'100m runners could smash record'
Updated on 29 November 2008
The men's 100-metre world record could come down to 9.48 seconds, a scientist has predicted.
That would knock more than one fifth of a second off the record of 9.69 seconds set by Jamaican Usain Bolt at this year's Olympics in Beijing.
Marathon runner Mark Denny, a biomechanist at Stanford University in the United States, wondered whether there were absolute limits on running speeds and, if so, how close we were to them.
Looking at the speeds of male race winners through the years, he concluded that men have not reached their top speeds at any distance.
Professor Denny predicted that male 100m sprinters could one day get the record down to 9.48s. Female sprinters' speeds have tended to level off, but he suspects they can improve too and predicts they could eventually cover the distance in 10.19s.
As for marathon runners, Professor Denny says men could cut the current world record by up to 4min 23s, and women by just under three minutes.
Professor Denny looked at records for dogs and racing horses, too, and found that both have already reached a plateau. There has been no improvement in the thoroughbreds' speed in the Kentucky Derby since the 1940s and two other major US races since the 1970s, while dogs' performances also levelled out in the 1970s.
But he is led to conclude that "chance might still turn up a faster animal", predicting that thoroughbreds could improve their top speeds by as much as 1% in the Kentucky Derby.
Professor Denny emphasises we have no idea what aspect of physiology restricts runners' performances, and is keen to find out what will prevent future gold medal winners from breaking his limits.
His predictions are published in The Journal of Experimental Biology.
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