results in a faster time for sprints and superior performances in the horizontal jumps. Currently, the times of Bolt and Johnson are far ahead of their competition. The third fastest 200m in history is a 19.62 s run, achieved by Tyson Gay in 2007. Few athletes have run faster than Mennea s 1979 mark. A point should be made about Usain Bolt. He is the sprinter that for many years I have thought would emerge someday to eradicate current world standards. When just 15 years old Bolt ran 200m in 20.58 s. At 16 he ran it in 20.13 s, and at 17 in 19.93 s faster than any other human at those ages. At 16 he also ran 400m in 45.35 s, again faster than any one else for that age. At that same age he won the IAAF World Youth championship 200m, against the wind, in 20.40 s. Usain did not emerge on the athletic scene unknown. He did have problems with injuries. But he has two attributes, which together contribute to the making of the world s fastest human. He appears to be taller than his official 1.97m (6 5 ) height; and he has very fast leg speed. While most elite sprinters take 43 strides to complete 100m, Bolt takes 40. With a near 10-foot (3m) stride length at top speed, he covers ground at a faster rate than anyone in history. The only athlete I can recall that resembled Bolt is Tommie Smith, the first athlete to run faster than 20 s for the 200m electronically. Smith ran 19.83 s to win the 1968 Olympic 200m final with an injury which kept him from running at full speed. In 1966 he ran a 19.4 s 200m on the straight on a dirt track. Smith was also the fastest 400m runner in the world. Smith s time was 44.3 s at the 400m, on a dirt track with short sharp turns. Smith was 1.93m (6 3½ ) in height. At the awards ceremony on the Olympic winners podium that year Smith famously, and unforgettably, made the Black Power salute. Because of that he was not allowed to participate in the sport again at an international level. Smith was only 22 years old and had many years left in which to improve. Instead of the top sprinters being small and powerful, the future sprint elite are likely be tall and strong. Note that Marion Jones, who won five gold medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, was taller than nearly all of her competition at 1.78m (5 10 ). (In 2007 Jones confessed to having used a banned substance before the Games and having lied to grand juries about a steroid-supplying drugs ring.) For the other men s events, no one has come close to meeting the Kruper and Sterken 154

predicted 2008 marks, much less their all time limits. Moreover, it is relatively simple to spot a glaring inconsistency in the predictions. Consider the limits for the men s 800m and 1500m. Kruper and Sterken believe that the 800m event can only be improved by 2.1 s from the current record, but the 1500m will be run faster by 15 s. They also predict that the difference between the 2008 best and ultimate limits for the 800m is a mere seven one-hundredths of a second; for the 1500m the difference is a predicted 10 s. The model, as I shall refer to Kuper and Steken s work, predicts that, ultimately, an athlete will run the 1500m in 3 min 11 s, which converts to an approximate 3 min 26 s mile (the current record for the mile, set in 1999, is 3 min 43.13 s). To achieve a time of 3 min 11 s for 1500m, an athlete would have to run an average 400m (one lap of the track) at a bit faster than 51 s for 3.75 laps. If an athlete were running at a constant pace, he would run the first 800m in 1 min 41.9 s, only 0.8 s off the current world 800m record and less than 3 s off the ultimate world 800m limit. Many state high school (secondary school) 400m championships are won at the pace that the model predicts the ultimate athlete to keep up for 3¾ times the distance. There is simply no possibility that an athlete will ever run this fast without artificial physiological enhancements. It is possible that genetic engineering might produce human organisms that are able to perform at this level, but given the rate at which performances have improved over the past 30 40 years, adjusted for improved conditions of competition, it is highly unlikely that such dramatic improvements will occur. The same problem of having unrealistic predictions are found in the men s distances, where the model predicts 5000m (3.1 miles) to be run at a 3 min 56.2 s per mile pace. This is a highly unlikely feat unless aided by artificial enhancements. The East and North African athletes who currently excel in the distance events train at a level beyond which an organism will break down. I believe that those athletes are particularly suited to running distances. But even their incredible training programme did not bring any athlete close to the 2008 predictions. I have emphasised male athletic running performances, but do not mean to denigrate female achievements, nor, for that matter, male field events. I focus on men s running events because most of the studies of performance and ultimate limits have been centred in this area. Another reason is that the Table 1 predictions for most female running events are totally unrealistic. First, except for the 100m, the 2008 predictions are either identical, or nearly identical, to