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Why So Fast?
By Conway Hill
| Monday, July 2 2007 10:00:28 PM |
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"Bullet" Bob Hayes was the 1964 Olympic Champion. He won that race in 10.06 sec, and had a blazingly fast 9.91w (+5.3 ) in his semi. Asafa Powell, by contrast, is the current Co World Record Holder (Justin Gatlin's share of the record pending) at 9.77. That's a change of .29 sec over the course of 41 years (Powell first ran 9.77 in 2005), which is an average change of .07 sec per decade – actually a fairly reasonable amount of change. If we take a look at the evolution of the WR since Hayes it looks like this:
1964 - 10.06 - Bob Hayes (Tokyo)
1968 - 10.03 - Jim Hines (Sacramento)
1968 - 10.02 - Charlie Greene (Mexico City)
1968 - 9.95 - Jim Hines (Mexico City)
1983 - 9.93 - Calvin Smith (Colorado Springs)
1987 - 9.93 - Carl Lewis (Rome)
1988 - 9.93 - Carl Lewis (Zurich)
1988 - 9.92 - Carl Lewis (Seoul)
1990 - 9.90 - Leroy Burrell (New York)
1991 - 9.86 - Carl Lewis (Tokyo)
1994 - 9.85 - Leroy Burrell (Lausanne)
1996 - 9.84 - Donovan Bailey (Atlanta)
1999 - 9.79 - Maurice Greene (Athens)
2005 - 9.77 - Asafa Powell (Athens)
2006 - 9.77 - Justin Gatlin (Doha)
2006 - 9.77 - Asafa Powell (Gateshead)
2006 - 9.77 - Asafa Powell (Zurich)
So, just how did we get from there (10.06) to here (9.77)? I would submit that there are several contributing factors, chief among them being what I call the Five "T's", Time, Training, Technique, Technology, and Team.
In 1964 track and field was an amateur sport. As such, competitors had to have other jobs to support their running and competition. This created many differences in Time from the athlete of today. The time that an athlete spent training was limited, because he/she had to go to work. Even up to the mid to late 80's, as track and field was becoming "professional" many top level athletes had to split their time between training and working - not to mention time needed to rest and the transportation between job/home/training. The result is that training was a limited function, a "part time" endeavor. That in itself limited the Time that you could spend pursuing track and field. After all, at some point you had to focus on getting the bills paid. And with there only being one major meet every four years (The Olympics) until the mid 80's, it was very difficult to spend four years training for one single shot at greatness.
So Time was limited. Training time was limited, as was the time one spent as a track and field athlete. Typically, athletes were out of the sport by their mid 20's, and most within their early 20's! Bob Hayes was 21 years old when he set his WR in winning Olympic gold in Tokyo. His next move was to sign a professional football contract with the Dallas Cowboys - had to eat and pay the bills! Jim Hines was an "old man" at 24 when he set his WR in Mexico City in 1968. He too then went to give professional football a try.
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