There are an immense number of sporting events, so there are always records that can be broken. There will also be records that cannot be broken, but you don’t notice the non-record-breaking events. You notice the record breaking events.
Despite the title of msith537’s article, last night Wayde van Niekirk absolutely annihilated the record in the 400-metre race. It was an awe-inspiring performance. So the night had one record broken, and we’re seeing swimming records broken still. The 100m record didn’t get broken, but I suspect there’s still some room for i9mprovement on Usain Bolt’s 9.59; if he can do that, someone can do 9.58, and I honestly think 9.5 will be cracked before I die. But on the flip side, as pointed out, most of the field event records were set by cheating East Germans and Soviets back in the day, so they’ve held up forever and might always hold up.
It’s only a matter of time before we see a man run a marathon in under 2 hours. Just when I think that record is impossible to break, by either men or women, someone comes along and does it.
One thing I see happening as world records get harder to beat: we’ll see more statistics on how good a sub-record performance was. In the 2100 Olympics, we may hear commentators say “That’s the best time since 2056!” “That’s right, Bob. She just beat 99% of historical gold medal finishes.”
On the other hand, we may find that some unbeatable records are variants of the impossible four-minute mile.