Beyond the gold, silver, bronze (& jade)...

It seems like I have this thought and/or question every four years at about this time. It’s an olympic-sized thought and is possibly unanswerable but I’m still intrigued by the subject. Although the Olympics themselves are all about winning medals there is always a certain aspect of some of the events that is maybe not secondary to winning medals, but is certainly just as important because, usually, winning a gold means that it is possible you have broken a world record. World records cannot be set in a lot of the events because judging is subjective and the numbers only indicate who was the best in that particular event, at that particular venue, at that particular time.

Anyway, my question is: at what point does setting a record stall-out? At what point will the human body become unable to surpass what has been set before? Will there come a time when the human body just cannot run or swim any faster? Or jump any higher or further? I don’t mean this week, of course, because world records will no doubt be set in Beijing; I mean in 100 years or 200 or whenever. Of course human beings will get bigger and stronger and things like lung capacity and muscle strength and a standard of human perfection for a particular sport will increase. But does that mean that someone, 100 years (500?) from now will run a two minute mile?

I’m not considering, here, events that use equipment of some sort. I actually can envision that with the right piece of newly engineered equipment that some dude with the right kind of body and musculature will be able to pole vault 30-35 feet. Why not? And why stop there?

I guess there is no answer but it sure is interesting to contemplate. I wonder if people were thinking in 1956, when Bob Richards pole vaulted over 15 feet (not a record but he won the Olympics) that it wouldn’t take all that much time for someone to clear 20. Or Roger Bannister’s historic breaking of the 4-minute mile barrier in 1954 that was almost immediately followed by a veritable stampede of men following suit and, through the years, knocking almost 17 seconds off that record.

Anyway, I’ll mostly be hanging tough with many hours of tube watching over the next two weeks and wondering if these athletes know the context of their being world beaters of this particular year, decade and/or era. But what they are is really just a continuum of performance that will go faster, higher and more complicated as time flies by.

One additional thought that pleases me is that I think at some point in a lot of sports (100 years?), women will begin to catch up to men and world records will be set by a person; not just a person of a particular gender.

Update, August 24, 2008: Amazingly, 41 world records were set at the Beijing Olympics, some by wide margins. Wow, as I conjectured above, just how onward and upward can it get?