In sports, why do world records get broken so frequently? Originally answered on February 18th, 2015
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Answer by Laura Hale, Editor in Chief of ParaSport News
In the past 100 years, a number of things have changed in the sporting environment that led to a number of records being developed.
The rise of professional sport. Before, sport was a leisure activity or something that working class people got into to get out of the working class. They were often scorned by sporting institutions because their professionalism made them well, professionals. As professionalism emerged, market conditions made it possible for people to take up sport full time, to be well compensated for it, and created an economic incentive to continually improve and the economic resources to make that happen.
Improvements in health care. Torn ligament? No problem. There is surgery for that. Knocked out your teeth? You can get those replaced. Broke your back and were in traction for several months? No worries. As Anna Meares knows, they developed a bicycle and way to allow you to sit on the bike and pedal away. In many cases, because of economic and national reasons, athletes have easier access to better health care to deal with their sport related injuries than the rest of us. Countries and teams have been known to charter planes to get their elite athlete to the best specialists around anywhere on the planet. This rise in health care quality means elite athletes can overcome injury to continue to excel. Pushing yourself has fewer risks.
Technology. The technology has improved a lot. We're talking customized technology, specially designed racing wheelchairs. People are not using their day chairs to race in elite competitions today. The same principle also exists on the able-bodied side of sport. Think those superfast speedo swimsuits.
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Improved cheaper transportation and more opportunities to compete against the best. This is related to professionalism, but if you want to improve, you need to go up against the best and continually go up against the best. If Ronaldo was constantly playing for a fifth division team in the Icelandic league, he wouldn't be as good as he is. Instead, he has increased opportunities to compete against the best. Time to get to a place is still a factor but not as substantial as it used to be. Picture being an Australian swimmer, having to take a one week plane trip or three week boat trip to get to London to compete at a major international like they did in the early Olympics. That gets in the way of your training as ship and plane board training opportunities were often limited and inferior. It means during those travel periods, you can't compete in other competitions as you're in transit. This faster, cheaper transportation improves your ability to compete at more events against the best. This is something very important in the developing world where transportation options are not as good and are cost prohibitive. It is harder to be an elite footballer or Paralympian from Chad if you can't get out of the country to play against better competitors.Government support. Related to the first one, on the non-professional-sport-team, less-professional-in-general sports, government support means a lot. It is an issue of being able to compete, or needing to take a full time job doing something else. As sporting events became more important on the international level, as they gained in prestige in terms of what they said about a nation, the value increased, and governments paid out. They then put substantial money into sport to increase their value-added proposition of winning medals. Look at what Australia did following the fall of communism. They came in and swept up a lot of talented coaches and physical trainers and sport scientists. Where professionalism does not pay the bills, the government can help up the quality. This explains why the USA has dragged on the medal table at the Paralympics: they aren't funding Paralympic sport on the same level as other elite Paralympic countries.
Sport psychology and goalsetting. If you talk to a lot of elite athletes, their goals often include breaking world records. Sport psychology has also developed into a full fledged thing that puts people into the right head space to do this. So when you've got elite athletes who are well motivated, mentally healthy people who have the financial means to go and try to break records as a way to measure their own success... Earlier, this was a goal, but things were easier and it was not the be all and end all of sport.
Those are a few of the variables that created a climate that allows world records to be broken more easily these days. And that's not a bad thing as a sports fan.