HellenicAthletes.com

Why So Fast?
By Conway Hill
Monday, July 2 2007 10:00:28 PM

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.

"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. In contrast, Asafa Powell will turn 25 this year and this IS his job. And if other WR holders are any indication, he'll be doing this for another 5 years or more. Carl Lewis was 30 years old when he set his final WR, and competed until he was 36. Maurice Greene set his WR at 25, had a near WR run at 27, and took to the track this year at age 33 - continuing his chosen vocation. Michael Johnson, the 200 (19.32) and 400 (43.18) WR holder, set the 200 mark just before his 29th birthday, and the 400 mark just before his 32nd birthday. The man to whom he is often compared, Tommie Smith, the previous man to set WR's over 200 and 400 meters back in the 60's, did so at 23 (400) and 24 (200). Clearly the time one is able to spend doing something affects their ability to do it better! And being able to spend more time training each day/week, as well as being able to spend more time perfecting their craft (longevity) has contributed greatly to the drop in times over the years.

As athletes have been able to spend more time, the additional time has enabled them to improve on many of the things that they do while Training. Training is now much more than warming up, running some repeats and going home. Today's professional athletes employ nutritionists, massage therapists, strength and conditioning coaches along with their primary coach and an agent. This is NOT your grandfather's training program, or even your father's! Nutritionists monitor everything from one’s diet in order to reduce fat and increase general fitness, to the specialized supplements taken to balance out the body’s nutritional needs. Massage therapists work to keep muscles pliable, toned, and reduce potential injuries. Strength and conditioning coaches use high tech weight equipment to isolate specific muscles and muscle groups to increase muscle strength and maximize performance. Plyometrics is used to develop muscular power. All in all a far cry from running some laps and heaving up some free weights. We're talking professional physical development.

And along with improved bodies has come improvement in teaching and developing Technique. Coaches are now able to use timing devices that time to the thousandth of a second to isolate weak areas within a race. Hand held digital cameras and DVD's are used to study movements within minute segments of one's race. Intensive research has shown the optimal angles that need to be applied to the ground to produce optimal power and speed. And innovative techniques, such as the "Drive Phase" in sprinting, put individuals in better position to accelerate during the course of a race. Now a coach can monitor arm movement, center of gravity positions, foot strikes, and knee lift to the nth degree. An athlete can be remolded to find the optimal body positions to increase speed.

These changes in technique have been developed in conjunction with, and sometimes in support of, the new Technologies that have been developed in the sport. Back when Bob Hayes set his WR on the track in Tokyo he ran on a cinder/dirt track. And many of the WR's set in the 60's and 70's were done on tracks of this type - cinders or dirt packed very tightly within a track oval. Constant training and competition kept the surfaces very soft, ground up, and slippery. Athletes used very long spikes to just try and maintain some traction with the track.

Compare this to Carl Lewis' WR effort in Tokyo in 1991. Lewis competed on a Mondo track (very hard rubberized surface) engineered to produce fast sprint times! Instead of simply trying to maintain traction, the newer surfaces provide instant traction - and they continue to get better. Cinders/dirt gave way to the first "rubber" tracks, the Chevron 440's of the 1980's. A tremendous change, but soft and mushy. These were improved upon by the Tartan surfaces of the late 80's - a harder form of rubber with an underlying soft cushion, forming a "faster" surface. By the development of the Tokyo track of the early 90's we had the first Mondo tracks - a hard surface laid over a hard underlay, able to take the force that is put into them and give some back to the athlete, providing more "bounce" along the surface and down the track. Now instead of the athlete fighting against the track, he/she is able to run in concert with it! And to go along with better tracks, the shoe manufacturers have developed shoes to compliment the tracks. Lighter shoes, stronger spike plates, optimal placement of the spikes along the plate, even better shaped spikes. All of these things have aided in the continued reduction of times.

Finally, we have the athlete as Team, and the fifth of my Five "T's". As outlined in many of the items above, the athlete is part of a comprehensive Team Concept today. The days of a single athlete, and a single coach working for an hour and a half to two hours a day has gone the way of amateurism. Today's professional athlete is surrounded by those whose job it is to ensure that he/she is in perfect health, physically fit, and at the optimal physical condition. Injuries are dealt with immediately using the latest diagnostic methods. Massage therapists, strength coaches and the head coach working together in harmony. All with the singular goal of ensuring that Athlete "A" is able to perform at his or her best.

We have come such a long way since the amateur days of Bob Hayes and Jim Hines. There have been so many improvements in all aspects of the sport. If those athletes could run 9.9 given their limited resources, why is it not conceivable that the athletes of 40 years later should not be running 9.7's? If Tommie Smith could run 19.83 why should today's athlete not run 19.32? After all EVERYTHING else has gotten better. Bob Hayes was televised in black and white. Today I watch Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay in High Definition on a plasma television. Bob Hayes made calls on a rotary telephone. I can send email from the stadium today on my "Smartphone" cell phone.

And if you really want to look at change, look at the WR's 40 years before Hayes! Charlie Paddock set the 100 WR in 1926 at 10.4h - converts to 10.64 with automatic timing. Forty years before Tommie Smith ran 19.83, Roland Locke ran 20.5h - converts to 20.74 with automatic timing. And 40 years before Lee Evan ran 43.86, Emerson Spencer ran 47.0 - converts to 47.12 with automatic timing. So it would seem that in spite of all of the advancements we've made in the last four decades, we are still BEHIND the improvements of our predecessors! Maybe, just maybe, the guys aren't running fast enough!

*****

Mr. Hill is based in the United States in Northern California and has been following the sport of Track and Field for 40 years. He can be reached at Chill@HellenicAthletes.com

updated July 3, 10:39 am EDT