the ultimate limit of what a female athlete can achieve. There is absolutely no evidence to suppose that performances achieved by 2008 represent any ultimate limit of performance. There may very well be better female athletes training now for 2012. On the other hand, except for the sprint events, it is likely that female athletes will someday surpass the supposed ultimate limits. In fact, the 5000m ultimate has already been surpassed, by the 22-year-old Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibala (also asterisked in Table 1). It is likely that she will run faster in coming years, and she has an excellent chance of bettering the 10 000 ultimate mark. In fact, I would not be surprised to see every ultimate over 400m surpassed in the next decade. The situation in sprints, however, is different. Having coached women at every level from age group to Olympic athlete, it is clear The women s 100m record set by Florence Joyner has stood unbroken for 20 years. to me that unless females are allowed to have increased testosterone in their systems, and are allowed various physiological and perhaps genetic enhancements, the sprint limitations will never be achieved. The world 100m and 200m marks were set 20 years ago by the late Florence Griffith-Joyner with times of 10.49 s and 21.34 s, respectively. Known as Flo-Jo, and sporting trade-mark immensely-long painted fingernails, she was a flamboyant figure as well as a fast one. Many observers who witnessed her 10.49 s, achieved during the quarter-finals of the 1988 US Olympic trials in Indianapolis, believed the performance to be wind-assisted, but the anemometer surprisingly showed no wind at all. By 1987, at the age of 27, Griffith- Joyner had a personal best 100m of 10.96. But in 1988 she broke the world standard of 10.76 by nearly three-tenths of a second in 10.49. Her next legal mark was 10.61 at the finals of the same meet where she shattered the world record. Two months later Griffith-Joyner won the Olympic 100m in a wind-assisted 10.54. Due to her meteoric improvement, she was dogged with rumors of steroid use, but always passed evaluation. She retired after her incredible season. Today, Marion Jones has the second fastest women s 100m an altitude assisted 10.65 s, run in 1998. If we wish to discount her marks, the next fastest athlete is Christine Aaron (France), with a time of 10.73 s, also set in 1998. Given the lack of world record improvement in the women s 100m over the past 20 years, and likewise the same lack of improvement in the 200m, what does the model predict? Kuper and Steken s model predicts a 10.17 s 100m in 2008 and an ultimate limit of 9.88 s. Multiple Olympic champion Carl Lewis, who held the world 100m record in 1988, never ran as fast as 9.88 s. He would have been 4m behind! The model predicts that the women s 200m record will be 20.34 s in 2008. That s a full second faster than Griffith- Joyner s 20-year-old record. No female athlete yet has approached Joyner s time. The fastest of this decade is Veronica Campbell-Brown s ( Jamaica) 2008 Olympic win of 21.74 s. Quite a difference from 20.34 s! The other model-based prediction lists that I have seen give us similarly erratic ranges of predicted performances. Kuper and Steken s model is one of the best. However, a knowledgeable track statistician can predict performances that come much closer to those actually achieved than the statistical models have produced thus far. Equipment, training and techniques Improvements in athletics tend to occur by jumps, especially when the event has been contested for many years. At times world marks improve as a result of enhanced conditions of competition, as in the late 1960s when many tracks were converted from dirt to artificial surfaces. The artificial surface track constructed for the 1996 Olympics was particularly hard and thin, providing sprinters with a faster track. The same construction was used for the 2008 Olympic track in Beijing. Michael Johnson ran his astonishing 200m at the 1996 Olympics; Usain Bolt broke both the 100m and 200m world records in Beijing. The high altitude of Mexico City and its artificial track surface, which was still rare at the time, contributed to world marks being run in all three of the male sprint events, and the world long-jump record was bettered by nearly two feet. Other factors that bear on record performances relate to changes in equipment, and to new techniques. For example, the fibreglass 155

