According to biomechanist (a new one on me) Mark Denny at Stanford University it is anyway.
That’s how fast he thinks it’s possible for a man to run 100 metres (Usain Bolt’s current world record is 9.69 seconds), for a woman it’s 10.16 seconds.
Marathon times, says Denny, will come down a few minutes for both men and women. Horses and greyhounds, on the other hand, have already run as fast as they’re likely to.
Well obviously there’s a limit on how fast people can run as long as speeds are measured in hundredths of seconds, which means presumably that they’ll turn this into thousandths at some stage to keep athletics interesting.
Even so 9.48 sounds a bit precise. Dr Denny doesn’t say when this will happen.
Actually if Bolt, who set the record winning the 100m at the Beijing Olympics, had kept running rather than grandstanding for the last 40m, he might well have beaten 9.48 seconds there and then.
So, ingenious but wrong, as Mr Blatherskite’s college tutor used to write on his essays.
[Image Attribution: jeffpearce]