Study: Women may beat men in sprint by 2156
 

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/09 ... index.html

Study: Women may beat men in sprint by 2156

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Women could be faster 100-meter sprinters than men by the 2156 Olympics, according to a study on Wednesday.

By the middle of the next century women may be leaving men in the dust and could, for the first time, beat them in the 100 meters.

If projections by scientists at Oxford University in England are correct, women will close the gender gap by clocking 8.079 seconds in the 100 meters,ahead of the best male time of 8.098 seconds. The current world record stands at 9.78 seconds.

"If current trends continue, the women will run faster than the men at the 2156 Olympics," said Andrew Tatem, an epidemiologist at the university.

"There is a strong trend at the moment of both men and women improving their 100-meter times at the Olympics but women are increasing at a faster rate ..," he told Reuters.

American sprinter Justin Gatlin won the men's 100 meters in Athens this year with a time of 9.85 and Yuliya Nesterenko of Belarus took the women's gold in 10.93.

Winning times in the sprint for both sexes have increased since the 1900 Olympics, due to improved ability and better diet, fitness and coaching.

Tatem and his colleagues plotted the winning times of the men's and women's Olympic finals for the sprint over the past 100 years. Their research showed no sign that either male or female athletes have reached a plateau.

By extending current trends to the 2008 Olympics, they estimate women could win the 100 meters in 10.57 and the men in 9.73. Their calculations, which are published in the science journal Nature, show clear linear trends up to 2252.

"The lines (representing the best male and female times) cross just before the 2156 Olympics," Tatem said.

But he added that the analysis did not include confounding influences such as timing accuracy, environmental variations, national boycotts or the use of legal or banned stimulants.

How much illegal substances have influenced men's or women's timing is unknown. According to some commentators, drug use can explain why women's times were improving faster than men's, particularly since they slowed after the introduction of drug testing, according to Tatem and his colleagues.

But they found no evidence to support that.

One explanation for the closing speed gap is that women have not been competing in the 100 meters as long as men and until now only a minority of the female population has been given an opportunity to compete.

"Sports, biological and medical sciences should enable athletes to continue to improve on Olympic and world records, by fair means or foul," Tatum said in the Nature report.


==================
Just over 8 seconds is crazy fast. Average today is like 10 seconds. Imagine scratching 2 seconds off that and run 100m in 8 seconds. That is nuts.

well i'll be dead so.............good for the women??? oOo:

good for them and their damn equality.

my grandkids will have smoked pot by then oOo:

cause they got no fuckin nuts slappin an floppin between their legs.


duh. spank:

they have titties flappin above, ever think of that?


(then again, there are some that dont. )

they got dem goofy fuckin sports bras to hold em back

Fuck sprinting. Just buy a bike or a car. oOo:

i just masturbated to that article.

wtf dude, that was my hand you masturbated with, not yours.


I actually liked it though

lol

by that time, i'll be a floating head in a jar

It'll never happen and here's why. Whoever did the study is predicting this on past track times. Over the short amount of time the woman has been in the Olympics, they've been running faster times at a pace that IF UNCHANGED will be faster than mans. They forgot the "Peak out" in their lil' study. The Women will "peak" and faster times won't come as easily. You may have a freak thrown in there every now and again but it won't be enough to top man.

This is in no way a flame on women...they're just built differently from man. They don't have the testostorone levels than man has (except during pregnancy) but they won't be running world record times carrying around a 7 month old fetus.

These scientists are idiots. Perhaps they should call themselves something else.

I was thinking the same exact thing Arkan

beer:

I say who gives 2 shits?




I sure as fuck dont.