4. Modern Athletes are Expanding their Years of World Class Performance
Modern training regimes, nutrition, and medical rehabilitation of injuries are expanding the plateau of peak performance for footballers, basketball player, and olympic athletes. American Justin Gatlin was
30 at the 2012 London olympics, but finished second in the 200 meters to Bolt. Ironically, Usain Bolt will be 30 years old in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. He has mischieviously slowed down during his most spectacular wins, so that his true speed is sometimes questioned. The theoretical limit on the speed of the human body is not really known, but if Bolt can get his very slow start time (the time to get to a full upright position) of
0.165 sec down to the about 0.13 sec (the best sprinters are consistently doing 0.12 sec), then he will be able to depend less on his blazing top speed of
more than 27 miles per hour. There is no doubt that he will have to pull on everything he has to repeat the feat of the last two olympics in Brazil, but he has the experience and the pedigree, now with the aid of science, he might have the opportunity. Plus, if there is a little, legal, tailwind, there is that proverbial luck factor that champions tend to have, and that we, the spectators, always benefit from.