reyonthehill

As I watched Usain Bolt celebrate his way to the gold medal and world record in the 100-meters on Saturday evening (as well as the distinction of the "world's fastest man"), I kept thinking that NBC is not doing its job of putting these new world records in perspective. NBC will usually mention the current world and Olympic records and keep them on the screen for the race, but won't mention what the record was four or eight years ago, let alone a couple decades ago, for which the new records are still being compared to. I made the joke to my wife that it'd be great to know that the world record in the 1920s was 15 or 20 seconds. Trust me, it was funny; you had to be there.

In comes Wikipedia... the world record for 100 meters in 1912 was 10.6 (what, no hundredths?). That wasn't nearly as slow as I'd imagined it would have been, although they were probably counting by voice, "one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand..."

And as for Michael Phelps, who obliterated his own world record in the 200-meter freestyle by nearly a second with a time of 1:42.96 (previously 1:43.86), the earliest kept record for that same race (in 1908) was 2:31.6, nearly 50 seconds longer. Must be the deeper pool.