Who do you think holds the title of world’s fastest human. Obviously, you can use whatever criteria you want (Olympic medals, consistency, dominance, WRs, etc.)
ELITETRACK Founder
Who is the world’s fastest human?
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Participant
I feel Michael Johnson is the fastest man in the world because if you were to take his 200m time (19.32) and seperate it into even 100m splits (9.66) it ends up faster than the fastest 100m race (9.78) ever run. Since the first part of a race is most often faster than the second part Michael Johnson is undoubtidly the fastest man in the world. Using the simple Mathematics that all children of the United States of America must go through I have determined that Michael Johnson IS the Fastest Man In The World.
-David
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Keymaster
I thought about what you said and almost put MJ on the list. At the time he ran his 19.32 (1996), I would say with very little reservation that he was the fastest guy in the world….in that race he ran the curve in 10.1. 😮
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
But if T-mont or Maurice Greene were to run 100m against him with a 30-40m runup they could probably beat him and break the 100 record in the segment after the 30-40 by a lot.
Anyway, I think the poll is who is the fastest now, not of all time or I’m sure Ben Johnson and a bunch of others would be on the list.
How can Marion be the fastest human?BTW I realize this poll is old and hasn’t been responded to in a while, but I’m new to this board.
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Member
[i]Originally posted by Daa20[/i]
I feel Michael Johnson is the fastest man in the world because if you were to take his 200m time (19.32) and seperate it into even 100m splits (9.66) it ends up faster than the fastest 100m race (9.78) ever run. Since the first part of a race is most often faster than the second part Michael Johnson is undoubtidly the fastest man in the world. Using the simple Mathematics that all children of the United States of America must go through I have determined that Michael Johnson IS the Fastest Man In The World.-David
I think you have it wrong on this one. For an elite sprinter(200m man) the second 100 is faster than the first, dont forget the 2nd hundred starts with a running start. As Mike pointed out his first hundred was 10.1 so his 2nd was 9.2. Mike I also must disagree with you, there is no way MJ was the fastest man in 96. L et’s look at the max velocity he achieved, it’s no where close to Donovan’s
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Participant
Sorry, I took the side of a high school athlete instead of a college athlete or coach :P, I havent really done too much to show that the second half is faster, we work alot on speed but not at the finish, more towards the beginning and maintaining the speed. But since the time shows that I guess thats how it works.
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Participant
since we are tlaking about the fastest human shouldnt this be an easy thing to determine since all we really have to look at is the athletes max velocity which only occurs for a second?
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Keymaster
It all depends on how we classify world’s fastest human. If we’re solely talking about instantaneous velocity for 1 second(i.e- m/s for 1 sec duration) then the answer would be pretty cut and dry. If however, we look more deeply in to it, we might consider things like “fastest over a certain distance” or “fastest relative to their competitors” (including genders and sprinters of past generations), or even “fastest average velocity over a given period of time” (2+ seconds) rather than instaneous velocity. We might even consider something like m/s values sampled over times less than a second. That is, if we further break down the “1 second of MaxV” there are surely subdivisions (10ths or 100ths of that second) within that one second time frame where the person is actually travelling faster than the velocity reported for that second. Not taking sides here, but there are clearly several ways to look at this, and this was one of the reasons why I put this poll up, because I thought it would help to get to the root of people consider to be the world’s fastest means.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
mike,
i hear you but im saying what if there was only a way to know where they hit their fastest time and shoot a special radar gun that tell us the miles per hr. -
Member
I know this is a late reply (soryy!).
But you're right there were no official split times taken for Donovan Bailey's 9.84s in Atlanta.
The only split times I have found are translations from the velocity curve shown on all TV screens by swatch timing.
From this, DB's projected 10m Splits were;
RT:0.174s (round-up to 0.18s)
WInd:+0.7m/s.
