How fast could Usain Bolt have run? A dynamical study
H. K. Eriksen, Jostein R. Kristiansen, Ø. Langangen, Ingunn Kathrine Wehus · American Journal of Physics · 2009
Since that memorable day at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, a big question has been, “What would the 100m dash world record have been had Usain Bolt not celebrated at the end of his race?” Bolt’s coach suggested that the time could have been 9.52s or better. We consider this question by measuring Bolt’s position as a function of time using footage of the run, and then extrapolate the last 2s with two different assumptions. First, we conservatively assume that Bolt could have maintained the runner-up’s acceleration during the end of the race. Second, based on the race development prior to the celebration, we assume that Bolt could have kept an acceleration of 0.5m∕s2 greater than the runner-up. We find that the new world record in these two cases would have been 9.61±0.04 and 9.55±0.04s, respectively, where the uncertainties denote 95% statistical errors.