100-meter showdown: Fastest race ever?

There has never been a collection of fast human beings like the one that has gathered at the London Olympic Games. For the first time, the four fastest men in history could meet in a 100-meter race (provided they survive Saturday's heats and qualify for Sunday's finals) — Usain Bolt (9.58), Tyson Gay (9.69), Asafa Powell (9.72) and Yohan Blake (9.75) — along with history's seventh fastest man — Justin Gatlin (9.80). It is relevant to note that history's fifth-fastest man, Jamaica's Nesta Carter, didn't even make his nation's team. The competition also matches two former Olympic champs — Bolt and Gatlin.

The shelf life of a sprinter is so short that rarely are history's best sprinters around long enough to run against each other, nor do many great ones come along at the same time. And yet here they are.

It's not just one or two men who are running sensational times, as we have seen in the past when a Carl Lewis or Maurice Greene comes along. Already this year 17 men have run sub-10 times. The London showdown could mark the first time an entire field of sprinters runs under 10 seconds in the same race. Perhaps the only thing that could prevent that is London's cool, wet weather.

The current era of sprinting is what the turn of the century was to home-run hitting, what the '60s and '70s were to pop music, what the last decade has been to passing the football, what the late 1800s were to painting. The 2000s have been the confluence of great sprinters. While marks in so many events have stagnated (the long jump has actually gone backward), 100-meter times have fallen off a cliff.

In 1968, Jim Hines set the world record of 9.95. In 1983, Calvin Smith ran 9.93. In 1988 Carl Lewis ran 9.92. In other words, in 20 years the world record was broken only twice, by a scant .03 of a second. In the next 20 years — 1989-2009 — the world record was broken 11 times and tied three times, dropping from 9.92 to 9.58 — a staggering improvement of .34 of a second. The record was broken an average of about every other year. Even if you toss out Bolt's aberrational times, the record was broken nine times and improved .23 — without an altitude-aided time. Meanwhile, from 1968 to the present, the 200-meter record has fallen just five times and the 400 two times. Yet both longer races would seem to have more room for improvement than the 100.

In 1999, Maurice Greene became the first to break 9.80 legally (no drugs, no wind aid). Now the mark has been exceeded 27 times, and that's not counting performances by Ben Johnson and Justin Gatlin, whose sub-9.8 efforts were erased by drug penalties.

There's never been such an assault on the 100-meter record since electric timing replaced hand timing almost 50 years ago. Look at the list of the top 13 sprinters accompanying this story — nine of those performances were produced in the last six years. This in an event that, more than any other, requires near perfect conditions.

Why is this happening? It's difficult to ignore the obvious in this age. It's either the golden era of sprinting, or track's version of the drug-fueled home-run binge that occurred a decade ago in baseball. "I don't believe there is an explanation unless you charge it to doping, and yet they are simply that fast," says Willard Hirschi, the retired BYU track coach who coached Frank Fredericks, a four-time Olympic silver medalist in the 100 and 200. In 1996, Fredericks ran 9.86 — .01 off Leroy Burrell's world record at the time. Thirteen men have run faster since then. In a phone conversation, Hirschi goes back and forth on the issue, trying to make sense of it.

"It requires enormous speculation," he says. "Has training technique changed that much? Perhaps. Yet, I don't think so."