My question concerns athletic world records only. As long as there are people willing to do silly things like, I don’t know, sing the most consecutive show tunes while chewing gum and standing on one foot, the Guinness Book will continue to exist.
But it kind of amazes me that when it comes to, say, the heaviest weight lifted, or the fastest sprint, world records still get set all the time. At the Rio Olympics, we’ve seen several new world records set, including Katie Ledecky swimming the Women’s 800-Meter Freestyle so fast she was an entire body-length ahead of the old WR line, which was a thrill to watch. But even that was only about two seconds faster than the previous record. The progression of new WRs tends to be even more gradual than that. According to this Wikipedia page, the WR for the Men’s 200-Meter Dash was 19.83 seconds in 1968. New records have been set five times since then, and in 2009 Usain Bolt got it down all the way to . . . 19.19 seconds. The “world’s fastest human” can’t even shave more than a second off the time of a record from 41 years before.
This is not to trivialize Bolt’s achievement. Apparently he really is the fastest sprinter who has ever lived, at least as long as we’ve had the technology to time these things. It’s just that it seems to me there must be some kind of absolute ceiling for how much a human body can do. I would assume that sooner or later somebody would swim or run a given distance so fast, or lift a weight so heavy, or fling a discus so far, that no human would ever be able to surpass it. Let’s assume that cybernetic implants aren’t going to count, and that none of these athletes are on performance-enhancing drugs to push them beyond human limitations (and no, I’m not really that naive). And let’s also ignore records in events like bicycling or archery, where more advanced equipment can make a difference. Even if someone faster than Bolt surfaces and runs the two hundred meters in 19.17 seconds or 19.08 seconds, is it possible that it is beyond the realm of human ability to run it in less than 19, so that someday soon no more WRs in that event will be possible?
I suppose that some genius could someday devise a training method so superior to what today’s athletes use that we’ll get a crop of new sprinters beating Bolt’s record. But it’s not like anyone will ever run it in two seconds. Sooner or later there must be a limit to these things.
(I put this question in GD because I doubt there’s a definitive, demonstrable answer that would make it better suited for GQ. But if the mods disagree, I’m prepared to defer to their judgment.)
While there is a theoretical limit for many human pursuits (eg. Fastest pitch, longest jump), I don’t think we are there yet with most things because these is generally a small subset of people who put in the training to maximize their potential. Human potential is destroyed by the boatload everyday for a variety of reasons, but as the population increases and the rewards of athleticism increase, we will see greater and greater numbers of people maximizing their potential. Given that, records will continue to fall for the foreseeable future.
Worth pointing out that we managed to up the rate at which athletics records were superseded by increasing the sensitivity of time measurements from 1 decimal place to two. There’s no limit to how far you can carry that process.
Obviously, there has to be a theoretical limit to sports records. I do not believe that, barring major genetic or cybernetic manipulation, a human will ever run 100 metres in seven seconds or throw a standard javelin for 150 metres. The questions of interest are - how close have humans approached that unknown limit and will we even know when that has happened? Some records have stood for decades - are they out of reach for “normal” non-cheating humans or just living their last days, months of years until a once in a lifetime talent like Usain Bolt comes along?
I don’t believe we are as close to human limits in most, if not all, athletics events as we may think. Thus, taking the thread title literally, I am not prepared to bet that we will see the end of all records. For a record to be legitimately considered “unbeatable”, it would have to satisfy several complex criteria. Do we know the limits of human body with certainty, even taking into account extreme genetic outliers? Will there be no further breakthroughs re: training methods, nutrition, equipment, track surfaces, etc.? Were the circumstances absolutely perfect for the record - ideal weather (e.g. wind speed just under the legal limit), a high altitude venue (known to improve sprint and jump results), peak form, the shortest legally possible start reaction time? All of these are pretty big assumptions, yet every “no” answer implies a probability of someone shaving at least another fraction of a percent off the result.
Exactly. It’s Zeno’s paradox. If the measurement is precise enough, a new record could be set every year which is halfway between the previous record and the theoretical limit.
Note that Ledecky’s new WR represents a time improvement of 0.39%, whereas Bolt’s is 3.3% (about 8.5 times the difference). When Bolt set the 2009 record, he improved on the previous record (his own, set in 2008) by 0.57%.
Runner’s World Magazine ran an interesting article in 2014, on what it would take for someone to break the 2-hour barrier in the marathon (the current record is 2:02:xx). Unlike in some of the other athletics events, the WR in the marathon had been improved upon pretty regularly since 1998.
The gist of what they think it’ll take: cool weather, a boring course (lack of hills and turns), the use of “rabbits” (pacemakers who provide an airbreak), and a runner with the right build and oxygen capacity.
Missed the edit window when I went to look it up, and got sidetracked. The current WR is 2:02:57, set by Dennis Kimetto in 2014, at the Berlin Marathon. As is noted in the Runner’s World article, most of the fastest times, for both men and women, have been set at a small number of courses (Berlin, London, Chicago, Dubai).
I don’t see why it should stop anytime soon, as long as global wealth, health, and sports culture continues to expand. The total talent pool for these sort of niche activities isn’t that large and could be much bigger in the future, especially on a planet of 10 billion people.
Another good way of setting records is a via an environmental advantage.
Did some Olympic swimmers have an unfair advantagein the Rio pool?
Via Ockham’s razor, the simplest explanation of this effect is there was a current, induced by the water circulations system and caused by the sides of the pool not quite being level.