So just how low can these athletes go?

Margins will become tighter, but that is unlikely to stop athletes striving to be hundredths of a second faster than their rivals, writes Andrew McWhirter

EASING up to wave at the crowd during a record-breaking 100m final was surely an Olympic first. Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt cruised to the 100-metre title in a record time of 9.69 seconds, but could have gone much faster, pundits agreed, if it was not for his nonchalant last 20 metres.

The quest to be the fastest man on the planet has intrigued sports fans dating back to Jesse Owens' heroic 10.3 second win at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany.

But how long can the sprinting records continue to be broken without a significant change in technology or sports science?

The drugs factor is one that has tainted the 100m in the past, most notably with Ben Johnson in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, but experts agree future record breaking efforts will be entirely man-made.

Bolt's height has caused a stir in athletics, with many thinking future 100m record breakers may be equal to or taller than the Jamaican's 6ft 5in frame. It has been calculated he takes an average 41 strides to cover 100m, compared to an averge 46 strides for other athletes.

The Scots former Olympic 100m champion Allan Wells said he had seen big changes in the sport since his heyday in the 1980s. He added: "I think there has been a change in attitude and that has contributed to the faster times. Some of the things that were just starting to get going when I was running, such as the types of training but also the system of working in groups, have made a difference.

"When you are training in groups, you feed off other people and there have been improvements in the level of coaching on offer. I think Bolt will break his record again and it will not stop there. There will continue to be advances in sports science and training techniques which will see split-seconds continue to fall off the times."

Wells said Bolt's height was a key part of his success and it was now likely that more giants will start to challenge in the 100m. Bolt had been told he was too tall for the 100m and, when he first broke the world record in May, it was only his fifth senior run over the distance. His coach, Glen Mills, helped his star pupil to overcome the problem tall runners often face of getting into their stride quickly.

Wells added: "The convention was that athletes like Bolt are too tall for the 100m and that is all out of the window now. What Bolt has done is move the goalposts and it will be difficult for others to follow, but they will."

Matt Lock, a senior executive at the Scottish Institute of Sport, agreed the height factor was significant.

He said: "What is most interesting about Bolt is his physiology. Is this the future build of a sprinter?

"There is now fairly good knowledge of the basics of getting world-class athletes performing.

"But organisations like ours are looking at the innovative ways to go beyond this and simply make people faster."

Allan Campbell, manager of the Central Scotland Institute of Sport at Stirling University, added: "There are obvious natural advantages that many athletes will have, but we can't underestimate the impact that an increase in standards across the sport is having.

"Records will continue to get broken, but it is just that the margins will get smaller and smaller, and eventually I guess there has to be some point where the limits of the human body have to be reached.

"There have been big changes in attitude, something which cannot be underestimated."

64 records add up to a second

IT IS nearly a century since world record times for the 100 metres race were first recorded.

The record has been broken 64 times since then, but only one second has been shaved off the times.

The first men's 100m world record was recognised by the International Association of Athletics Federations in 1912, when athletes were clocking in about 10.6 seconds.

The times fell by split seconds as the sport improved until 1968, when Jim Hines became the first man to break the ten-second barrier in a 100-metre race with a time of 9.95 seconds in the US national championships in Sacramento, California.

The records have continued to be broken year on year since then, with notable performances from the American Carl Lewis.

He broke the record twice in three years, with 9.92 at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and 9.86 in World Championships Tokyo in 1991.

Usain Bolt's time of 9.69 seconds on Saturday broke the world record of 9.72 that the Jamaican athlete himself had set in June.