Can a human be able to run 100m in less than nine seconds one day?

Can a human be able to run 100m in less than nine seconds one day?

  • Yes it will happen one day.

  • No it will never happen.

Results are only viewable after voting.
MXZT said:
Thanks for sharing your well informed input once again. But I'm just curious do you think a sprint athlete in the future will be able to break and go below 9 seconds for 100 meter race?
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My opinion isn't informed enough to intelligently predict that, but in theory it's possible.
 
rj144 said:
For a long time, no one could run under 10 seconds. The WR holder 80 years ago probably wouldn't even qualify for the Olympics today.

People evolve.
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Ummmm, Jesse Owens adjusted for modern spikes and cinder track is actually sub 10secs.

He ran 10.2 in leather shoes, no starting blocks and on cinder. You can damn well expect he would have been considerably under 10secs with modern shoes and track, never mind the starting block alone.
 
rj144 said:
For a long time, no one could run under 10 seconds. The WR holder 80 years ago probably wouldn't even qualify for the Olympics today.

People evolve.
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No, we don't.

LEWIS540 said:
When people say stuff like "There will never be another Bolt/Messi/Mayweather/LeBron etc etc"......

Yeah, there will.

If we are still around in a 1000 years, humans will be performing way beyond our current capabilities. A million years they'll be doing things we can't even comprehend.
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Again, probably not.

There will more than likely be zero evolutionary change to make us run faster.
 
@MXZT

So, I found this:

https://www.livescience.com/8039-humans-run-40-mph-theory.html

Humans are capable of running up to 40 mph.

I did a quick and kind of rough calculation, but could do a more accurate one later. Modeling on Usain's Bolt WR run, his average speed was 23 mph and his top speed was about 28 mph. If you then say he ran the race almost the same with but with a top speed of 40 mph instead, his average speed would be about:

23/28*40 mph = 33 mph or 14.75 m/s.

So, his time would be 100 m/(14.75 m/s) = 6.77 s or so.

So, this is pretty close to the fastest someone can run a 100 m dash.

As a side note, I also calculated Bolt would have ran 9.61 s instead of 9.68 s in 2008 if he ran the entire race a few weeks after the 2008 Olympics (in 2008). He ran in 9.58 s the next year.
 
Scaling up Bolt's to speed to 40 mph in 2008 (when he coasted at the end), he would have ran it in about 6.60 s.
 
There is a good chance that Jarmila Ktatochilova's 800m doesn't get beaten for another 36 yrs. 1:53 is ludicrously fast. Many women's olympic and WC finals are won with 1:58. It's kind of amazing how long that record has stood and before people chime in about doping, this was 1983, keep in mind the IAAF did jack shit about EPO/blood doping and HGH in the 1990s.
 
Bamboozled said:
No, we don't.



Again, probably not.

There will more than likely be zero evolutionary change to make us run faster.
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Yeah, we're not talking about evolution are we, at least not in the traditional sense.

We haven't "evolved" in the last 100 years, yet the 100m WR has improved by a second in that time.
 
rj144 said:
@MXZT

So, I found this:

https://www.livescience.com/8039-humans-run-40-mph-theory.html

Humans are capable of running up to 40 mph.

I did a quick and kind of rough calculation, but could do a more accurate one later. Modeling on Usain's Bolt WR run, his average speed was 23 mph and his top speed was about 28 mph. If you then say he ran the race almost the same with but with a top speed of 40 mph instead, his average speed would be about:

23/28*40 mph = 33 mph or 14.75 m/s.

So, his time would be 100 m/(14.75 m/s) = 6.77 s or so.

So, this is pretty close to the fastest someone can run a 100 m dash.

As a side note, I also calculated Bolt would have ran 9.61 s instead of 9.68 s in 2008 if he ran the entire race a few weeks after the 2008 Olympics (in 2008). He ran in 9.58 s the next year.
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Hard to believe a human can run 40 mph. That's almost 2x faster than Bolt which is unbelievable to think about. So therefore that seems unrealistic but who knows. Plus that article is 9-10 years old so who knows they may redact what they said there with new information of today.
 
MXZT said:
Hard to believe a human can run 40 mph. That's almost 2x faster than Bolt which is unbelievable to think about. So therefore that seems unrealistic but who knows. Plus that article is 9-10 years old so who knows they may redact what they said there with new information of today.
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It's a theoretical number based on max force excretion. Big leap to 40mph and considering that Bolt has never hit higher than 27.8mph, it's a bit of an absurd number to pull.

9.58 is likely to stand a long time. Could be Lee Evans/Bob Beamon/Seb Coe/Kratchilakova territory or longer.

