Had been thinking about this topic yesterday and a post on another thread just reminded me of it. We always talk about how bikes are faster and training techniques have improved and bla bla bla. Of course all of those things are true, but I’ve come to the decision that the main driver behind increased/improved performance must be population growth. I posted a graph of population growth below to compare with the one posted by Klehner, couldn’t find one for the exact same time period but took the closest one I could.
An example of how my theory would apply is if you take something like the long jump, which is what’s used in Klehner’s graph, the number of “spots” available at the top of the long jump world hasn’t changed since 1900, there can only be one WR holder and one Olympic gold medalist and so on, but the number of potential long-jumpers has increased dramatically. Therefore therefore the pool of people competing to be that one guy at the top simply need to push themselves harder to get there, not to mention the fact that, with a larger population, I would assume there’s simply a higher chance of very genetically gifted long-jumpers being born. To use a different example take something like the NBA. In the inaugural season of 1946 they had 11 teams and the world population was ~2.3 billion based on the graph below. Now in 2014 we have 30 NBA teams and, according to worldometers, a population of 7,276,611,566 meaning that the ratio of NBA teams per capita has decreased and consequently that it is harder to make one.
As I alluded to there are various other factors and those were probably responsible for the big spikes on the first chart below, but in terms of general improvement of the athletic standards in all sports I think increasing difficulty of making the top level as a result of population growth is the main driving factor. Looking forward to hearing any thoughts or insight. Wasn’t able to find related research, but I only tried two different Google searches.
So, given a world record progression like the above, would what you say apply to the record setters in 1900, 1936 and 1968?
Among the western industrialised nations, the performances in national rankings lists and the performances
achieved by the best athlete in the nation have relations that are characteristic of a Gaussian distribution. To
achieve international success in the long jump, the smaller nations have to overcome a performance deficit of
about 0.3 m per factor of ten increase in population. This study suggests that when comparing athletic
performances among nations the appropriate population for comparison is the subset of citizens that are
competitive athletes, rather than the total population of the nation. One method for a nation to increase its
chances of international athletics success is through increasing the participation rate in the sport.
Little bit misleading on the long jump record chart, because of the one off nature of Beamon’s jump.
If you plot it as a straight diagonal line, it stays pretty consistent and matches the population growth. If Beamon hadn’t had that freak jump (His best jump in the years after was 2 feet shorter, 26’ 11.75"), you would see the normal staggered progression you see in the early records.
Advanced training, techniques, equipment all contribute.
Little bit misleading on the long jump record chart, because of the one off nature of Beamon’s jump.
If you plot it as a straight diagonal line, it stays pretty consistent and matches the population growth. If Beamon hadn’t had that freak jump (His best jump in the years after was 2 feet shorter, 26’ 11.75"), you would see the normal staggered progression you see in the early records.
Advanced training, techniques, equipment all contribute.
John
You’re right, but exactly, a straight diagonal line would come come to the population growth. Long jump is only coincidentally the sport I most focused on as it came up in the other thread and also happened to be the subject of the study in my second post. However with a sport like the long jump, I think, one can eliminate some of those other factors or at least say that something like technology probably has only played a small role in the WR development.
Competition. You only need to beat the previous fastest. There are exceptions when an exceptionally motivated individual will set a record that will last for decades, but I imagine that is becoming a rarer event.
We also have a greater wealth of knowledge to draw on, and more access to that knowledge.
Lifestyle. More opportunities for an athlete to work on their sport eg professional, rather than work to support their sport.
Evolution? I can only imagine that the child of generational athletes has a greater chance than a child of generational obesity, if not just for mindset/culture alone.
Competition. You only need to beat the previous fastest. There are exceptions when an exceptionally motivated individual will set a record that will last for decades, but I imagine that is becoming a rarer event.
We also have a greater wealth of knowledge to draw on, and more access to that knowledge.
Lifestyle. More opportunities for an athlete to work on their sport eg professional, rather than work to support their sport.
Evolution? I can only imagine that the child of generational athletes has a greater chance than a child of generational obesity, if not just for mindset/culture alone.
Now that I think about it I essentially just took a long-winded approach to stating that there is now more competition in reaching the top. The last point you make is an interesting one and a possible mitigating factor.
well, i think it’s partly a numbers game. but humans are always tricky and modelling behaviour against graphs is always tough. there are other things - sometimes a cohort of great athletes come up together and push each other along, sometimes a guy has a great day, or benefits from a slightly friendly ref (were any of those long-jump records foot faults, in retrospect?), or whatever. people are strange.
as for evolution, not really. yes, good athletes might mate and have athletic kids. but for evolution to come into play, you’d have to show that world-class athletes are outbreeding (and their kids outsurviving) the general population. that’s not happening here.
