Gay out of 200m

Charlie_Francis · August 19, 2009, 1:39pm

It’s so hard to distinguish between fastest (right now), most dominant, “greatest”, most talented, etc etc

Bolt’s got a bunch of wins right now, but because of his youth doesn’t have as many as Mo Greene.
Tyson and Powell have incredible times but, except Tyson’s 100 and 200 in 2007, not the major individual golds.

What sets Bolt apart for a lot of people is that his times are so far ahead of his time - the record is now, what, almost two-tenths ahead of what it was before he went after it? - and he just wins whatever race he is in.

The time reduction is really amazing. In the 90s we were seeing .01 getting chopped off every 3 years, in the 80s it was an even slower reduction (minus Ben, addressed below), and basically static in the 70s.

Instead of the reduction of the WR slowing as time goes on, as might be expected if we were truly approaching some “Human Limit” (whatever that means) - I remember reading in a WR book the possibility that the 2000s would require official thousandth-timing to lower the WR and predicted the 2015 WR as 9.79 - we are seeing big pieces of time getting lopped off by a few key guys.

Ben took the WR from 9.93 to 9.83 and then to 9.79. His margin of improvement over the previous record would have been as much or more than Bolt’s if he had run through the line in Seoul. Whatever you think of that, read Speed Trap and then reassess.

Carl didn’t have the WR-improvement (in the same manner as Bolt, Ben, or even Powell) but he had sustained success. So what does that count towards?

Who we put in what categories depends on our pre-conditions for those categories, not something in the athletes themselves.
Comparing Mennea to Bolt to Morrow to Owens to Carl to Ben etc. only makes sense if we have some sort of clear idea of WHAT we’re comparing.

good points- hard to assess. Where does Bob Hayes fit into the equation?