In the previous two posts I compared Usain Bolt and Carl Lewis as 100m and 200m sprinters. For that comparison I used as a source a website with all time best performances in track and field (maintained by Peter Larsson). I will use the same source to make a more relevant comparison nowadays: Usain Bolt and Justlin Gatlin, both in 100m and 200m.
Best ever ~800 100m times, focus on Usain Bolt and Justin Gatlin.
Best ever ~950 200m times, focus on Usain Bolt and Justin Gatlin.
You can see in both graphics why there was so much attention in the races of this summer Beijing World Championship and expectation with the possibility of Bolt being defeated by Gatlin. 2014 wasn’t a good year for Bolt due to injuries. Gatlin ran more often and faster that year. The year of 2015 had started in the same way, with Gatlin running more often and faster, to the point of beating his personal bests in both 100m and 200m (twice).
The best 5 times in 100m of the year belong to Gatlin, yet the 6th best time made Bolt the World Champion.
Of the best 4 times in 200m of the year, 3 belong to Gatlin, yet the Bolt managed the best time (better than Gatlin’s personal best) on the final and that made Bolt the World Champion.
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Note: the times included here exclude wind-aided races and times excluded due to doping.
Usain Bolt has recently won the gold medal in the 200m of Beijing Athletics World Championships, with a time of 19.55″, that is the 10th best ever time.
In the previous two posts, I wanted to highlight the size of the figure of Carl Lewis as a long jump athlete (here) and to compare both Usain Bolt and Carl Lewis as 100m sprinters (here). I want to recap here the following two graphics:
Best ever ~180 long jumps, focus on Carl Lewis.
Best ever ~800 100m times, focus on Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt.
Recall the following lines from those two posts, on the long jump:
Now, in 2015, 18 years later, of the best 184 long jumpsever (all those at or above 8.50m), 55 of those jumps (a 30%) correspond to Carl Lewis. I let you to qualify the feat.
The runs (100m and 200m) Carl Lewis did in the 80s would probably not win him any gold medal today; his jumps would still win him almost everygold medal today.
On the dash 100m:
[…] on all the times a runner has *ever* finished the 100m below 9″90, 187 times. Of those,
32 times correspond to Usain Bolt (17%), and
just 1 to Carl Lewis.
In this post, I want to compare Usain Bolt and Carl Lewis as 200m sprinters. I will use as a source again the website with all time best performances in track and field (maintained by Peter Larsson).
Best ever ~950 200m times, focus on Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt.
In the previous graph you can notice that times in the 200m have significantly improved since the 80s and 90s. Usain Bolt is today way faster than Carl Lewis was in the 80s.
If we want to focus not on the best ~950 times, but in a similar amount of marks as in the long jump and the 100m above, we can just focus on all the times a runner has *ever* finished the 200m below 19.95, 190 times. Of those,
26 times correspond to Usain Bolt (14%), and
just 7 to Carl Lewis (4%).
Compare that 14% of best times of Usain Bolt in the 200m with the 17% in the 100m. Despite his telling that the 200m is his preferred distance, his dominance of the 100m has been even greater. Anyway, compare that to the 30% of long jumps today (while he retired 18 years ago) of best long jumps of Carl Lewis.
In relation to Lewis, he retains 7 of the best 190 200m times (4%) while only 1 of the best 184 100m times… who would have suspected that? We tend to remember Lewis as more of a 100m sprinter and Bolt more of a 200m…
… and it seems that Lewis was first a jumper, then a 200m sprinter (despite of never holding the world record of any of those) and then a 100m sprinter. Whereas it seems that Bolt is a more distinguished 100m sprinter despite of what he likes best.
Usain Bolt has recently won the gold medal in the 100m of Beijing Athletics World Championships, with a time of 9″79, that is the 34th best ever time.
In the previous post, I wanted to highlight the size of the figure of Carl Lewis as an athlete, but a long jump athlete. I want to recap here the following graphic:
Best ever ~180 long jumps, focus on Carl Lewis.
Recall the following lines from that post:
Now, in 2015, 18 years later, of the best 184 long jumpsever (all those at or above 8.50m), 55 of those jumps (a 30%) correspond to Carl Lewis. I let you to qualify the feat.
The runs (100m and 200m) Carl Lewis did in the 80s would probably not win him any gold medal today; his jumps would still win him almost every gold medal today.
In this post, I want to compare Usain Bolt and Carl Lewis as 100m sprinters. I will use as a source again the website with all time best performances in track and field (maintained by Peter Larsson).
Best ever ~800 100m times, focus on Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt.
In the previous graph you can notice that times in the 100m have significantly improved since the 80s. Usain Bolt is today way faster than Carl Lewis was in the 80s.
If we want to focus not on the best ~800 times, but in a similar amount of marks as in the long jump above, we can just focus on all the times a runner has *ever* finished the 100m below 9″90, 187 times. Of those,
32 times correspond to Usain Bolt (17%), and
just 1 to Carl Lewis.
Compare that 17% of best times of Usain Bolt today (while he is running) with the 30% today (while he retired 18 years ago) of best long jumps of Carl Lewis. That speaks about the size of the figure of Bolt as a sprinter but, again, speaks a great deal about the figure of Lewis as a jumper and also about the different evolution of both events.
