Excellent overview! *promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, August 6th, 2012 6:42am PDT - promote requested by seltar.

Very well done Info-graphic.


One of the reasons that wasn't discussed in the video is that athletes are now faster and stronger than earlier decades mainly due to sponsorships. These sponsorships serve as an income for the athlete and allows training to be their only job. Non-stop repetition for 3 years and 10 Months shows.

a huge number of variables.
probably one of the most important is that there are now 7 billion people in the world...which gives a much broader and deeper genetic pool to evaluate.

as for the US doing well....
maybe we just like running in a straight line more.
or maybe hybrid vigor plays into it.
but also in the US between the 1700's and the late 1800's, there was some forced selective breeding going on.

>> ^criticalthud:

as for the US doing well....
maybe we just like running in a straight line more.
or maybe hybrid vigor plays into it.
but also in the US between the 1700's and the late 1800's, there was some forced selective breeding going on.


I would imagine it's simply a product of better training facilities and more money invested in athletes which allows them to train more.

>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^criticalthud:
as for the US doing well....
maybe we just like running in a straight line more.
or maybe hybrid vigor plays into it.
but also in the US between the 1700's and the late 1800's, there was some forced selective breeding going on.

I would imagine it's simply a product of better training facilities and more money invested in athletes which allows them to train more.


so the US guys train more and harder (since, they're from AMERICA, fuck ya!) and have better locker rooms? and more money makes the athlete?
hmmm....
just ribbing you. sure, lots of variables, those included.
a strange one is...track and field isn't even really popular in the US. Most athletes opt for other sports.

Compare to...

Long Jumpers

Interesting article on long jumping where athletes are not only not breaking records like in sprints but getting steadily worse..

http://www.slate.com/blogs/five_ring_circus/2012/08/03/long_jump_olympics_why_do_the_best_long_jumpers_in_the_world_seem_to_be_jumping_shorter_distanc
es_.html

.. ba at link...

>> ^criticalthud:

so the US guys train more and harder (since, they're from AMERICA, fuck ya!) and have better locker rooms? and more money makes the athlete?
hmmm....
just ribbing you. sure, lots of variables, those included.
a strange one is...track and field isn't even really popular in the US. Most athletes opt for other sports.


Well, I'd imagine @Unsung_Hero got it right. More money for athletes = not having to flip burgers at a "day job" = more time to train.

Also not so much locker rooms, but dieticians, personal trainers and so on. Contrast with (for example) Ireland which got it's first olympic sized swimming pool in the 90s.

>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^criticalthud:
so the US guys train more and harder (since, they're from AMERICA, fuck ya!) and have better locker rooms? and more money makes the athlete?
hmmm....
just ribbing you. sure, lots of variables, those included.
a strange one is...track and field isn't even really popular in the US. Most athletes opt for other sports.

Well, I'd imagine @Unsung_Hero got it right. More money for athletes = not having to flip burgers at a "day job" = more time to train.
Also not so much locker rooms, but dieticians, personal trainers and so on. Contrast with (for example) Ireland which got it's first olympic sized swimming pool in the 90s.


Ok, then explain how we don't do as well in distance events. do we not train for those? Why do those broke-ass kenyans whup up on us fancy pants all the time? must be the diet?

i guess we could also come to the conclusion that since, as a society, we tend to value size, strength, muscle and horsepower, the US athletes have a tendency to train and be trained to enhance those traits.

but Russia (and the former USSR)also trained that way and couldn't keep up with US sprinters.

i think you're looking at a lot of variables. nothing simple. but genetics are hard to ignore.

I suspect it's a great combination of factors that go into today's athletic success. Nutrition, training, athletic tradition and certainly a larger gene pool.

Quite of a lot of *science involved in this and the discussions we are having here I notice.

Adding video to channels (Science) - requested by Auger8.

>> ^criticalthud:

Ok, then explain how we don't do as well in distance events. do we not train for those? Why do those broke-ass kenyans whup up on us fancy pants all the time? must be the diet?


I don't know how to explain it. I certainly agree that genetics play a part, as does culture and training.

Nobody has brought up doping yet. I have absolutely no idea how vast it's influence is or how little it may be sought after due to the literal pride of the athletes themselves may be influencing these decisions among their own community (and I do think that the athletes and how they handle those that have done it, might do it, and haven't yet but are just hearing about the possibilities of doping; how they talk and act to stop it when they can amongst themselves and their community is what fights it the best).

I know some of the athletes have been suspended up to four years, but are still allowed to play again. I don't know if it matters what they were doing (as anabolic steroids and its effects will be lifelong if you keep up your routine) as some doping schemes are quick fixes like someone trying to use adrenaline. I mean do they check for that type of thing, a neurotransmitter carrier drug stuck in something like a false tooth; you bite down and in 5-10 seconds your adrenaline shoots forward for 30 seconds... I guess I should look and see how far they've taken this process; I know they are very vigilant, as much as possible. But, I really don't know were the holes are and how big they possibly are.

Training has most defiantly given athletes a superb edge. Not only do they run and work out, but they WATCH themselves run and can see what they are doing run. They just compare it to the best and modify themselves in that fashion gaining seconds, upon seconds. Eventually they learn to add a new twist and soon people are watching HIM or HER for inspiration to win a medal.

