Has The Human Being Reached Its Limits? Perhaps – But Swim Speed Is Not Yet Done

After decades of improvement in longevity, size, physical and intellectual performance, human beings have reached their limits on all those scores, according to research.

After an Olympic century and a bit of “faster, higher, stronger”, will the next challenge of humanity be to cope and deal with staying put – and finding that acceptable, asks authors Sandrine Cabut and Nathaniel Herzberg in a feature on human limits in Le Monde today.

Take age up top: life expectancy soared as the human lot improved after the end of the Second World War but it now appears to have levelled off: the longevity of Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at 122, has not been topped since.

There’s a lovely story from the life of Calment. It goes something like this: her family solicitor was also a friend of the family; when Calment was getting on in age, the solictor offered to buy her beautiful home on the basis that she would be able, under contract, to live out the rest of her days there; the solicitor was much younger that Mme. Calment and reached a decent age himself but he never got to live in the house he had bought, courtesy of those 122 years of longevity.

Human limits divide scientific opinion, the article in Le Monde notes: some say there is a very low chance of humans living to over 125 years of age being relatively commonplace. A research paper published by Nature last year suggested that human longevity has reached its peak. Other researches disagree and see an upward trend that is not yet done.

The feature rattles through many measures, including intelligence, which in some studies appears to have tipped over the peak and is, on some measures, in decline. A fascinating read. It touches, too, on sporting limits.

In an article published last year in the Journal of Sports Medicine , researchers analysed 3,263 records established since 1896 in athletics, cycling, speed skating, weightlifting and swimming.

Wars and doping were among detractors and accelerators, as were shiny suits, Le Monde notes, citing the 3% leap in 2008-09, the short-lived era of polyurethane suits still represented strongly in the all-time world rankings 20, 50, 100 and 300 deep across all events.

One of the aspects raised in one reasearch paper touches on a culture shift in the attitude of those who govern sport and those who broadcast it. No records, no show (?), ask Le Monde’s feature writers as they consider this research.

The article has little to say on how training, techniques and much more in swimming have affected …

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