Record-breaking preditcions : What are the absolute limits to human performance levels?
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Everything’s up to date in Kansas City – they’ve gone about as far as they can go!
The song in question, in a musical set in the 1890s, was actually written a hundred years later; the irony lay in the hindsight. In each generation over the last century we have seen new records set, with performances once regarded as superhuman becoming routine and unremarkable, writes Bruce Tulloh.
In 1912, for example, there was a titanic track race over 5,000m between Finland’s Hannes Kohlemainen and Jean Bouin of France, which took the world record from 15:01 to what was regarded as an ‘ultimate’ 14:36. In 1954 I can remember seeing Vladimir Kuts push Chris Chataway to a world record of 13:51.6 for 5,000m, when Emil Zatopek and Gunder Haegg were the only other men to have gone under 14 minutes. Three years later, Kuts ran an amazing 13:35, and this was regarded as an ultimate until the 1960s when Kip Keino and Ron Clarke came along... and so on.
 | Author: | whatsnew (whatsnew's profile, whatsnew's blog) |
 | Posted On: | Wednesday, 25th October '06, 4:59pm |
 | Tags: | Cycling, Research Findings, Running and Sports |
 | Comments: | 0 comments, go to comments |
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