THE UPPER LIMITS : How Much Higher, Faster and Longer Can This Go On?

May 6, 1954. Oxford, England:

Roger Bannister runs a mile in less than four minutes. Bannis ter lunges across the finish line in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds, creating a sensation. A seemingly impossible barrier has been smashed.

But Bannister’s athletic accomplishment has since been swept away in a wave of biomechanical, physiological and technological advances.

Today, a four-minute mile causes as much excitement as a three-minute egg.

The Bannisteresque accomplishment of the future, according to a New Zealand biophysicist, Dr. Trevor Kitson, will occur on Aug. 1, 2528. By projecting growth curves for times in the mile, Kitson predicts that on that date the mile will actually be run in no time at all, a feat, he allows, “which will presumably ruin athletics as a spectator sport.”

The public has been known to pay more to see less, but Kitson’s assessment is probably correct. With times going down and technology going up, it does seem that the ultimate performance by a sprinter may be too fast to be witnessed by the naked eye.

“It’s going to be pretty boring in the future,” said Dr. David Martin, a physiologist and chairman of the marathon and sports science subcommittees for The Athletics Congress, the national governing body for track and field. “With runners, you’ll assume they’ll get there (the finish line) before the gun goes off.”

Martin is only half joking. The future of athletic performance is a scary prospect to some.

“It’s difficult to project,” Martin said. “The people who came to the conclusion in the ‘40s that the four-minute mile was impossible were smart people. These days, no one wants to say anything is impossible. As a scientist, I would find it very difficult to justify putting a limit on human performance. Something like a 1:30 marathon (1 hour 30 minutes) sounds plausible now. You know, you can prove anything with statistics.”

Statistics, of course, can also prove any “expert” wrong.

In a widely distributed manifesto in 1934, University of California track Coach Brutus Hamilton set out what he believed to be the ultimate performances in track and field. His ultimates might be reasonable goals for high school athletes today.

Hamilton predicted a peak performance of 50.40 seconds in the 400-meter hurdles. Edwin Moses’ world record is 47.02. Hamilton set an upper limit of 6-11 in the high jump. The world record is nearly a foot higher, 7-10 3/4. And, in a fit of cloudy vision, Hamilton predicted a maximum height of 15-1 in the pole vault. The record is 19-8 and climbing.

It’s easy to laugh at Hamilton’s careful predictions, but unfair to fault him. He was working with the athletes and information then available. Recent studies indicate that the average athlete today has a greater capacity for absorbing and carrying oxygen in his blood and is 20% more efficient than his counterpart of 40 years ago.

Today’s athletes also have help. Cyclists ride in wind tunnels, and swimmers swim against resistance in flume tanks. Weight training machines have taken new, almost human, shapes.

Yet, some old methods have borne fruit. Using a primitive form of progressive strength training, a Greek wrestler known as Milo of Crotona won three gold medals in the ancient Greek Olympics. He trained by picking out a young calf and lifting it every day until it grew into a bull.

“I think that’s a lot of bunk,” is Martin’s terse reply to one physicist’s description of the gyms of the future. This space-age sweat shop presumably will house little else but elaborate computerized training machines. Athletes will insert a disc, which contains detailed information on the level and duration of the athlete’s workout, step into the hard plastic shell, and turn the machine on.

If researchers can perfect current projects, the athlete of tomorrow may step into his synthetic training machine to exercise his synthetic muscles. Scientists at MIT are working with gels that, when placed in an electrical field, contract to a hundredth of their original size. That may not sound like much, but since muscle movement is all about contractions, their frequency and size, it means that this gel can be synthesized to provide strength factors far greater than natural muscle.

There are experiments with artificial blood, which can transport more oxygen than human blood. Such oxygen carrying efficiency would revolutionize endurance events.

Research with perhaps the most sinister overtones is being done with the harnessing of RNA, the genetic messenger of the DNA blueprint.

Scientists are training laboratory animals to perform specific tasks, such as negotiating a complex maze or jumping onto platforms. The RNA is extracted from the trained animals and injected into untrained animals. The untrained animals exhibit many of the same advanced motor skills, even though they have never had similar training.

The obvious sports application of this research is to extract “essence of Carl Lewis,” inject it into a well-conditioned but unschooled athlete, and watch him jump to a world record.

