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Sporting Intelligence
July 20, 2015
by Roger Pielke, Jr.
The fastest time in the 100m in 2015 so far belongs to Justin Gatlin, the American sprinter twice sanctioned for doping violations. That Gatlin has come back from suspension during 2006 to 2010 to become the top sprinter in the world today makes for a remarkable story. The fact that he is doing it at age 33, for some, makes the story a bit too good to be true.
At present, no one has outright accused Gatlin of achieving his current success by breaking the rules. But questions remain. Ross Tucker, an expert in athletic performance explained that “Gatlin is the problem that will not go away… he is a former doper, dominating a historically doped event, while running faster than his previously doped self.”
For his part, Galin is aware of the talk, saying: “There’s nothing I can do except go out there and keep running and pushing the envelope.”
I was curious about how unusual Gatlin’s performance is as a 33-year old. Now that I’m closer to 60 than I am to 30, I have a soft spot for the older athletes taking it to the youngsters, like 33-year old Serena Williams, who at Wimbledon this month won her 21st tennis Grand Slam singles title and doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
The first thing I did was to gather data from IAAF.org, which hosts a wonderful data repository, for the top nine sprinters ever at 100m, and compare how their times progressed as they aged. That data is shown in the chart below. (I added in Carl Lewis because I was curious.) Read more …
