Usain Bolt's Separation In Time

August 16, 2009, Usain Bolt sprinted into the record book to redefine the fastest clocked human speed reaching an unprecedented 44.72 km/h [27.8 mph]. He had reduced his overall time from the previous year’s Olympic by and ran a 9.58 second time (Greatest). When compared to Thomas Burke, the gold winner in Athens 1896 (Tom), who had a time of 12 seconds even, Bolt seems to be dramatically faster. However, the rapid development of technology has created the separation in time. This is problematic as it causes the history books to forget about the immense talent and skill of those who came before. When placed in comparable terms Tom and other early modern era Olympians would be able to compete with Bolt.

As time has advanced so has the biological
This trend of running for a career is a rather new one. For example, Burke was also noted to be a college student in Boston who majored in Law and went on to becoming a lawyer (Tom). Nowadays, with the development of this career path as well as other advancements in modern athletics, technology plays a larger role than ever. A possible counter claim to how this impacted Burke could be that Burke was on a college team and therefore he should have been in great shape and well trained. However, this fall flat when it’s realized that in the 1890s, there were few schools that competed and strived to be the best.

Currently, athletes have a superior arsenal of equipment options. For example, there are a large number of shoe companies that now compete amongst themselves to sponsor athletes. The companies must work to develop shoes that grip the track at a superior level. A large number of years ago such a luxury wasn’t available. Olympians wore what they could and in the case of the legendary Jim Thorpe, who had his shoes stolen, he was forced to wear a pair in which he had found in the trash
Again, there is the conceptual fact that by limiting the resistance, whether it be surface or wind, the athlete will require less energy to do more work. Therefore, fabricating the results, making the sprinters appear faster as they hone onto human theoretical limitations.

Furthermore, one if not the most major difference of past and present, Thomas and Charles didn’t release out of a starting block. The addition of the starting block wasn’t added until 1984 (Mallon 68). Once again, this contributes to the aforementioned idea of energy loss. The modern starting block is designed to allow a fluid motion as the runner breaks into their run.

Continually, more recent sprinters are also taught proper form. Digital technology allows for feedback that examines the angles of each body part a runner must shift to to become more efficient and by extension, faster.

In the final analysis as to whether or not athletes are actually becoming faster or not, it is critical to place the data into comparable terms. First and foremost, older athletes didn’t make careers in sprinting. They participated in these spectacles and then moved on with their lives. Nowadays athletes devote their lives and give everything they can muster into the