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Why So Fast?
By Conway Hill
| Monday, July 2 2007 10:00:28 PM |
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In the past few seasons we have seen some of the greatest sprints marks in history. Asafa Powell 9.77, and he's done it multiple times. Tyson Gay (19.62), Xavier Carter (19.63), Wallace Spearmon (19.65), Walter Dix (19.69) redefining the "standard" for 200 meter running.
Xiang Liu (12.88), Dominique Arnold (12.90), Terrence Trammell (12.95) making us come to expect sub13 times in the high hurdles. Jeremy Wariner (43.62), Angelo Taylor (44.05), and Lashawn Merritt (44.06) challenging the boundaries of the 44 sec barrier for a quarter mile. With Merritt also going below the 20 sec boundary for 200 at 19.98! And the long parade of athletes behind these incredible individuals is equally impressive.
A look at the All Time Lists for almost every event on the track will show numerous entries made within the past few seasons.
So when I see individuals on message boards, in newspaper articles, in blogs and other media attempt to single out specific athletes to target and lay the "drug" tag on, I find it quite offensive and irritating, because if we are going to label individuals, there are a tremendous number of athletes that "fit the profile" as far as those performing at incredible levels. And while I understand that there are athletes out there that have used performance enhancers, it would stretch the imagination to believe that all that perform admirably have done so.
As such it would behoove us to look for other reasons why performances have improved, rather than rely on the knee-jerk reaction that improved performance = use of performance enhancing drugs, because, in reality, there are many reasons why we are looking at improvement in performance.
I think we must start with the assumption that we are not witnessing any major advances in the human genome! Evolution takes time, lots of time - generally to the tune of tens of thousands of years. Therefore we must assume that we're working with the same base product here in terms of the individuals themselves. And I think that we can agree that when you take a look at say Bob Hayes, the fastest man of the early 1960's and compare him to Asafa Powell, today's 100 meter WR holder, we will find many similarities and perhaps identify the differences.
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