This is something I have been thinking about since the Olympics... at what point will it not be possible for human beings to swim or run any faster. There has to be a point where the human body just can't go any faster, no matter how much you train, what kind of things you put into your body (legal or not), etc.
I mean it isn't possible to swim a 400 IM, for example, in 2 seconds (at least I don't think it ever will be) so where does it end? And when will that happen?
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coming in late to this conversation, but there is no way (well, at a reasonable cost) a 50 m pool can be built that can guarantee that two different lanes are within 1 mm of each other. That is why races are decided to the nearest .01 second, not .001. originally posted by Phil Arcuni
That is a very good point......I think the reasoning for wanting timing systems with that kind of precision is to break the somewhat frequent ties that ocurr when the timing is only broken down to the 0.01 second mark. The problem is that in short races, this has a fairly high probability of occurring. Moreover, if the speculation that the elite swimmers will (and are) approaching some "limitting best possible time" asymptotically (as Lindsay put it) as the years progress, then the probability of multiple ties with the timing system broken down to only 0.01 seconds will increase over the years (or at least that's a theory based on the speculation of this thread).....Will people (fans) be willing to see all 8 swimmers in the Finals of the 50 meter freestyle in some later Olympics all share the gold medal for example?....(of course if that happens there's a high degree of probabilitythat at least two of the swimmers will also be within 0.001 seconds of one another??) ....totally hypothetical but not beyond reason.
newmastersswimmer
p.s. I think the underwater cameras I mentioned in my last posting would need to be a little deeper than 18 inches below the surface of the water also....(I wouldn't want anyone to cut thier feet on them while making a flip turn...ouch!!)
coming in late to this conversation, but there is no way (well, at a reasonable cost) a 50 m pool can be built that can guarantee that two different lanes are within 1 mm of each other. That is why races are decided to the nearest .01 second, not .001. originally posted by Phil Arcuni
That is a very good point......I think the reasoning for wanting timing systems with that kind of precision is to break the somewhat frequent ties that ocurr when the timing is only broken down to the 0.01 second mark. The problem is that in short races, this has a fairly high probability of occurring. Moreover, if the speculation that the elite swimmers will (and are) approaching some "limitting best possible time" asymptotically (as Lindsay put it) as the years progress, then the probability of multiple ties with the timing system broken down to only 0.01 seconds will increase over the years (or at least that's a theory based on the speculation of this thread).....Will people (fans) be willing to see all 8 swimmers in the Finals of the 50 meter freestyle in some later Olympics all share the gold medal for example?....(of course if that happens there's a high degree of probabilitythat at least two of the swimmers will also be within 0.001 seconds of one another??) ....totally hypothetical but not beyond reason.
newmastersswimmer
p.s. I think the underwater cameras I mentioned in my last posting would need to be a little deeper than 18 inches below the surface of the water also....(I wouldn't want anyone to cut thier feet on them while making a flip turn...ouch!!)
