How fast would Jesse Owens have run with modern shoes and track?

[repoman]

I just was wondering...

Anybody have a clue?

My idea was to take a world class runner and try to have the same shoes and track from Owens' era used. If say that they are 5% slower, then give Owens a 5% boost? Make sense?

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

I just was wondering...

Anybody have a clue?

My idea was to take a world class runner and try to have the same shoes and track from Owens' era used. If say that they are 5% slower, then give Owens a 5% boost? Make sense?

No, because today's runner would have no experience running with those shoes on that kind of track. Owens had done it all his life.

 

[fromderinside]

I just was wondering...

Anybody have a clue?

My idea was to take a world class runner and try to have the same shoes and track from Owens' era used. If say that they are 5% slower, then give Owens a 5% boost? Make sense?

No, because today's runner would have no experience running with those shoes on that kind of track. Owens had done it all his life.

Most of the advances in such as running have been with there being more athletes all of whom are better conditioned and trained. On the other side, time keeping is much better and more consistent today. How many athletes cheated the clock by getting off the starting line up to two tenths of a second earlier back in the day, or, got up to half a second advantage at the finish line, or, benefited from tailwinds above two miles an hour. Remember the long jump records that fell in Mexico at about 7000 feet altitude in '68 that weren't matched until a supers athletes Mike Powell competing with Carl Lewis did it in the nineties?

An event that use instruments like bamboo, steel, fiberglass and epoxy are much more susceptible to change than are changing from cinder to tartan turf or going from cow leather ('30s) to kangaroo skin ('50s) to synthetic material ('90s) like with track shoes.

 

[barbos]

How they were measuring time in 1936 anyway?

 

[rjh01]

See this video Why Are Some World Records So Hard to Break?
It answers a similar question to yours.

 

[fromderinside]

How they were measuring time in 1936 anyway?

Sundial. How well I remember my mammy bouncing me on her knee for mast-ah told me of the good old days of '36 back in '43.