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?
“I still want to try and solve the puzzle of creating a timing system that has enough integrity and reliability to be able to give reasonably accurate times to the nearest 0.001 second.”
This already exists… current timing systems (Colorado, Omega, etc.) could as easily record/display times to 0.001 seconds of precision, in fact back in the 70’s they were timed to the 0.001th of a second. The world swimming community decided to only record times to 0.01th of a second.
As for the discussion about elite swimmers all approaching some mystical fastest time, you have a better chance of being struck by lightening or being eaten by sharks (see other forum posts on shark attacks for those odds), then you do of ever seeing an entire dead heat in a championship 50.
But back to this fastest time argument, what few people seem to be taking into account is the fact that records are not broken on any schedule some records stand for decades (Mary T’s fly or Bob Beamon’s long jump) and many records from the 70’s 80’s and 90’s still stand. And aren’t all our records already the fastest any human can swim? That is until someone breaks it.
“I still want to try and solve the puzzle of creating a timing system that has enough integrity and reliability to be able to give reasonably accurate times to the nearest 0.001 second.”
This already exists… current timing systems (Colorado, Omega, etc.) could as easily record/display times to 0.001 seconds of precision, in fact back in the 70’s they were timed to the 0.001th of a second. The world swimming community decided to only record times to 0.01th of a second.
As for the discussion about elite swimmers all approaching some mystical fastest time, you have a better chance of being struck by lightening or being eaten by sharks (see other forum posts on shark attacks for those odds), then you do of ever seeing an entire dead heat in a championship 50.
But back to this fastest time argument, what few people seem to be taking into account is the fact that records are not broken on any schedule some records stand for decades (Mary T’s fly or Bob Beamon’s long jump) and many records from the 70’s 80’s and 90’s still stand. And aren’t all our records already the fastest any human can swim? That is until someone breaks it.
