New 100m world record

Haircut · 1 Jun 2008 at 08:41

By a guy running it for only the 5th time!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/athletics/7429745.stm

Pretty incredible to do this when he's not even a 100m specialist, hopefully he'll do it a bit more now and it will spur both him and Asafa Powell on to push the record down even further.

weringo · 1 Jun 2008 at 08:56

That's very impressive especially considering the world record was at 9.79 only a few years ago, they've certainly knocked the time down a bit.

Freefaller · 1 Jun 2008 at 09:13

Very impressive. I wonder how much more time we can shave off - I think for 2 legs we're getting close to our maximum potential... but we keep surpassing ourselves don't we?

The_One · 1 Jun 2008 at 09:42

Roids

Lunatic Dreyfus · 1 Jun 2008 at 09:44

It's great to see another contender for the Olympic 100m title surface, and in some style too. Now at least there's a chance of someone beating, or perhaps thrashing the Americans at Beijing, as Asafa Powell is a bit of a bottler at the big championships.

I wonder, seeing as he fancies himself as a 200m runner first and foremost, if he can push Michael Johnson's 19.32? Now that would be something.

semi-pro waster · 1 Jun 2008 at 10:56

Freefaller said:
Very impressive. I wonder how much more time we can shave off - I think for 2 legs we're getting close to our maximum potential... but we keep surpassing ourselves don't we?

That's what I thought as well but it is a fairly decent stride forwards in terms of time, bit of a shame that people will automatically assume drugs to be the reason though. They might well be but I hope not as I'd like to believe that clean runners can compete against the drug takers.

[TR]SweetSpotOz · 1 Jun 2008 at 11:16

gillywibble · 1 Jun 2008 at 11:20

23 mph low? That's a reasonable speed on a bike.

The_One · 1 Jun 2008 at 11:34

markyp23 said:
I'd be quite interested how fast they could go with the use of steroids or whatever performance enhancing drugs it is they use, as well.

9.69 seconds? That would be ridiculous.

On another note, 23.014 mph is the speed of this world record. Opinions on how fast that is? I can't believe it is that "low"!

All the runners ar on steroids or a performance enhancing drug or another.

I believe there was someone high profile who once said you will never win gold without taking steroids i cant remember who it was though

*EDIT*

It was dwain chambers who said you cant win gold without taking drugs and to some extent i agree with him the sport if rife with it whether they want to admit it or not

semi-pro waster · 1 Jun 2008 at 11:39

markyp23 said:
On another note, 23.014 mph is the speed of this world record. Opinions on how fast that is? I can't believe it is that "low"!

Pretty fast really, think about it. If the average walking speed for someone is 4mph then to be travelling at almost 6 times that is fairly quick, jogging would probably be ~8mph so while it isn't quick in comparison to a car or even a bike it is very fast for something purely human powered with no mechanical aid.

Haircut · 1 Jun 2008 at 11:51

Also, 23mph is the average over the whole 100m.
If you consider that a reasonable amount of time is spent getting up to speed, the actual peak speed will be closer to 30mph.

oddjob62 · 1 Jun 2008 at 11:58

semi-pro waster said:
Pretty fast really, think about it. If the average walking speed for someone is 4mph then to be travelling at almost 6 times that is fairly quick, jogging would probably be ~8mph so while it isn't quick in comparison to a car or even a bike it is very fast for something purely human powered with no mechanical aid.

Also remember that 23mph is the average speed. Top speed for these guys I believe is over 30mph.

Edit: Hehe... beaten with an almost identical answer

Pigeon_Killer · 1 Jun 2008 at 12:12

The_One said:
It was dwain chambers who said you cant win gold without taking drugs and to some extent i agree with him the sport if rife with it whether they want to admit it or not

He may or may not be right but I certainly would've believe anything that came out of his mouth.

Not really surprised to see him beat the record given he ran almost as quick a month ago and wouldn't be surprised to see the record drop quite considerably over the next year or so.

Freefaller · 1 Jun 2008 at 12:22

I would say that even with a stack load of steroids and other specialist hormones and supplements not much more that one or two hundreths of a second could be shaved off. I truly believe that owing to our anthropometry we are close to our potential maximum.

FeFiDoh · 1 Jun 2008 at 12:47

Is it cheating if everyone is on it though

Viper² · 1 Jun 2008 at 14:05

Freefaller said:
I would say that even with a stack load of steroids and other specialist hormones and supplements not much more that one or two hundreths of a second could be shaved off. I truly believe that owing to our anthropometry we are close to our potential maximum.

How can you be so sure? Our species may not be fully evolved yet.

[TR]SweetSpotOz · 1 Jun 2008 at 14:06

serlex · 1 Jun 2008 at 14:26

get him tested

Fubsy · 1 Jun 2008 at 14:55

They should just let the morons take as much drugs as they like, at least it would be a level playing field then...

Freefaller · 1 Jun 2008 at 15:20

Viper² said:
How can you be so sure? Our species may not be fully evolved yet.

True. However our physique/anthropometry is flawed. Our knees are crap, our lower backs struggle with our height, we're still not really "comfy" on 2 legs IMO - but even with every conceivable mutation I don't see how with 2 legs we'll get significantly faster.