In 1936 Jesse Owens held the World Record in the 100 meter run with a time of 10.2 seconds. Usain Bolt ran the same distance in 9.77 seconds. To put that in perspective, when Bolt finished, Owens would still have had 14 feet to go.
In 2014, during a CrossFit Tour event, Ruth Anderson Horrell (out of CrossFit Invercargill in Australia) stole the show with a score of 840lbs in the CrossFit total (combined total in the squat, press and deadlift). These numbers are impressive on their own, but when you consider that this score would have tied for 18th in the Men’s event and won the Women’s event by 310 lbs in 2007, it tells another story completely-the evolution of the CrossFit athlete.
This TED talk by David Epstein seeks to answer the question, “What’s behind the march of athletic progress?”
Image courtesy of TED.com
