As I understand it, we’re partly breaking speed/jumping records because of equipment: better shoes or whatever will make a huge difference.
Not trying to belittle their achievements, but to me somebody breaking a weightlifting world record is a little more impressive, as presumably everything is identical every time except the person themselves?
How are we still breaking those sorts of records? Better training? Are we artificially selecting for better weightlifters (ie, olympic weightlifters have olympic weightlifting kids)?
In: Biology
I think the concept of athletes dedicating 100% of their lives to training for a specific sport is a relatively modern thing. So you have that, better equipment technology, a lot better physio understanding around optimizing training and nutrition and stuff. (EDIT: and while thinking more about it, there’s probably a lot easier ways to be “discovered” globally as a high performer nowadays. was the god-like marathon runner from Africa being noticed 60 years ago?)
And doping. Let’s not forget that a ton of records are broken cause athletes have made themselves artificially super-human (on top of already being very strong performers…it’s not like an average person can dope up and become the best in the world)
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