Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Problem With Track & Field World Records

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

One of the unique things about track and field is that you don’t just compete against your immediate competitors, but you are also competing against the clock or the tape measure. That means you can compare achievements with people in the past, and that means world records. You would expect world records to fall over time, but there are a small number of records that haven’t been broken in decades and no one has even come close to breaking them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the unique things about track and field is that you don't just compete against your immediate competitors, but you are also competing against the clock or the tape measure. That means you can compare achievements with people in the past, and that means world records. You would expect world records to fall over time, but there are a small number of world records that haven't been broken in decades, and no one has even come close. Learn more about track and field's unbreakable world records, and why this might be a problem, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by the Restoration Depot. Do you want more fun in your life? It can be tough finding the U-Times. we all need. Here is a way to feel more energized. Join the Restoration Depot where friends can meet for all sorts of health and wellness options online. The Restoration Depot is created for people like you.

It's convenient and affordable. Just log in to any one of their online classes like yoga, Tai Chi, meditation, music, and many more. Check out all of the classes at the Restoration Depot.com and try your first class for only $5 by selecting first class special at checkout. Remember, that is, The Restoration Depot.com. The Olympic motto is Kittius, Altius, Fortius, which means faster, higher, stronger.

While almost every Olympian is faster and stronger than the rest of us, some elite athletes are the fastest and the strongest. They are world record holders. Even if you never win an Olympic gold medal or a world championship, if you hold a world record, it's something that'll stay

with you forever, even if someone later breaks it. The reason why I'm focusing on track and field is that it's very simple and very easy to compare records and competitors over time. Football, of either kind, is not. So, what goes into a world record? Obviously, it has to be an incredible performance. Everything has to come together just right. They don't happen very often. When Bob Beeman broke the world's record in the long jump in 1968, see my previous episode about that, the conditions were perfect. He had the maximum allowable tailwind. It was at a high altitude in Mexico City. He had

perfect form, and he put together his best jump ever at just the right time. Since the advent of competitive athletics in 1912, the International Association of Athletic Federations has been keeping world records. In every event, there has been a progression of world records

as people have incrementally bested previous performances. Most world records are only broken by less than 1%. The greatest single increase in a world record was the aforementioned Bob Beamon jump, which beat the previous world record by 6.5%. So that is sort of the world record of world records. Each event has a very different progression in how frequent and how recent world records get set.

And this gets into the real heart of what I want to talk about. You should expect to see world records being broken at a slower and slower rate over time. As humans approach the limit of human performance, it should become harder and harder to break records. Records will require more luck and more people who have the perfect physiques in the very peak of their careers. But this isn't quite what happened. In some events, there hasn't been a new world record set in over 30 years. Yergen Schultz set the world record in the men's discus in 1986 at 74.08 meters. To put that into perspective, the gold medalist in the 2019 world Championships had a distance of 67.59 meters, a full 6.5 meters, or 21 feet short of the world

record. The men's hammer throw was also set in 1986. Yuri Siddick of the Soviet Union threw the hammer 86.7 meters. The 2019 world champion threw it only 80.5 meters. That's 6.2 meters less than the world record. The oldest existing world record in track. and field is the women's 800 meters. Yarmilochratoc Viola of Czechoslovakia set a world's record finishing the 800 in one minute 53.28 seconds. That's almost five seconds faster than the 2019 world champion. You might have noticed something that all these really old records have in common.

They're all held by athletes from former communist countries. If you're thinking that these records might be tainted by performance-hancing drugs, you aren't alone. The fact is, the IAAF and the Olympics did not do a very good job of testing for performance-enhancing drugs in the 1980s, and as a result, there was rampant doping. Countries behind the Iron Curtain had official state-sponsored doping programs to give their athletes a competitive edge. The athletes in these programs really didn't have a choice in the matter. If they wanted to compete and to get the perks that came along with being an elite athlete in a communist country, you had to go along with the program. None of these athletes failed a drug test when the record was set,

but all of them have been implicated after the end of the Cold War by people inside their sports organizations. Lest you think that this was only a problem in communist countries, the men's shot put record was set in 1990 by Randy Barnes of the United States, the same Randy Barnes, who subsequently was banned for life for taking performance-enhancing drugs. Likewise, the women's 100-meter and 200-meter records were set by American Florence Griffith Joyner in 1988. She suddenly saw a massive improvement in her times in a single season, smashed every world record, then retired suddenly, passing away early at the age of 38.

Her training partner has subsequently confessed that Flojo was taking a cocktail of drugs in 1988 to improve her performance. These are only the high-profile records. There are many others that were set during the same time period that are also highly suspect. These decades-old records were set at levels that have been unobtainable for athletes ever since. No woman has come even close to the 800-meter world record. In almost 40 years, the closest anyone has come is 7 tenths of a second, an enormous difference in the elite world of track and field.

The records have remained out of reach despite improvements in training, nutrition, physiology, shoes, and other technology. So many of these records are so suspect, that it has been proposed to simply wipe away every world record which was set before 2005. This was the year the IAAAF began storing blood and urine samples for future testing. If this rule were implemented, over half of the current world records would be wiped from the books. However, there is a problem with this. Not all of the old world records are tainted.

The World Long Jump Record was set in 1991 by Mike Powell. He broke the legendary record set by Bob Beeman. There have never been accusations of doping around Mike Powell, or Bob Beeman for that matter. He set the record in an era where the long jump was a much more important and prestigious event. Top sprinters like Carl Lewis and Jesse Owens would compete in the long jump when amateur rules were still strictly enforced. As track became big money, elite sprinters no longer saw a reason to compete in the long jump. Usain Bolt could have been one of the world's great long jumpers. but the money was in sprinting, so he never bothered.

Of course, not all world records in track and field have been tainted. As I mentioned, about half of the world records have been set since 2005, and there have been records set in various events almost every year. Most but not all of the recent records have been in long-distance events, especially the marathon. This is mostly because these races have been less affected by technological changes like rubberized tracks, and because the money involved in marathon running has been, dramatically increased. Good athletes who might otherwise have competed in events like the 10,000

meters, are now pursuing the marathon because that's where the money is. Incentives matter. The world's greatest marathon runner, Elliot Klipchoway of Kenya, was a 5,000 meter runner until he turned his attention to the marathon. So what is the answer? There are clearly old records that are so tainted that they probably should be removed from the record books. Athletes who competed for countries with documented state-sponsored doping programs, and athletes like Randy Barnes who were caught doping later on are the most obvious targets. However, there are some records that were achieved legitimately. The problem is, it's difficult to prove innocence when they were achieved in an era with so much cheating. So, what do we do? If any records are purged from the books,

there will certainly be controversy and probably lawsuits. Nonetheless, it might be better for the sport if there were records in place, which were at least, least in the realm of possibility. Removing a record isn't the same as overturning the results of a race. There are many would-be records that have never been recorded because they were wind-dated, for example. Removing these records needn't be any more controversial than disallowing a record with a three-meter-per-second wind at your back.

As of right now, many records are so far out of reach that they might as well be considered impossible. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer credit. If you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them.

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