10m: 1.90s (1.72s)
20m: 2.94s (1.04s)
30m: 3.88s (0.94s)
40m: 4.75s (0.87s)
50m: 5.59s (0.84s)
60m: 6.42s (0.83s)
70m: 7.26s (0.84s)
80m: 8.11s (0.85s)
90m: 8.97s (0.86s)
100m: 9.84s (0.87s)Fastest 10m Split:
0.83s, 50-60m.(Note that a 10m split of 0.83s represents a peak speed of; 12.048m/s or 26.95mph. And not 12.1m/s as the Laser Gun has shown his peak speed to be)
50m Splits:
5.59s/4.25s = 9.84s (ex-WR)The web site;
https://www.chnsport.com/mainCesu.htm shows extracts for instantaneous speeds at 30m point by LAVEG laser, max speed and speed at 100m point. For Bailey in Atlanat'96, it gives 11.29m/s at 30m point, max speed 12.01m/s at 50m point and 11.30m/s at 100m point. In that race, Fredericks reached 11.67m/s at 55m and Boldon 11.87m/s at 53m.The information aboves comes from Pierrejean, who can be found at the IAAF.org Forums, Track & Field News Forums, Charlie Francis.com Forums & rarely on the Run-Down forums.
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Participant
Instead of getting so scientific. what you might want to ask yourself is, who would you want on the track to win the biggest race?
I say Michael Johnson
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Participant
Dan, Dan, Dan
to think I was such a fan of yours over your 4 yr career… (kidding, still impressed with your acheivements)
MJ's biggest race one could argue, was never at the Oly or WC's which in most cases he never really had a threat.
You could argue that his biggest race, in terms of world attention, $$$, competition, pressure, etc. was the infamous 150m against Dovovan. And we all know how that went.
Given the arguement as presented, I will take Donovan on his 100m in 96 and his embarassment of MJ in Toronto.
MJ's next big event could come soon? A run from the law and public opinion if they go into the freezer at Dick Pound's "House of Potential Horrors" up in Montreal and pull a frozen sample to test?
I would re-state the poll question to:
Who was/is the fastest, CLEAN athlete ever?Just the discussion over "clean" will be loads of fun.
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Participant
well the fastest of all is mo greene for sure…
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Participant
mo is the goat
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Participant
ya i think he did like 52 subtens
and 32 of them are sub 9.95! oh my god! -
Participant
When I looked at this topic I was like, what?:no:
You can’t just ask who is the fastest human in the world, in my opinion it’s several people!
These athletes have posted the best consistent performances in there event over everyone; in the entire history of there event.
100m-Mo Green 8+ times under 9.87sec.
200m-Michael Johnson 9 times under 19.85sec.
400m-Michael Johnson 18 times under 43.92sec.
800m-Wilson Kipketer 11 times under 1:42.60sec.
1,500m-Hicham El Guerrouj 14 times under 3:28.84sec.I could go on forever but the point is try to put this into perspective lets say Mo Green raced El Guerrouj in a 100m, 99% would agree Mo would win if he tried, and the same if El Guerrouj raced Mo in a 1,500m, 99% would also agree on the stronger competitor in that event El Guerrouj.
My point is you cannot classify a runner just on there (top)speed, but on there performance in that event. Hope this makes scene.
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Keymaster
[i]Originally posted by Littlelefty[/i]
When I looked at this topic I was like, what?:no:You can’t just ask who is the fastest human in the world, in my opinion it’s several people!
These athletes have posted the best consistent performances in there event over everyone; in the entire history of there event.
100m-Mo Green 8+ times under 9.87sec.
200m-Michael Johnson 9 times under 19.85sec.
400m-Michael Johnson 18 times under 43.92sec.
800m-Wilson Kipketer 11 times under 1:42.60sec.
1,500m-Hicham El Guerrouj 14 times under 3:28.84sec.I could go on forever but the point is try to put this into perspective lets say Mo Green raced El Guerrouj in a 100m, 99% would agree Mo would win if he tried, and the same if El Guerrouj raced Mo in a 1,500m, 99% would also agree on the stronger competitor in that event El Guerrouj.
My point is you cannot classify a runner just on there (top)speed, but on there performance in that event. Hope this makes scene.
The error or perhaps difference in your line of thinking and that of this thread is that you are qualifying the statement. In short, the statement is “who is the world’s fastest human” PERIOD. Your statement would read “who is the world’s fastest human over XYZ meters.” We are talking about who can attain the highest speed possible without regard to how long they can sustain it.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
I gave my answer:bounce:
But If that’s not good enough then give it to a 50m or 100m runner WR Holder who attained the fastest speed EVER!!!
That was easy!:rolleyes:
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Keymaster
I agree, right now it’s probably either Powell or Crawford.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
In nature there has been humans observed running much faster than any 100m runner. However they had a much greater motivation than the athletes (ie: being chased by pyroclastic clouds). Saddly the clouds are almost always moving faster than the people and they ended up dead.
