Olympia 2021 – 100 meters: are you faster than the fastest?

Anyone who comes out of the blocks too early will be punished. If you start late, the others will run away.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

An international group of researchers examined whether this is really the case for the period from 2003 to 2009, the period in which Usain Bolt set his world records.

Bolt was known for a lot, but not necessarily his quick start-up responsiveness. The 155 milliseconds assumed in the simulation above, coming from his gold medal run in Rio 2016, are average at best.

The study came to the unsurprising result that there is a significant correlation between success and quick start-up time. Also that the more successful sprinters (who make it to the finals) had better reaction times than the less successful ones (who were previously eliminated).

However, there are also some more surprising things to be found in the study. The reaction time is shortest for sprinters who are near the end of their careers (for men between 26 and 29 years of age, for women over 30).

More experience or the higher number of races completed could be possible reasons – but the researchers cannot really explain that either.

Likewise, which is why the average reaction times of women were significantly higher than those of men.

The study mentions a thesis that women could react faster to visual stimuli than to acoustic ones. Possible genetic reasons or different training methods are also mentioned. But the researchers write themselves: all speculation.

The speculation is no less with another, just as simple sounding question, namely when a start is considered a false start. The limit for this is exactly 100 milliseconds after the shot (which of course does not come from a real pistol, but from a highly complex technical device). It is assumed that during this time, which corresponds to about a third of the duration of the blink of an eye, a person cannot react to an acoustic stimulus. But here too: it is accepted.

This assumption is quite controversial among experts. The question is hotly debated whether it might not be possible to react below this time. There, sensor accuracy in starting blocks and signal transmission times of nerve tracts are cited. Details are left out at this point, just so much: It’s complicated.

By the way, the master of the 100-meter reaction time is Jon Drummond. The US sprinter did not win a single medal in individual competitions (only in the relay), but in 1993 in Monaco he managed the probably unique feat of starting out of the blocks in exactly 100 milliseconds. Not least because of this, he is still considered one of the best starters of all time.

At the 2003 World Cup in Paris, however, Drummond became a tragic figure when he caused a false start in the 100-meter quarter-finals after a repeat start and was disqualified due to a newly introduced tightening of the rules.

In protest against the verdict, he lay down on the runway, ran through the stadium in tears and delayed the restart by almost an hour. In doing so, he added another to the history of the 100-meter races, which was not poor in scandals.

Anything under 100 milliseconds is counted as a false start, by the way, the most famous in recent history underwent world record holder Usain Bolt in the final run of the 2011 World Cup in South Korea.