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pole introduced in the early 1960s revolutionised the pole vault. Within a few years of use, not only was Cornelius Warnerdam s 1942 record vault of 15 7¾ (4.77m) surpassed, but the 16 (4.88m) and 17 (5.18m) barriers were broken as well. The record is now 6.14m (20 1¼ ), set in 1994 by Sergey Bubka of Russia. In 1967, Dick Fosbury of Oregon State University experimented with a new backward technique in the high jump. His best jump of the year was 2.10m (6 10¾ ), which made the US list. He perfected the method during the following year, resulting in a jump of 2.24m (7 4¼ ) to give him the Olympic title and one of the best jumps of all time. His method immediately caught on and by 1973 just 5 years later nearly all top high jumpers were using the Fosbury flop. The best performance in 1973 was Dwight Stone s world record jump of 2.30m (7 6 5 /8 ). The 50th top performer of that year leaped 2.18m, a performance surpassed by only four athletes 5 years prior. In fact it is impossible to predict with any confidence world records for a century or more in the future. Conditions of competition have changed in the past, and likely will change in the future as well. We have no way of knowing if certain types of performance enhancement drugs will be allowed in the future, or whether or not genetic engineering, within defined constraints, will be prohibited. Suppose that in 100 or 200 years time nearly all babies born will have been screened for genetic disabilities, or will have been adjusted with enhanced growth hormones, or superior physiological capabilities for utilising oxygen. We simply do not know what the future will bring. To divine legal world records from constructed regression procedures seems to me to be a fruitless enterprise, and misleading at best. Tenth best stays the same There is another way to view increased performance that lessens the anomalous recordbreaking athlete from being our criterion of improvement The results of this approach demonstrate that improvement in male track and field events has been marginal over the past 40 years. Go back earlier than that, and you find that conditions of competition and training methods were so different that comparisons with current performances are inherently biased. In addition, there is a financial factor. As athletics becomes more profitable, more top athletes will turn to, or stay with, track and field events rather than turning to American football or soccer. In 1984 Carl Lewis won Table 2. Tenth best male performance (in metres) for each event in the Olympic years listed Year Discus 10th top throw four athletic gold medals at the Los Angeles Olympics, duplicating Jesse Owens achievements in 1936. He was also probably the first track athlete to earn more than $1 million per year in the sport. During the 1990s athletes like Michael Johnson and Marion Jones were earning multi-million dollars per year. Now the tendency is for the money to be spread to all elite level athletes, with bonus money for the best. Track and field can now be viewed as a profession, as is golf and tennis. This has definitely changed the sport, with a result that average elite level improvements will likely occur at a much slower rate than 40 or 50 years ago unless the rules of competition change. I consider the performance of the 10th best athlete in an event for a year to be a superior comparative indicator of athletic performance than is the top performance. I also believe that performances achieved in an Olympic year give a more meaningful indication of performance than do other years. In an Olympic year, most top athletes participate and aim to achieve their peak performance at their nations Olympic trials or at the Olympic Games themselves. Olympic years nearly always result in the top performances in comparison with contiguous years. High jump 10th top jump Long jump 10th top jump 1968 62.68 2.18 8.07 1972 64.48 2.21 8.07 1976 66.02 2.25 8.09 1980 67.68 2.29 8.13 1984 67.76 2.33 8.28 1988 67.38 2.36 8.31 1992 65.90 2.33 8.28 1996 66.70 2.33 8.33 2000 68.35 2.31 8.33 2004 66.73 2.32 8.28 2008 67.91 2.32 8.25 Table 3. Mean estimations for the 10th best male performance (in metres) in Olympic years Event Mean SE Range 1984 2008 (95% CI) Discus 67.25 0.321 66.46 68.03 Long jump 8.29 0.011 8.27 8.32 High jump 2.33 0.006 2.31 2.34 Table 2 displays the 10th best performances in the Olympic years between 1968 and 2008 for three field events: discus, high jump and long jump. The mean performance for this data with a 95% binomial confidence interval (CI) (meaning that the true mean performance will be within this range 95% of the time) leads us to Table 3. Prior to 1984 use of anabolic steroids in the field events was widespread, particularly in the weight events. Moreover, the USA sponsored a boycott against the Moscow Olympic Games of 1980. When hearing of the boycott, several of the top US athletes chose not to seriously train and compete. An athlete I trained, Terry Albritton, had broken the world shot record in 1976, but had failed to make the US squad. He wanted very much to win his event at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. However, on hearing of the boycott, he retired from the sport. Most athletes did not simply quit, but many did not train as hard. Performance standings were therefore affected by the boycott. The Soviet boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics meant little to world standings. The Soviets and other boycotting nations held numerous alternative contests, Table 4. Comparing 10th best performances (in metres) in two Olympic years for male field events Event 10th best performance in year 1984 2008 Discus 67.76 67.91 High jump 2.33 2.32 Long jump 2.28 2.25 157