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Keymaster
[i]Originally posted by Flash[/i]
In nature there has been humans observed running much faster than any 100m runner. However they had a much greater motivation than the athletes (ie: being chased by pyroclastic clouds). Saddly the clouds are almost always moving faster than the people and they ended up dead.Where did you get this? I don’t believe this for a second. While I think there are probably freaks out there who could run 10.2 or so without ever training, I don’t think for a second that an untrained individual without the benefit of spikes and a synthetic track could run 12 m/s no matter what the motivation.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
I got it from a television program called the nature of things here in canada. The host is nobel prize winner David Suzuki. But now that I thought this over I do believe that they were running downhill, being in mountain terrain in all.
On a side note, is it so hard to believe that people can achieve supernatural strength with the proper motivation. There have been many examples of this with ordinary people, like mothers lifting up a car to save their trapped child. Some things happen that can’t be explained and I dont see how running would be any different.
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Keymaster
[i]Originally posted by Flash[/i]
I got it from a television program called the nature of things here in canada. The host is nobel prize winner David Suzuki. But now that I thought this over I do believe that they were running downhill, being in mountain terrain in all.Whatever Dr. Suzuki said is embellished for television because it’s setting off a 5-alarm alert on my B.S. meter. Even if they are somehow able to run extremely fast downhill (this is somewhat of a skill that requires quite a bit of recklessness) there is absolutely NO WAY to determine that they were running upward of 12 m/s. Were there somehow timing eyes on the mountain that could determine the exact velocity of each person (as there have been in all major championship races of the past 20 years)? Perhaps as some of the people ran down the hill to save their lives, others stood on the side of the hill and took 10m splits for all the people as they ran past a set of markers that had been accurately lade out prior to the catastrophic event. Using these 10m splits they then calculated there velocity?
On a side note, is it so hard to believe that people can achieve supernatural strength with the proper motivation. There have been many examples of this with ordinary people, like mothers lifting up a car to save their trapped child. Some things happen that can’t be explained and I dont see how running would be any different.
I would again ask you to show me a source regarding the “mother’s lifting a car off of a child.” I looked in desperation trying to find one years ago but never found anything other than people saying that it happened without ever giving details (where, who, when, etc.). You’d be surprised how many things like this are accepted as fact without ever having a lick of supporting evidence or truth. I think that it’s nothing more than urban legend. Always be skeptical!
Having said that, phenomenal feats of strength or athletic performance are possible due to decreased neural inhibition brought on by extraordinary circumstances. For all cases I’m aware of though, the results have been realistically within the limits of human capacity. A 100 lb mother (as the tale goes) lifting a car off of a child doesn’t fit into this category nor does a group of untrained people running at velocities faster (even if achieved downhill) than those ever recorded by the fastest individuals under the most perfect conditions (mondo track, speed suit, spikes, etc.) in the world who have trained for years. If you can find proof from a credible source to support the “woman lifting a car” story I’ll send you an ELITETRACK t-shirt for free.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
I would think running on concrete downhill in flats would be faster than downhill on mondo with spikes.
I once pushed a Plymouth Champ out a snowbank in the middle of the country soused like you could not believe, my best friends and I, 2nd and 12th in 800m at State Meet their senior seasons were out skiing on the back of the car. I don’t reccomend this by the way. Just an example of mind over matter, I weighed about 120lbs at the time and it was a plymouth Champ.
as for 12m/s, that is faster than the Human body can possibly withstand over any distance greater than a couple of strides. Downhill running requires significant skill development.
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Participant
Where is my t-shirt?
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Keymaster
Where is my t-shirt?
Where's my proof? If you're referring to the free t-shirt deal neither you nor anyone else provided what I asked for….proof from a credible source that the legendary "frail old woman picking up a car" stories are true. All you provided me with was a story of you pushing a car and some speculation about downhill running. I've seen many people push a car. I've never seen a lady pick one up.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
j/k
Not speculating about running downhill though.
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Keymaster
j/k
Not speculating about running downhill though.
Oh really?
I would think running on concrete downhill in flats would be faster than downhill on mondo with spikes.
This sure sounds like speculation to me. Now I'm not necessarily saying it isn't true but I've never seen anything to indicate that it's necessarily true. Whatever the case, I'm closing this topic since it's gone so far off-topic and the poll options and results are very outdated in light of recent developments in the sprint world (namly the emergence of gatlin, obikwelu, crawford and powell)
ELITETRACK Founder
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