100 m in 5 secs??? Dream on...

Like a bolt of lightening, Usain Bolt ran his way into the record books with a double World record breaking 100 and 200 meters win at Beijing... I saw the 100 m sprint, and such was the dominance of the sprinter, that he was celebrating even before he crossed the finish line, and still managed to break the WR and his competitors comprehensively... He is the first person after Carl Lewis did a 100-200 m double way back in 1984...


A 9.69 second run... wow that sounds pretty impressive. I saw an article in TOI the other day, "100 m in 5 secs? - Not impossible", it said... well I think otherwise... yeah many people hold me as being a pessimist... but let me put some facts first...

From the past records that I have gone through, Donald Lippincott held the WR in 1912, and he clocked 10.60 seconds...
It has been almost a century... 96 years to be precise, and the timing for the 100 m sprint has not even been reduced by 1 second!!! Now thats interesting...
Well, we all know about the Theory of evolution... Humna beings are really quick to adapt themselves to the surroundings... but this adaptation has led to us being a slave of machines off late... Technology is being used more and more often to make life as easier as possible for us...
I simply believe that our evolution has stopped and its the evolution of the machines, that has begun... Even for a simple walk for a couple of blocks, the western countries have come up with a machine... Now theres no walking to the grocer and actually buying stuff, it all can be done sitting on a couch at home through internet...

Its not surprising then that the 100 m timing hasnt been reduced even by a single second.. The results that are showing up are due to extensive training (and performance enhancing drugs taken by some) undertaken by the athletes and nothing else... Without evolution, the 5 second barrier seems like a distant impossible dream... Maybe a nuclear war or global warming may change everything...