Table 5. Tenth best times logged during Olympic year for male track events (times given in seconds or minutes:seconds) Year 100m (s) 200m (s) with outstanding performances being acknowledged on world ranking lists. I therefore averaged performances for the period beginning in 1984 and ending with the recent 2008 season. An overview of the 10th best performances throughout the range 1984 2008 show that little if any improvement has been made. Comparing 1984 with 2008 performances for these three field events gives us Table 4. It appears that in the events listed in the table, male athletes have not been steadily improving, as the typical models of performance assume. Next, in Table 5, we look at the running events, showing performances from 1956 through to 2008. Since electronic timing was not the official standard for maintaining records until 1976, I calculated the mean 10th performance for the period 1976 2008 (Table 6). Several conditions of competition changed during this time in particular the influx of money into the sport after 1984. 400m (s) 1500m (min:s) 1956* 10.3 21.0 46.4 3:42.4 1960* 10.2 20.7 45.8 3:41.5 1964* 10.2 20.5 45.7 3:39.7 1968* 10.0 20.2 45.2 3:38.9 1972* 10.0 20.3 45.1 3:38.3 1976 10.21 20.45 45.14 3:37.70 1980 10.18 20.36 45.33 3:34.11 1984 10.14 20.34 44.83 3:34.20 1988 10.06 20.18 44.61 3:34.68 1992 10.14 20.20 44.90 3:34.18 1996 10.01 20.17 44.51 3:32.90 2000 10.02 20.03 44.70 3:32.01 2004 10.01 20.17 44.72 3:31.10 2008 9.95 20.17 44.70 3:32.16 *Hand timing (the official method of recording records at the time). Training methodologies have also improved. To cite just one example of such serious weight training is now part of the training regime of both sprinters and middle distance runners. This was generally not the case in the 1970s and early 1980s. It has served to make athletes stronger and faster. Notice that the performances of the 10th best athlete during the past 10 or 11 Olympic years have not significantly improved. There are exceptions, such as this year s 100m. But for the most part, the average elite level athlete is generally performing at the same level now as they have for the past 30 years at a 95% confidence interval. In the distance races, the influx of North and East African athletes in the 1970s revolutionised the events from the 1500m through to the marathon. Even the 800m has changed. But middle distance and distance performances are now staying much as they have been for the past 10 15 years. There may be improvement in the sprints if more tall athletes having fast twitch muscles Table 6. Mean estimations for the 10th best male performances in Olympic years for track events (times given in seconds or minutes:seconds) Event Mean SE Range 1976 2008 (95% CI) 100m 10.08 0.030 10.01 10.15 200m 20.23 0.043 20.13 20.33 400m 44.83 0.087 44.63 45.03 1500m 3:33.67 0.648 3:32.18 3:35.17 and a strong desire to achieve stick with the sport instead of turning to other sports; basketball s loss may be sprint s gain. If Usain Bolt seriously trains for the 400m, an event that he ran in 45.35 s at the age of 16, I fully expect he would be able to run in the 42 s range. But this does not affect the average elite performance, in which I believe there will be only marginal change if the same rules of the sport maintain. My aim in this article has been to point out the difficulties in trying to use a formula or statistical model to accurately predict future athletic performances. Kuper and Steken s model is a representative example of this type of analysis, and we have seen that it is far off base. It is probably best to ignore this approach to divining the future. I would not dare to offer specific predictions of future athletic performance. However, I believe that this article has demonstrated that any such predictions are better based on experience in the sport and a basic knowledge of human physiology and biomechanics than on mathematical analysis. Ultimate predictions cannot be made since there is no evidence that similar conditions of competition, or of physiology, will be maintained throughout the future. Also, as we have seen, world records are not a good mark of athletic improvement in an event. A world record is a single performance that may be simply a matter of everything being just right. Sometimes records live on for decades, without telling us how the event itself is being contested by all other athletes. The 10th best performances in Olympic years give a better indication of how athletes are improving over time. When performances are adjusted by the conditions of competition, it is likely that future improvements will be comparatively minimal. Reference 1 Kuper, G. and Sterken, E. (2008) Modeling the development of world records in running, In Statistical Thinking in Sports (eds J. Albert and R. H. Koning). Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/ CRC. Joseph Hilbe is Chair of the Sports Statistics Committee of the International Statistical Institute, a statistics professor at Arizona State, and author of several popular texts on statistical modeling. In the 1970s and 1980s Prof. Hilbe was head track coach at the University of Hawaii, a US track team coach, and lead competition official at the 1984 Olympic Games. He has coached an athlete to a world record, and others to compete at the Olympic and World championships. He was also a world-ranked sprinter during the 1960s. 158