All told now (as of the 100m final at the Berlin World Championships in 2009), 70 men in history have run the 100m in less than 10.00 seconds. And all, excepting Australia’s Patrick Johnson (Australian Aborigine and Irish mix), have one thing in common…an African heritage.
Caucasians, asians or men of other ethnic background it would seem, need not apply.
Last night I witnessed what can only be described as the greatest moment in the history of 100m sprinting. Usain Bolt of Jamaica led Tyson Gay (9.71sec) and his countryman Asafa Powell (9.72sec life-timebest) through the line in 9.58sec. The significance of 10.00sec as a marker of any real significance in modern sprinting is long gone. Yet…there remain plenty to whom the mark remains a wall, one that still stands as solid and imposing as the wall that used to ring the city of Berlin, the stage Bolt used to break some more barriers.
In 1979 (30 years ago) the Italian Pietro Mennea ran the 100m in an altitude assisted 10.01seconds. At the time, Mennea’s performance left him some 0.06 seconds short of the 100m record (Jim Hines altitude assisted 9.95 sec from Mexico in 1968). After last nights performance in Berlin’s Olympiastadion, the world record in the 100m had progressed by 0.37 seconds in the 30 years since Mennea, while the performance of white men had improved by a mere 0.01 seconds (Marion Woronin of Poland, 10.00 sec in 1984).
With Japan’s Koji Ito adding a similar 10.00 sec performance in 1998, the rest of humanity (Patrick Johnson aside) remains stuck at 10.00, now a full 0.42 seconds back of the best performers.
Where it might be plausible for some people to imagine a “genetic performance advantage” in sprinting, I can’t see how anyone could argue for a genetic improvement advantage. And if you can’t make an argument for a genetic improvement advantage, then it should have been as likely that Usain Bolt would have been followed across the line last night not by Tyson Gay’s superlative 9.71 sec, but by a Caucasian or Asian sprinter at 9.64 sec.
Implausible? Certainly if it is never imagined. Resetting the goals usually results in a change in the outcome. If that seems hard to imagine, I guess no one got the point about last nights performance; 9.58 sec was really, previously unimaginable. But someone did.
Bringing this back to the title of this thread, I was intrigued to watch Lemaitre run. Though I was disappointed that his Round 2 false start didn’t allow me to see more of him, I got the distinct impression that this kid likes to win (and his top end speed is very real). More than anything else, it will be a focus on something other than time that will see him through a perceived barrier like time. He or any physically gifted men of any background that want to take a crack at this sprinting thing.