I would speculate even more important than population growth per se has been the growth in the number of people with the opportunity to participate in sports. Same basic phenomenon, more people means greater likelihood of finding those at the end of the bell curve.
Thinking about it a little more I think the inverse of my last point might be of greater influence. De-evolution. Meaning I think bad lifestyle could introduce more counterproductive problems. I would think it more likely that bad lifestyle could lead to gene malfunction, disorders, etc than the likelyhood of a gene adaptation. I am still a proponent of evolution, just the timescale of our lives is so small that I would imagine the progression to be equally as small. But you might get the occasional mutant?
I highly recommend the book “The Sports Gene” by David Epstein. It doesn’t speak directly to this point, but it covers a lot of issues that lead to atheltic performance, and I am sure that you’ll find some overlap with your theory. Terrific book – one of the most interesting I have read.
There is definitely a few different angles to it. Another one to consider which ties into what ThisIsIt said is the amount of people participating in sport. We might (definitely) have more obese people than before, but I’d also make the assumption that we have more people doing sport than we even had on the planet in 1900. Also should consider the fact that the most obese people are concentrated in a few places like America.
I would speculate even more important than population growth per se has been the growth in the number of people with the opportunity to participate in sports. Same basic phenomenon, more people means greater likelihood of finding those at the end of the bell curve.
Correct. The study I linked to after the first post focused on that vs. just population growth.
“This study suggests that a nation can increase the likelihood of international success
through increasing the participation rate for the sport.”
Here is a link to it again for anyone that’s missed it. If it doesn’t load at first the trick is simply to reload the page.
I highly recommend the book “The Sports Gene” by David Epstein. It doesn’t speak directly to this point, but it covers a lot of issues that lead to atheltic performance, and I am sure that you’ll find some overlap with your theory. Terrific book – one of the most interesting I have read.
I remember reading an excerpt that I think was from that book in Sports Illustrated a couple years ago about the “speed gene”. I will look into that because I enjoyed the excerpt. Thank you for the recommendation!
There is definitely a few different angles to it. Another one to consider which ties into what ThisIsIt said is the amount of people participating in sport. We might (definitely) have more obese people than before, but I’d also make the assumption that we have more people doing sport than we even had on the planet in 1900. Also should consider the fact that the most obese people are concentrated in a few places like America.
…and Mexico, and China, and Brazil, and the UK, and the Polynesian Islands, and Australia, and Canada, and Iceland…I think you’d be shocked at the actual epidemiological numbers. There are very few countries today where less than 10% of the population is obese and there is a lot more parity than you’d think. The U.S. doesn’t even have the highest obesity rates, Mexico does.
Enjoyed the video thanks for sharing! As Epstein says we haven’t become a different species and that’s perfectly in line with my thoughts. What I’m suggesting is just that we’re getting more out of ourselves and that’s why I also think population growth is likely more tied to the general FOP standards in various sports than to world records. As we approach human limits we’re only going to get minimally better at the top (world record) level, but my theory is that we’ll have much more people just below that level. The example with track surface was a good one, although of course this (effect of technology) varies across sports. “There are many more people training today” is one reason given by Epstein for the number of people who’ve broken the 4 minute barrier in the mile since Bannister, which after his adjustment for track surface was still at 530 and as he acknowledged “more than one”.
Also I take issue with his Hour Record example. He states that the fact the post-reform Hour Record distances were only slightly better than Merckx shows that the previous improvements were only down to aerodynamics, but that ignores the fact that the number of attempts fell off dramatically after the UCI curtailed the aero improvements of the '90s. The guy who held the record in the end, Ondrej Sosenka, was essentially packfodder. I.e. what I’m saying is that it’s not a fair conclusion.
There is definitely a few different angles to it. Another one to consider which ties into what ThisIsIt said is the amount of people participating in sport. We might (definitely) have more obese people than before, but I’d also make the assumption that we have more people doing sport than we even had on the planet in 1900. Also should consider the fact that the most obese people are concentrated in a few places like America.
…and Mexico, and China, and Brazil, and the UK, and the Polynesian Islands, and Australia, and Canada, and Iceland…I think you’d be shocked at the actual epidemiological numbers. There are very few countries today where less than 10% of the population is obese and there is a lot more parity than you’d think. The U.S. doesn’t even have the highest obesity rates, Mexico does.
I apologize if I was unclear or if it came across as me saying that only America has obese people. It wasn’t my intention to say so. Let’s leave it at what I said above the bolded part and it not being the majority of the population.
