Why Usain’s 100m WR is not the fastest run ever…

The recent Olympic Games sparked lots of debates in my house – and of course, we were all experts in every sport. That little step at the end of the floor routine in gymnastics? Many a shaken head in our lounge and muttered comments of ‘you did so well, until there’. Similar to the little splash in the diving pool. We realized that fencing is obviously a bigger deal in the rest of the world than in South Africa because there was a lot of it on the broadcast schedule. We argued about breakdancing being an Olympic sport, but not squash. Mostly, what we argued about was is Usain Bolt the fastest man alive – and if so, explain the world 4 x 100m record.

According to World Athletics, the 100 m world record for men is 9,58 seconds. The world record for the 4 x 100 m relay is 36,84 seconds. Needless to say, those two records are held by Usain and the Jamaican team respectively. I am sure that by now you have done the maths: the average time per 100 m in the relay was 9,21. So somebody – or everybody – ran way faster than Usain did when he set that world record of 9,58 seconds.

If Usain Bolt ran the world record time on all four legs, he would complete the Bolt⁴ in 38,32 seconds. That would give him the 55th fastest relay time ever – squeezed somewhere between Poland (38,31s) and Esporte Clube Pinheiros from Brazil (38,33). If we simply add the four fastest 100 m times (Bolt, Blake, Gay, Powell), that will give us a relay time of 38,68. World Athletics publishes the 77 fastest time and this relay of super sprinters would not even have made that list.

There are loads of arguments and debates on how to put together your relay team to get the best results, but there are a couple that seems to be universally acceptable. Acceleration speed, maximum speed over distance, bend running and the handover seem to be on the list of all experts (excluding those of us on the sofa, because we are only worried about the step and the splash).

The runner with the best acceleration speed starts. Remember, the other three athletes have a ‘running start’, so you want your starting runner to be the person that gets to maximum speed as quickly as possible. Let’s look at another runner to explain the importance of a ‘fast start’. Michael Johnson held the world 200 m record for a while running an incredible 19,32 seconds at the Atlanta Olympics. Johnson was a notoriously slow starter – probably easier explained by looking at his splits: 10,12 seconds for the first 100m and 9,20 seconds for the second 100m. Johnson’s fastest time over the 100 m individual race was 10,09 seconds. So the man that ran a faster-than-word-record second 100 m leg in his 200 m race, is only the 365th fastest man over the 100 m individual race. You would have wanted Johnson in your relay team, but preferably not starting.

None of the fastest splits ever recorded, was run on the first leg. During the London Olympics Bolt ran 8,70 s (anchor leg, i.e. last leg). This is slightly faster than his anchor leg at the 2010 Penn Relays of 8,71 seconds. The USTAF High-Performance Registered Split Analysis Team clocked Asafa Powell’s time at 8,7 seconds at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Barcelona in 1992 saw a new World Record of 37,4 seconds – Bernard Williams ran the back straight and Carl Lewis the anchor leg – both clocking two incredible splits of 8,85 seconds. A running start is a huge advantage.

Relays have a 30 m handover zone. The baton cannot be handed over outside of this 30 m zone – so the receiving runner has to receive in this zone and the handing over of the baton has to be before the end of the zone. In a race where seconds count, this is where you ‘steal’ distance. If runner x is impossible to catch over 80 m, but you have a chance over 95 m, the race and positions are plotted in such a way that runner x runs 80 m from receipt to handover. A game that probably has the best understanding of who needs to run what distance at speed, is rugby. You will never see serious rugby statistics over 100 m for a player in the front row. Players in the front row are the really big guys that get involve in scrums and rucks and mauls and most of the physical stuff. Players in the front row need to be fast, but because of the way the game is designed, they need that explosive power and speed over 20 m. A player in the back row – normally a bit smaller (if that is a thing in rugby) than the player in the front row on average will run further distances. When you select your players in your team, you would be interested in how fast a front-rower is over 10, 15 and 20 m, whilst you would probably look at 60, 80 and 100 m for any player in the back row. Although a relay is 4 x 100 m, that is really just a suggestion and in reality, you will find every runner covering a different distance. (Just for clarity – splits are measured over 100m.)

There are hosts of other issues to consider – some of them obvious, e.g. how smooth was the handover of the baton, whilst others are a bit more complicated, e.g. how good was your bend runners. Sheffield Hallam University did an entire study on bend running – and they have some fascinating math for you – and the results show a ‘decrease in sprinting performance on the bend compared to the straight’. They comprehensively cover the reasons for this (decrease in step length, decrease in flight time, etc.), the effect of how leaning into the bend would affect your style and what can be done in training to prepare athletes for running the bend. They do make one observation though in studying their test subjects: certain athletes’ race velocities were ‘faster than their absolute speeds on the bend’. In other words, those athletes followed an inside path on the track, thus effectively running a shorter race. In an event where tenths of a second count, this is massively beneficial.

In closing, let’s quickly look at the handover. Outside of don’t stuff it up, there are some innovations that have made handovers better and faster. The Japanese relay team came “out of nowhere” in Rio in 2016, but not really. They didn’t have the fastest runners, but they made the least mistakes. Since the 2001 World Champs in Edmonton, the Japanese team used the underhand (up-sweep) baton exchange – it allows the giver to be closer to the receiver at the moment of exchange, ensuring minimum loss of speed. You are also less likely to make a mistake by using this technique. If you are into athletics and relays, do read the story of the Japanese team and how they applied analytics to be one of the most consistent relay teams – even more so than the Jamaicans. They tell the story of how 7 cm in a handover zone made a difference of 0,08 seconds – which doesn’t sound like a lot, but that day 0,08 seconds meant a silver medal.

Maths couldn’t explain the relay record, but once we have broken down the actions – as algebra taught us to do – maths not only explained the results but also gave us some pointers on how to perform even better. Perhaps the secret ingredient in sport is not so much talent or diet or facilities, but math.