THe funny thing is, as much as Bolt's time is other worldly, FloJo's death inducing 21.34 and 10.49 haven't been close to touched.
 
therealdope said:
THe funny thing is, as much as Bolt's time is other worldly, FloJo's death inducing 21.34 and 10.49 haven't been close to touched.
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How fast would a juiced up Bolt with a +5.0 wind behind him have run?
 
therealdope said:
I don't know, why do you ask? FloJo's time wasn't wind aided (outside of the allowed wind speed).
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Pretty sure it is strongly suspected/known that her WR was wind assisted, but was allowed to stand due to a faulty reader (which recorded +0.0 on a windy day). Granted she also ran 3-4 other unbelievable (;)) times around that time, too.


Edit:

-In the first race of the quarterfinals of the U.S. Olympic Trials, she stunned her colleagues when she sprinted 100 meters in 10.49 seconds, a new world record. Since 1997 the International Athletics Annual of the Association of Track and Field Statisticians has listed this performance as "probably strongly wind assisted, but recognized as a world record".

-
Flojo's 100m World Record (10.49 sec)

An unexpected outcome of the work on wind assistance was the discovery that Florence Griffith-Joyners' 100m world record was an illegal (wind-assisted) performance. Flojo recorded 10.49 seconds in the quarterfinals at the 1988 US Olympic Trials. This performance broke the existing world record by a whopping 0.27 seconds, and no other sprinter has come anywhere near the mark since. However, the official wind reading was considered 'highly suspect' by those who witnessed the race. The September 1988 issue of Track & Field News had a column titled "Everyone Knows it's Windy", which included the comment: "It's hard to say which number caused the bigger gasp at the Trials, Florence Griffith Joyners' 10.49 at the finish-line time indicator, or the 0.0 which popped up on the mid-straight wind board".



The doubts about the official wind reading (0.0) were confirmed by a study of the 100m races at the Trials. Plots of race time versus wind reading were examined for deviations from the expected relation. The wind reading for Flojo's 10.49 race was clearly anomalous. For all competitors in this race (not just Flojo), the race time indicated that the wind reading should have been between +5.0 and +7.0 m/s. The 10.49 performance was definitely wind-assisted. The real world record should be the 10.61 performance that Flojo set in the final at the 1988 US Olympic Trials.



Unfortunately, the IAAF has not yet corrected the world record list. The April 1994 issue of Track & Field News had a column in support of the findings, and since 1997 the International Athletics Annual of the Association of Track and Field Statisticians has listed Florence Griffith-Joyner's 10.49 performance as "probably strongly wind assisted, but recognised as a world record". In the 2003 edition of IAAF World Records, Richard Hymans concludes "this is a world record which should not have been ratified".



Note: Many of those involved in running the 1988 US Olympic Trials were opposed to the 10.49 performance being submitted to the IAAF. However, the relevant paperwork was signed and the performance was ratified as a world record. It seems that common sense 'took a holiday' at this track meet.
 
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Fluffernutter said:
This.

Someone did a,study on Jessie Owens and concluded that with today's technology ( shoes, track, clothes, etc) he would be at today's speeds.

His technique was perfect, it was technology that was behind.
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that possibly the same for a lot of athletes, give them the diet, training and equipment and they'd still be at the top of their sport.
 
Bamboozled said:
No, we don't.



Again, probably not.

There will more than likely be zero evolutionary change to make us run faster.
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I'm a little confused, you say we don't evolve then in the same post say 'There will more than likely be zero evolutionary change to make us run faster' which seems to imply we may evolve in other ways besides speed. I don't want to misrepresent what you're trying to say but we clearly do evolve, the evidence is ubiquitous and undeniable.

But setting evolution aside, I think once genetic manipulation becomes more commonplace we are going to need to shift the goal posts entirely. The next surge in athletic ability is most likely not going to be driven by evolution or superior equipment but by genetic modification.
 
Fatality said:
I'm a little confused, you say we don't evolve then in the same post say 'There will more than likely be zero evolutionary change to make us run faster' which seems to imply we may evolve in other ways besides speed. I don't want to misrepresent what you're trying to say but we clearly do evolve, the evidence is ubiquitous and undeniable.

But setting evolution aside, I think once genetic manipulation becomes more commonplace we are going to need to shift the goal posts entirely. The next surge in athletic ability is most likely not going to be driven by evolution or superior equipment but by genetic modification.
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Evolution occurs, just not at a rate in which people will drastically change within 100 years.

LEWIS540 said:
Yeah, we're not talking about evolution are we, at least not in the traditional sense.

We haven't "evolved" in the last 100 years, yet the 100m WR has improved by a second in that time.
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Technology, footwear, steroids etc have all contributed to it. We're already pushing the limits of our existence.
 
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