The idea of test-tube athletes may be distasteful, but it is certainly not new. Valeriy Borzov, the Soviet Olympic gold medalist at 100 meters in 1972, was often derisively called “Robotman,” a reference to his machine-like precision in the sprints.

Borzov was a product of the Eastern Bloc’s selection process that identifies and trains world-class athletes. In David Wallechinsky’s “The Complete Book of the Olympics,” Borzov’s coach, Valentin Petrovsky, explains how Borzov’s near-perfect technique was refined at the Kiev Institute of Physical Culture:

“We began with a search for the most up-to-date model of sprinting. We studied slow-motion films of leading world sprinters past and present, figured out the push-off angle and the body incline at the breakaway. . . . For Borzov to be able to clock 10 seconds flat over 100 meters, a whole team of scientists conducted research resembling the work of, say, car or aircraft designers. . . . When the mathematical equivalent of a runner was worked out and given a scientific basis, we began testing our calculations in practice. It was subtle work, which could be compared to the training of a ballerina.”

It has been a popular Western misconception that countries such as East Germany or the Soviet Union are alone in their relentless manufacture of world-class athletes. There are countless sports academies in this country dedicated to producing top gymnasts or swimmers.

“What people don’t realize is that our system is surprisingly similar to the Soviet system,” Martin said. “They have people wandering around the country, picking out the top young athletes, and they put them in special sports schools. We have the same thing. They are called college recruiters.”

The four-minute mile is as good a measure as any of the levels to which peak performances--or what were thought to be peaks--have now been stretched. The boundaries of physical possibility are well beyond what they were 10, even five years ago.

Computers have taken on a significant role in sports development. Technology has a prominence in sports that only cornflakes used to enjoy. When a runner wants to find what’s wrong, he compares the biomechanical analysis of his current form to what he has stored in the computer banks months before. A computer picture of the runner’s current technique is superimposed over the “correct” technique. From this, the athlete and coach can detect such minute changes as arm swing and length of stride.

So much has happened so soon. Ten years ago who knew what a biomechanic was? Now, with the help of these “body scientists,” a theoretical biomechanical limitation of limb movement has been developed.

It appears that the knee is the limiting factor as to how fast the legs can move. Thus, by computing the absolute top speed at which muscles can contract and move an arm or leg in a given range of motion, an ultimate performance can be calculated.

It seems, however, that as soon as those limits are determined, science advances on another front. In this case, it’s an old technique that has new application. In 1737, Alosio Galvani was working in his anatomy lab in Bologna, Italy. In front of him on a workbench was a skinned frog, with the nerves that led to the muscles in the frog’s leg exposed. Also on the bench was a basic electrostatic generator. When Galvani made an electrical connection between the generator and the exposed nerves, the frog’s leg jumped.

The connection is still being made. As early as the 1950s, researchers were reporting that electrical stimulation of muscles had the same effects as conventional strength training in increasing the size and strength of muscle fibers. This is the principle for the method that is now allowing paraplegics to walk, using a computerized electrical muscle stimulation system. The same techniques are applicable in sports.

Improvement in human performance has been a steady, plodding process punctuated by astounding episodes of achievement. Bob Beamon’s much-chronicled long jump of 29 feet 2 1/2 inches, at the 1968 Olympics is one such aberration. From Jesse Owens’ world-record jump of 26-8 in 1935 to Beamon’s jump 33 years later, the record had improved only 8 1/2 inches. Then Beamon came out with what one physiologist called a “mutation performance,” a performance that has no precedent.

“The ultimate long jump is an interesting question,” mused veteran track writer John Crumpacker of the San Francisco Examiner. “Unless Carl Lewis hits the record, we may have already seen the ultimate in Beamon’s jump. But, I would say the long jump will go to 32 feet.”

Another expert said that Beamon’s feat had put the event in a state of shock.

“When Beamon bypassed 28 feet and entered the space age with 29 feet, he set the long jump back 20 years,” said Jon Hendershott of Track & Field News. “Since Beamon, it’s taken Lewis to prove to other jumpers that mid-28s are possible. I think Carl can jump 29 feet. I think he can jump 30 feet on the right day. With the right combination of speed and strength, I think it can go 31 feet.”