I know many athletes get their medals the old-fashioned hard way, proudly and resolute, for their country. It just makes me wonder how far doping has truly influenced the athletes and what areas of their training and structure actually test them correctly with the possibility that there may always be an area, with many athletes all doping (they are tested at the Pre-Olympic qualifiers, The Olympics, but then a shady organization "passes" them all at their home training camp). I hope that it never reaches that scale, but I always have problems when there are some Olympic coaches that have had about six athletes under them, three of them have been caught doping and three are OK--kind of disconcerting...

-edit

I forgot one point I was going to make. You can obviously see from the info-graphic that even training and in absolutely NO WAY can doping account for the 8 year old to the rest of the teenage field of sprinters. It shows to me that perhaps a very long change in diet stopping any malnutrition, FAR better medical care (also limiting disease to a LARGE extent) has lead to a BETTER populace, even genetically which just due to this little clip you could make the case, to some degree. Then you have some of the intangibles like better shoes, better surfaces to run on, and other like changes in our lives that were mentioned and the ones you can think about that weren't. Then you find the cream of the crop athletes, give them superb training, and I truly do think you can see why we have increased those three seconds.

I just merely hope doping isn't behind many victories. I actually wouldn't care if it was someone genetically modified--not grotesquely (to go out of your way to destroy the human form is up to you, but as scientists I don't think we should aim for that--we should aim within that, I also have a feeling that someone grotesque may not be exactly happily received at The Olympics...), just suited to run faster with muscles that are far more dense than usual. As long as genetic changes like this eventually come to almost all of us, changes that enrich and make our lives better (not The Hulk™).

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Sift of the week.

>> ^criticalthud:

a huge number of variables.
probably one of the most important is that there are now 7 billion people in the world...which gives a much broader and deeper genetic pool to evaluate.
as for the US doing well....
maybe we just like running in a straight line more.
or maybe hybrid vigor plays into it.
but also in the US between the 1700's and the late 1800's, there was some forced selective breeding going on.


Interesting point... ah yes, also an interesting point... straight line, possibly mmhmm.... hybrid vigor? Wikipedia, aha! very interesting... Whozawhatzit now????

This stupid video isn't even to scale. Carl Lewis would have been 7 feet from the finish line. The stupid video needs to exaggerate an lie about how far people are from the finish line... Two strides or one body length away, not like 20 feet back.

Why make a "science" like video then lie in it.

>> ^joedirt:

This stupid video isn't even to scale. Carl Lewis would have been 7 feet from the finish line. The stupid video needs to exaggerate an lie about how far people are from the finish line... Two strides or one body length away, not like 20 feet back.
Why make a "science" like video then lie in it.


As they said in the video themselves this is a field of runners separated by 3 seconds of time. Which will not be that much distance when you boil down the facts that the fastest runner will possibly get near or at 27 mph (something Usian Bolt stuck up there) and less. The slowest runners I imagine will ATLEAST be above 20 mph which really does make this field closer and closer together. They would all be running somewhere between 10 m/s to 10.4 m/s in 12.6 s (the times they ran a VERY long time ago) or up to and past 9.6 s in the modern era.

If you weren't that great of a runner, very quickly, with these type of numbers however, you would find yourself very far behind--it must be almost shocking to see someone gain a 3-5 meter lead on you if you slip up, particularly in the longer length Olympic sprints. It's a great infographic doing everything right, in fact I think they could literally take this concept and bump it up to a 30-60 minute show about the history of Olympic running; I'd throw it on the Discovery or Science Channels. Just look at the numbers I pulled up in a very short amount of time to give some comparisons, there are FAR more things to look at and open up this conversation much, much further... More things to look at could be anything taking in ANY possible connection to a sprinter's performance which may include a few things some people would never even think of, some examples: average foot-span covered each sprinting step and how that has changed with time (longer-shorter, side strides or are they all in line), the possibility of body weight distribution being re-mapped on the body from training, workouts, and diet, over time and has this been a possible endemic change in society (have we become more top heavy, bottom heavy, or averaged out--how does it compare with analysis we can try to make about our Olympic forefathers--with societal changes any of the things I've listed have the possibility of starting there first, moving outward; a true evolutionary or genetic change that might be observed...), shoes and their timeline with features, surfaces used by the athletes through time, how training was done throughout history, our personal livelihood with things like vitamins, a balanced and INFORMED diet allows you to get more out of your muscles then you normally would EVER get, and there is SO much more they could explore!

I would love to see a very well done show about this and if they cover the subject substantially and extensively enough, I wouldn't mind it being a short one year series. As long as they stay true to the overall presentation found in this infotainment/info-graphic and the information displayed here should be, somewhat, natural to us and keep us at ease in which all this material/information is able to be displayed in this show and always making that information available for us to consume and compare just as easily as here. So to me having a large presence online hand-in-hand With a show would be important, of course providing more info-graphics like this for us. One can hope that they'd read our comments and realize, just from a small clip, they have something bigger here--if they want it...

I wasn't quite sure why they "pulled" out the field so far as well, but all I can think is that they were trying to put a exclamation mark on the overall acceleration of the genesis of runners into the modern day.