Paris — The Olympic motto is "Faster, Higher, Stronger", but what if we have reached the limits of the human body? Some scientists have warned that when it comes to running — from sprints to marathons — the era of breaking records may be coming to an end. That is, unless the next athletic evolution is artificial and is doping, rather than human exertion, that breaches the next barriers. Only one world record was broken at this year’s athletics world championships in London, in the newly recognised women’s 50km race walk. And at the 2016 Rio Olympics, just two running world records were bested — SA’s Wayde van Niekerk in the 400m men’s event and Ethiopia’s Almaz Ayana in the women’s 10,000m. After the great advances of the 20th century, "the rate of improvement is approaching zero for the majority of athletic trials", says Marc Andy, a researcher at France’s Institute of Sport Biomedical Research and Epidemiology. In 2007, the institute analysed the history of Olympic records since t...
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