Quick smart
They said a four-minute mile wasn’t possible, and that a man couldn’t run 100 metres in under ten seconds. They were wrong, of course, but how fast could we go, wonders Andy Round
London, August 2012, and it was an ungainly start as always. The big man sprang out of the Olympic blocks with his trademark lurch. But within 30 metres, it was all over. Usain Bolt had again cruised to gold with all the ease of a thoroughbred enjoying an aft ernoon jaunt in the park.
Then, as the world held its breath and Bolt wheeled around the track with his outstretched arms… confirmation. His famous diet of chicken nuggets had paid off, again, with another 100-metre world record.
Or maybe not. In the world of high- performance athletes, is it really possible to keep on breaking records? Surely nutrition, training and human evolution can only go so far? Aft er all, the laws of physics might suggest that no one will ever manage to run a one- second 100 metres.
“Can more records be broken? Yes,” says Henk Kraaijenhof who has trained elite athletes for 30 years, including European and World champion Nelli Cooman, a Dutch female record holder in the 100 metres and a world record holder in the 60 metres.
“Scientists are always putting up barriers and it is the job of trainers and athletes to leap over them. They said a four-minute mile wasn’t possible, that a man couldn’t run 100 metres in under ten seconds. They were wrong. Exceptional things happen all the time. We are bigger, fitter, healthier and our knowledge has improved dramatically.”
Kraaijenhof believes there may be other people in the world that share the incredible physique of a Usain Bolt or a Nelli Cooman, and that they just need to be found.
“Perhaps they are playing other sports or are simply not interested,” he laughs. “Is breaking records about having the right genes? Well, I think it’s cultural. You don’t see runners from Tibet or Nepal because it is not part of their culture. There are lots of nationalities that don’t have a running culture, who knows what record holders are out there?”
Usain Bolt is a unique running machine, says Professor Bert Otten of the University of Groningen’s Institute for Human Movement Sciences. At 1.96 metres tall (6’5’’) with a lower leg that is slim and long with a small calf muscle close to the knee, he has power that propels him forward like a horse.
“The average ratio between lower and upper leg is 103%, Bolt’s is 112%,” says Otten. “If you plotted previous 100-metre records and drew a curve, you would not expect Bolt’s time – taking 0.2 off the record – until 2068. He’s 60 years ahead of his time, but if he trains hard and makes up his initial ‘slow’ start I believe he could achieve 9.5 seconds.” That would be a staggering feat. It took more than a century to reduce the record by a second from 10.8 in 1890 to 9.79 in 1999.
But what of marathons? If it took a hundred years to reduce the marathon world record by 50 minutes, could a sub two-hour time happen in the future? “I think there is room for improvement because the limits in skeletal muscle power output that limit the 100 metres is no limit in the marathon,” says Otten. “With a marathon it’s all about limits of fatigue and oxygen uptake.”
The professor references scientific research into mitochondrial DNA shared by Kenyan and Ethiopian long distance runners that are believed to create a resistance to performance- sapping lactic acid build up. “These athletes also have slender lower legs, great oxygen uptake and lung capacity as well as an elegant way of running that is feather light,” he says. “The brain’s control of all those muscles and the timing of each step is something that is almost impossible to teach.”
“If you could identify those people who are genetically better at converting oxygen and carbohydrates into energy, my gut feeling is that we will see improved marathon records,” says Professor Willem van Mechelen, head of the Department of Public and Occupational Health of VU (Vrij Universiteit) Amsterdam.
“A trained layman can run at an endurance level of 60% of maximum aerobic capacity; an elite athlete can easily achieve 90%,” he says.
Kraaijenhof agrees that marathon success has long been associated with East Africans, but says research between comparable runners from Kenya and Denmark found no discernable differences. “So, can environment play a part? Yes,” he says.
“There are Kenyan children who run miles to school, the altitude training is good and they want to get rich as runners. But Paul Tergat (marathon world record holder from 2003-7) came from a middle-class background and went to school in a Mercedes.”
The man who took Tergat’s crown, Ethiopian former world record holder, Haile Gebrselassie (whose own 2:03:59 was recently bettered by the 2:03:38 of Kenya’s Patrick Makau), has no doubts that “a sub two-hour marathon will need 20 to 25 years but it will definitely happen,” he told the BBC earlier this year.
But US marathon expert Glenn Latimer disagrees: “Gebrselassie looks magnificent through 22 miles then his body starts to break down. You can see the strain. I don’t see a sub two-hour happening in a long, long time.”
“Records still give meaning to sport and we still need them, but they will become harder to achieve,” says Ivo van Hilvoorde, a lecturer at the School of Human Movement and Sport in Zwolle, The Netherlands. Otten agrees. “We are reaching the final limits of the human body,” he says. “And we are reaching a plateau with training and nutrition. But we will always manage to keep things exciting even if it’s about measuring time better and future records are reduced by thousandths of a second.”
But there remains scope for more in the water. “I expect to see a few world records for swimming broken in next year’s Olympics,” says trainer, scientist and performance researcher Roald van der Vliet. “Compared to track and field we have still not reached the peak of what is humanly possible in swimming.”
Van der Vliet works at InnoSportLab in De Tongelreep, the Eindhoven training centre for the Dutch national team. “Technology is evolving all the time which allows us to improve every factor of a swimmer,” he says.
Constantly improved monitoring reveals the gains that can be made by the slightest change of hand angle or the timing of a butterfly kick and then applied to individual body types.
“We are also developing a better understanding of the body type that makes a record-breaking swimmer,” explains Van der Vliet. “And this will help us identify the record-breakers of the future.”
The expert believes huge improvements will also be made in the area of improving psychological strength, nutritional developments or better costume fabric. “The 100 metres and marathon are probably at the peak of their evolution – after all they have been around for a long time – but swimming offers more scope.”
At the 2012 Olympics, he anticipates records falling in the 200-metre medley, the 1,500-metre freestyle and 100 metres and the women’s 800-metre freestyle and 200-metre backstroke women and possibly the 400-metres men’s freestyle.
Only time will tell if the 100 metres and marathon records tumble too.
Bionic men?
“A marathon will eventually be run within two hours and 100 metres within nine seconds. I think we have a conservative view of what the body can achieve and we don’t know what medicine can achieve,” says Ivo van Hilvoorde, lecturer at the School of Human Movement & Sport in Zwolle. But surely tinkering with an athlete’s body is an unsporting way to achieve new records? “We are becoming more liberal and it may be something we will have to consider in future. In the past it used to be unsporting to be paid or even to train,” says Van Hilvoorde.
And it’s not all science fiction. Thanks to his prosthetic blades Oscar Pistorius is an undeniably powerful runner, but should he be allowed to compete against ‘able-bodied’ people? “Tiger Woods had laser surgery for his eyes, baseball players have shoulder muscles strengthened,” says Kraaijenhof. “After tendon surgery I ran better… should a man with a titanium arm take part in an arm-wrestling competition? These are questions we will have to address in the future.”
