Will a 5’9" 200lb person with the same power to weight ratio as a 5’9" 180lb person run the 60m and 100m as well as the lighter person?
all things being equal that is, speed endurance, limb lengths etc.
I would guess that the 200 pounder would have an advantage…although slight…basically because once the mass is moving, the heavier person will have more forward momentum…I have no proof of this, just a gut thing.
I would say the 180lb. guy b/c he would have less mass to swing through the air, allowing him to have a greater frequency. BTW, nice car!
In this thread:
( http://www.charliefrancis.com/board/philboard_read.asp?id=1174&recordnum=0 )
a lot of people seemed to think that heavier athletes don’t have as much springiness. I think the point you made about the heavier athlete having more muscle mass and this being a good thing depends on track time. If both were running the same time as well as having same proportional bodyweight:weightroom ratios I would say the heavier one might have an advantage because he could probably exploit the muscles he currently has more.
More heavily muscled athletes should have an advantage in the acceleration phase while slighter sprinters will fly over the ground easier helping out their top speed more. Of course you can always find anomalies where this isn’t that case, but it will be true in general.
At top speed, much of an athlete’s ability to maintain that speed will be dependent on their ability to minimize their time spent on the ground. The heavier they are, the more (speed) strength it takes to ammortize the landing forces and if your strength isn’t sufficient, you end up spending more time on the ground. This shouldn’t be a problem you say because they should be stringer because they are bigger, but I believe reading that the force reqirements are exponetially related to weight. That is, if you double the weight, you need 4x the strength.
xlr8
That’s interesting. Then brute strength will probably help them for even longer. I guess at a certain point (which I will probably will never get to, I just like thinking about this stuff) an athlete who seems to have completely reached his potential can either drop weight and maintain strength or add weight while making massive improvements in brute strength. Or do neither and just make small improvements each year without risking injury and losing speed.
Food for thought
Prophet - its a Nissan Pulsar GTI-R, early 90’s rally derived roadcar 
For each individual the is a limit to size in order to maximize the strength to weight ratio ( the law of scale mentionned above.)