How can we explain that we are still breaking sporting records?

Pole vault, swimming, high jump… The Paris Olympic Games are the scene of many feats and new world records. These performances fascinate the public. How can athletes constantly push human limits? Explanations with Gaël Guilhem, director of the sport, expertise and performance laboratory at INSEP.

On Tuesday, August 5, Armand Duplantis broke his own pole vault record again, and during the Games, several records have been broken. How can we explain that such solid records continue to be erased in these Olympic Games?

Gaël Guilhelm: In athletics, for example, there is a technological factor that has been increasing in recent years. In these 83 disciplines, over the last three or four years, according to my memory, between 20 and 30% of these records have fallen. This can be explained in particular by the integration of new shoes and spikes in endurance disciplines. They have also, over the last year or two, penetrated the sprint disciplines. We have not broken the 100m record but you will have noticed that we are in the densest final in the history of the Olympic Games with seven sprinters under 9.9 seconds. There is an intensification of very high level performances since with 9.82 seconds this year, you are not on the podium whereas in Atlanta, in 1996, you would have been Olympic champion.

But there is also the improvement of our knowledge on discriminating factors and performance. We have never seen so many coaches and athletes mobilizing seven days a week, for four years or for an entire career, all the knowledge available to achieve the best possible performances. And then we often talk about marginal gains. We try to optimize nutrition, sleep, mental preparation, the ability to perform in contexts with a lot of atmosphere, a lot of stress, a lot of pressure. By adding all these little extras, we continue to be able to break certain records.

We sometimes see on social networks videos comparing swimming or athletics competitions from 100 years ago with current competitions. The performances achieved at that time are pulverized. Aren’t the athletes simply physically stronger?

Yes, of course, it’s obvious, especially in swimming. But as in many disciplines. The major factor in progression in high-level sport is gaining muscle mass. And that can also be seen in team sports. In football, if you compare the France-Germany of 1982 with a current France-Germany, it has nothing to do with movement, the ability to repeat efforts. So obviously, there is clearly a difference there. And you’re also talking about competitions that took place a century ago. Imagine if we presented the athletes of that time in many disciplines. With today’s athletes, there has been colossal progress made in physical preparation and that contributes to breaking records.

Today, sport has become largely professionalized, with knowledge sharing and technological improvement. Will we see a cap on the number of records broken in the years to come?

There is already work that shows this leveling off of records. I am exaggerating, but they are analyzed over about two centuries. I often take the example of work that is rather conducted by anthropologists, to estimate the speed of movement of some of our ancestors from footprints in mud tracks. Some of our ancestors were capable of reaching relatively correct levels of athletic performance without necessarily training for it. This allows us to put into perspective a little the analysis that we have when we look at two centuries. It is shown that this is leveling off.

But if man is here in a century or two, how big will he be? How big will his tendons be? What will the elastic properties of his muscles be? I have no idea. And how will coaches be able to use the available knowledge? If we take the example of sprinting, we have known for a short time now which muscle groups are discriminating. We know that sprinters who have very developed glutes or certain knee extensor muscles or knee flexors more developed than others, are more likely to perform well. And we also know that there are imbalances within muscle groups. We have had this knowledge for a short time. How will coaches use it to individualize training? We will continue to progress, perhaps scraping off a centimeter here, a hundredth there, but it will be more slowly than 30 or 40 years ago.