So today at lunch several members of the lab and I had a conversation about how crazy the Olympics were (which relates to my previous post). For instance, the New York Times posted an article which compares the top runners and swimmers of today (Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps) to every Olympic Gold Medalist going back to 1896 and the consistent progression of better times each year.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/05/sports/olympics/the-100-meter-dash-one-race-every-medalist-ever.html?hp
This article poses the question "How fast are we capable of going." Each year, multiple World Records are broken at the Olympics and have been since I've started watching. World Records are broken so often I've even stopped being surprised. Today we debated what could be done for them to go faster and just how fast a human is capable of going based off of new training techniques, changing technology, and nutrition.
The pressure in some of the events is just absolutely enormous to. For instance in gymastics, you work all your life to get there and only do your routine one time in the finals and thus one slip will completely ruin your dream. In track, a false start or even a slow also means the end of your dream (although runners and swimmers often make multiple Olympics unlike gymnasts). I personally always chuckle at events like swimming or track because the athletes train non stop for 4 years for these finals and they take a very small amount of time to actually be completed (for example the 100 meter dash is less than 10 seconds). Those 10 seconds however mean the difference between anomity and immortality in the running world.
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