The world record for 100 meters is 9.93, and Lewis, again, is closing. Scientists predict taller, stronger runners in the sprints. This new style sprinter will have huge leg muscles and a more streamlined torso--an aerodynamic model.

“It’s hard for me to imagine someone running 100 meters faster than 9.3 seconds,” Crumpacker said. “That would boggle the mind.”

Said Hendershott: “I think by the year 2000, we’ll see a 9.85. It’s an event with such a small margin for error, I don’t think we will see records broken by much.”

Kitson, the biophysicist, has projected a 9.74 by the year 2000 and a speedy 9-flat ultimate.

Big things are predicted in the mile. Again, sports scientists are observing a change in the body type of middle distance runners. The slender Jim Ryun-type physique will be replaced by a miler that one biomechanic likened to “a Bill Walton type--very tall and very strong.”

Kitson--or, more accurately, Kitson’s computer--predicts a 3:44 in the mile by the year 2000. The world record is 3:46.32. Kitson’s ultimate mile is 3 minutes.

These calculations are based on several factors. One used in calculating an ultimate marathon performance is called a “coefficient of fatigue.” This is the point at which a well-conditioned athlete will literally run out of energy.

Crumpacker thinks that this fatigue factor is never so important as in the marathon. “You can only go so fast over 26 miles,” he said. Carlos Lopes’ world best is 2:07:12. “I predict an ultimate of 1:58.”

Kitson predicts a 2:04:20 by the year 2000 and an ultimate of 1:37:30.

Among the women, a sub-2:20 marathon is not far off. Ingrid Kristiansen’s world best of 2:21:06 is in jeopardy.

“You get (Joan) Benoit on one of her better days and she’ll run 2:18,” Hendershott said. “Not long ago, 2:30 was really something. Off the top of my head, I think 2:17 is possible. The marathon for women is still a very underdeveloped event. When you hear the very best athletes talking about 2:15 by the year 2000, you’d have to think by that time the men would be approaching two hours.”

The pole vault, which caused such a stir in this year’s indoor season, is an interesting event to predict. Technology plays an important role in pole vaulting, where poles have gone from bamboo to metal to fiberglass.

When the first fiberglass poles were widely used, the first complaints were widely broadcast. “What do they want, a circus or an athletic event?” asked former gold medalist and world record-holder--on a metal pole--Don Bragg. “The vaulter with the fiberglass pole has the pole do all the work.”

The Soviets, too, took a shot at the fiberglass poles used by Western athletes, with one coach saying, “In Russia we develop athletes not implements.”

Today’s poles are fiberglass with some added graphite. Steve Chappell, general manager of AMF-Pacer, a leading manufacturer of poles, says to look for new compounds and materials in the poles of the future.

Sergei Bubka’s world record of 19-8 will almost certainly fall this outdoor season. Bubka himself predicts a vault of over 20 feet by the end of the century. He told a reporter for L’Equipe that the vaulter of the year 2000, “Will have to run more quickly than Borzov, long jump more than 8 meters (26 feet 3 inches), be able to lift twice his body weight without effort and be good enough in gymnastics to make coaches in that discipline envious.

“But I prefer not to be too adventurous in my predictions. For example, you must envision that a vault of 7 meters (22-11 3/4) would oblige you to reconsider your whole environment. Such a performance would put me through the ceiling of the gymnasium where I usually train!”

Crumpacker predicts 23 feet as an ultimate in the event.

The javelin is another event in which technology has affected performance.

Wooden javelins were used as late as 1956. Today’s metal javelins have something new this year, a configuration that will make them “safer”. International track officials thought that the event was becoming dangerous as throws over 300 feet became common. Uwe Hohn’s world record of 343-10 would fly out of many track stadiums in the United States.

“What they have done is make the javelin less aerodynamic,” said American record-holder Tom Petranoff, not a fan of the rule change. At first Petranoff thought the less airworthy javelin would favor a stronger thrower, but has since changed his mind. “It will favor the technical thrower, and once you get used to it, we will throw it farther than the old one,” he said.

Crumpacker predicts a 375 ultimate with the new javelin, and Petranoff predicts that won’t happen until the turn of the century.

By then, most likely, technology and science will have developed new sports about which fans and scientists can make fresh predictions.