Sub 10 seconds 100m Times by Age

I want to thank Scott Olberding for posting this graph on Twitter.

I had so many emails this week about Justin Gatlin’s recent PR in Doha, plus the fact that all the top sprinters (i..e Jamaicans) were “ducking” or avoiding Gatlin in fear of losing against him.

This chart below shows the outliers. Gatlin is the red dot (9.74 before the age of 35), with Kim Collins on the top left, and Usain Bolt on the far left with his 9.58.

Gatlin's 9.74 100m at 33yrs is atypical, but not an extreme outlier. Red dot is his vs. all sub-10s ever run#DohaDL pic.twitter.com/ckgLRKCntI

— scott olberding (@isthatsol) May 15, 2015

The sad part is, drugs or clean, we will never know the true story of any of the athletes in the dots above.

But as outlined in Roger Pielke’s Blog, the top 3 sprinters who improve after Age 30 (Justin Gatlin, Tyson Gay, and Asafa Powell) all have history of drug related positives. Maurice Green and Carl Lewis looks terrible in the graph below!

Only time will tell with the retirement of Usain Bolt and the changing of the guard with a crop of new young sprinters. Let’s hope the TV ratings don’t go down because of it.