I read earlier today an article claiming that Usain Bolt might be the best athlete ever (here, in Spanish). I do not want to dispute that with this post; by the number of olympic and world championship medals he has won and the records he has set, he might be so. However, in that article the author compared Usain Bolt (the runner) with Carl Lewisthe runner. However, it happens that Carl Lewis was much more than a runner, he was a long jumper. In this blog post I just want to put into perspective the size of Carl Lewis as a jumper.
I will again base the analysis on the following terrific website with all time best performances in track and field (maintained by Peter Larsson (1)). In the following two graphics you can see the best ~2200 and the best ~180 long jumps *ever*. The red dots correspond to Carl Lewis’ jumps.
Best ever ~2200 long jumps, focus on Carl Lewis.
Best ever ~180 long jumps, focus on Carl Lewis.
Carl Lewis retired in 1997. His last great competition was the Olympic Games of Atlanta in 1996 (where, by the way, he collected a gold medal with a 8.50m jump at age 35).
Now, in 2015, 18 years later, of the best 184 long jumpsever (all those at or above 8.50m), 55 of those jumps (a 30%) correspond to Carl Lewis. I let you to qualify the feat.
The runs (100m and 200m) Carl Lewis did in the 80s would probably not win him any gold medal today; his jumps would still win him almost every gold medal today.
That was Carl Lewis the jumper.
Finally, after having highlighted the talent of Carl Lewis as a jumper, I wanted to recall that several times along the past years we have read news indicating that Usain Bolt was going to venture into either long jump (here) or 400m (here), he hasn’t done so far (not in big events, at least). This is not a criticism. Without a doubt, he is the best sprinter ever. However, athletics is much more than sprinting… (2)
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(1) I already used this magnificent source when I analyzed Rotterdam marathon times, here.
(2) Personally, I would always pick a marathoner ;-).
Edit [28/08/2015]
(3) I believe it would be interesting to share the World Championship long jump competition of 1991, when Mike Powell managed to set a new long jump world record (8.95m), 22 years after Bob Beamon had set the previous one in Mexico DF (8.90). Find the explanation from the Wikipedia here. Despite of losing it, Carl Lewis managed the following four jumps in that competition: 8.91 (wind aided, therefore it doesn’t count for world record and best ever jumps), 8.87, 8.84, 8.68 and 8.56. The first 3 jumps would have won *any* competition in history except 3, including the two world records referred. Unluckily for Lewis, these jumps got him only a silver medal.
I received a comment from Uwe, a reader of the blog, suggesting to plot it using a logarithmic scale. At first, I wanted to show how the long distance runners could almost keep a speed (between 20.5 and 23.8 km/h) for distances from 5 kilometres to 42, a marathon. However, Uwe convinced me to make the plot and here it is:
Athletics World Records vs. my times (speed) – logarithmic scale for the distances.
In this view, what it is interesting is to appreciate the different slops of the lines connecting the different records. There you can see how:
100m and 200m races are fully anaerobic where Usain Bolt is capable of maintaining an average speed of above 37.5 km/h. You can see in the explanation in the Wikipedia how these two races (both lasting below ~30 seconds) use as energy source high energy phosphates.
races from 400m to 1 km are still a high intensity activity, with some anaerobic component, though another energy source enters into play: anaerobic glycolisis. And as we have heard often in descriptions about 400m races, the consequence of rapid glucose breakdown is the formation of lactic acid.
from then (1.5 or 2km) on (up to 42km) professional runners are able to keep a high speed out of aerobic metabolism (using adenosine triphosphate, ATP). Of course, speed decreases with distance, but from the 26.2 km/h of a 1,500m to the 20.5 km/h of a marathon the speed decrease is of -22% for a race 28 times longer!
for ultramarathons (over 42k) speed starts decreasing at a higher pace, though Wikipedia only offered the 100k time. Probably more data can be found in the web to try to find with more accuracy up to which distance the long distance stable pace could be maintained.
Uwe, you were certainly right. This view offers another very interesting perspective to the game :-).
I have many times commented with friends and acquaintances how impressive professional athletes are, what does it mean running a marathon in barely over 2 hours…
Many amateurs (not to mention sedentary people) would not keep up pace much longer than 100 metres. Each time I have made this comment to someone I had to verbally make some numbers for my interlocutor. I am sure these verbal calculations were not always well understood and digested. Following the adage “an image is worth more than a thousand words”:
Athletics World Records vs. my times
Red lines show speed (in km/h; decreasing as race distances get longer). Blue lines show pace (in mm:ss / km; increasing as race distances get longer). I have included a table so you can compare the numbers.
I took athletics world records from the Wikipedia. You can find my times in the page “Races” of this blog. I only added a tag to the records that most of you will recognise, as they were achieved by well-known super stars.
There are many catches in the graphic. Two impress me the most:
I could have kept up the pace of Patrick Makau in his marathon world-record-beating performance for 100 metres… but not for 400m! (see black dotted lines).
How once we enter into aerobic exercise, we’re able to almost keep up speed despite distance increases. The difference in speeds between Bekele’s 5k (23.77 km/h) and Makau’s marathon (20.48 km/h) is only 3.25 km/h!
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NOTE: I am not a particularly fast runner, thus don’t take the times and paces and interpret them as if no amateur runner could keep up pace for more than 100m… some will keep it up somewhat longer. I just wanted to share the idea.
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