For the point of this argument, let’s say that ALL performance enhancing drugs in sport have been successfully eradicated and surgery/genetic modifications of the human body similarly outlawed.
Will there come a point where a world record stands permanently unbroken due to the absolute limitations of the human body? As it stands now, each world titles and Olympic games sees many records broken in many events…for speed races by as little as 0.001 seconds, but broken all the same.
So over many years, the time for an event (say 100m athletics) reduces by a small amount, but that time is not going to ever reduce to 1 or 2 seconds…or is it? What is the limit of human abilities? Will it get down to 8 seconds at some point and stay there…or 5?
As I understand it, athletes are more interested in records than medals…will the attraction of becoming an elite athlete diminish in the future when record times/distances are unable to be challenged anymore?
There would still be random variations, leading to outliers. Records might stand for longer and longer times, but some guy is eventually going to hit a “perfect storm” of conditions and gain that next 1/100th of a second.
I expect that there would be an asymptotic trend toward the hypothetical “absolute” score. As time passes, there will be fewer and fewer records broken, and these new records will differ from their previous records by less and less.
As for what will happen to athletics, we might simply move away from competitive records and more toward competing against ourselves and against defined skill or accomplishment levels. So, instead of athletes dreaming of beating the record for the 100m dash, they will dream of reaching Level 10 (or level 15, or whatever) in the Hundred Meter dash. High levels would be considered significantly equivalent to being a record holder or at least being close to a record holder. These people would have access to the best opportunities, etc.
Perhaps there could also be a move toward competing not against old records, but against each other. This way, a future 100m dash runner wouldn’t be trying to beat centuries’ old records, but would be competing only against other people alive at that time. As old athletes die and new, untrained ones take their place, there will be plenty of opportunity for people to have someone to “beat” for the sake of beating them in an event.
Never. Most people still just compete against themselves; world record breakers are rare. But there’s no theoretical reason people can’t keep breaking records forever. Our ability to (asymptotically) approach our genetic potential is increasing, with dietary and training improvements, and the genes of our best athletes keep improving over time as well.
Hasn’t this already happened in one sport? --horse racing.
I don’t follow horse racing at all–but I remember hearing that no new speed records have been set for many years now… Yet the sport remains popular. (though one reason of course, is the money and all that gambling…)
I don’t see horseracing in the same league (hah). For starters, every race track is different and the weather of course plays a part as well. With swimmers (for example) every Olympic pool is almost exactly the same and the vagaries of the weather have no impact.
And horse-racing is, as you mentioned, just a reason to gamble. I’m pretty sure that the horse itself doesn’t puff up its chest as it canters to the podium to get its Melbourne Cup or Kentucky Derby award.
It would be interesting to see a graph plotting these world records over the years. My impression is that the speed gains are slowing down, and that the new records are only a tiny bit faster thean the previous record (which might even be somewhat due to better timing equipment).
For example, in 100 meter freestyle mens swimming, the world record has gone from 66 seconds a century ago to 47 seconds now. But since 2000, it has gone down by less than a second (0.93).
It’s an interesting question and I suspect we’ll eventually see a greater focus on “Event records” - like you’ll see on some Olympic coverage they’ve got the “World Record” for that event (ie the best anyone has done ever) and then the “Olympic Record” (ie the best anyone has done at the Olympics).
Otherwise, I’ve wondered the same thing as the OP.
Fry: Hey I’m starting to get the hang of this game! The blerns are loaded, the count’s three blerns and two anti-blerns and the infield blern rule is in effect, right?
Leela: Except for the word “blern” that was complete gibberish.
Considering a record can be set with such a tiny amount. I think there will always be some who feel they can get that tiny amount more. In a way it becomes a closer goal. You know that everyone, even at their peak, is still in the very close neighborhood. So many variables that might come together just a bit more perfectly, this time. The feat also becomes more impressive. Likely to last a longer time after you do it.
Long jumpers have faced some long standing records that seemed impossible to beat. Jumps that beat the existing records by a large margin.
What makes you think that genetic modification will be banned. Most such changes will happen before a person is born so I don’t see them being able to call them cheaters.
It’s already the case, and has always been the case, that at most athletics meets there is no prospect of any world record being broken.
The central point of a race is not to beat a record; it’s to come in ahead of the other guy. And if that is a sufficient incentive to run 9,999 races out of 10,000, as it seems to be, I don’t think we need worry about the 10,000th overmuch.
Besides, if you want to break records, the records there for the breaking can be multiplied. We already have, e.g., national records. We can have records for athletes of a particular age. We can have altitude-linked records. All that’s required for a record is that it be empirically measurable, and that it be challenging.
Germ line genetic modification is an unstoppable force. The bottom rung for what is considered a healthy baby will be raised as technology improves and a country which bans medical procedures will lose out to countries which don’t. People will interbreed across borders, and the capabilities of humanity will improve. The Olympics will have to accept genetic modification or else they would have to exclude 90% of humanity, as our DNA intermixes across the Earth.
So, see may see a temporary lull for the next 10-20 years, but after that, we can expect time to start shooting up. Maybe a temporary ban on genetically modified persons will set things back for a while, but eventually it will start to go up again. So the question would become, what can an intelligently engineered human being actually accomplish?
Hungary’s Boglárka Kapás and the UK’s Jazmin Carlin seem to prove your theory: they swam the 800m freestyle trying to come in first, and Carlin’s 8:16.17 was just barely enough to beat Kapás’ 8:16.37.
But it doesn’t explain Katie Ledecky’s beating them both by nearly 12 seconds. That’s not hundredths of a second, or tenths of a second. That’s “One Mississippi, Two Mississippi…” eleven times, and then perhaps half the word “Twelve,” to boot.
She smashed the prior world record by two seconds, too. That was, at least, a more serious competition: the previous holder of the 800m freestyle was … Katie Ledecky.
Your statement is true: at most meets, there is no prospect of world records being broken. But the OP’s question is about world records being broken, overall… not sure how we can answer it by saying that since most meets won’t generate a world record, we can make some safe statement about all world records.
I am active in a sport I call a micro sport. Archery flight shooting. It has been around for centuries but is still little known. Like swimming we have a lot of different classes and thus lots of opportunities for records. I currently hold 3 world records. Many of the women’s records could be broken quite easily if serious competitors challenged them. In recent years the women have been moving the marks up and I expect they will continue to do so. If the sport can remain viable I expect over the next couple of decades we will see some significant increases in most existing records.
