{"id":21689,"date":"2013-08-05T12:52:24","date_gmt":"2013-08-05T10:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/the-mystery-behind-bolts-speed\/"},"modified":"2013-08-05T12:52:24","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T10:52:24","slug":"the-mystery-behind-bolts-speed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/the-mystery-behind-bolts-speed\/","title":{"rendered":"The mystery behind Bolt\u2019s speed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mysport24.co.za\/bolt-fights-to-win-back-world-title\/\" target=\"_blank\">Usain Bolt<\/a>\u00a0is a large guy as far as sprinters go, and his 6-foot-5 frame does not exactly make him a model of aerodynamic perfection.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mysport24.co.za\/?attachment_id=12366\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12366\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-12366 \" alt=\"Usain Bolt poses after winning the 100m in 9.85 in the Sainsbury's Anniversary Games at Olympic Stadium on July 26. Photo: Kirby Lee \/ USA Today Sports\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/plugins\/rss-poster\/cache\/5e391_1375631364000-USP-Track-and-Field-Sainsbury-s-Anniversary-Games-1308041150_4_3.jpg\" width=\"374\" height=\"281\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Usain Bolt poses after winning the 100m in 9.85 in the Sainsbury\u2019s Anniversary Games at Olympic Stadium on July 26. Photo: Kirby Lee \/ USA Today Sports<\/p>\n<p>But as his time of 9.58 seconds in a 100-meter race in 2009 proves, he is the fastest human on the planet.<\/p>\n<p>Even physicists who pored over every frame of that race are wowed after translating Bolt-the-runner into Bolt-the-mathematical-model for a study in the European Journal of Physics.<\/p>\n<p>He uses an almost inhuman amount of energy to overcome air resistance, thanks in part to \u201cextraordinary stride length\u201d and \u201clots of fast twitch muscle fibers,\u201d a Cambridge physicist tells the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>Or just think of him as \u201ctruly a freak of nature,\u201d writes George Dorsky at <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">io9.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the eye-popping findings:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Only 8% of the energy Bolt expended in the race was used for motion; the rest was to overcome the aerodynamic drag of his large frame, explains <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidescience.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">InsideScience<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>His maximum power output came less than a second into the race; figure about 3.5 horsepower, or enough to power a \u201clarge vacuum cleaner,\u201d reports <a href=\"http:\/\/www.popsci.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">PopSci<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>His top speed came about seven seconds into the race at around 27 mph.<\/li>\n<li>Even without the slight tailwind he had that day in 2009, he would have busted the record with a speed of 9.68 seconds, say the physicists.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All of which might beg the question, Is he doping? At <a href=\"http:\/\/www.letsrun.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Let\u2019sRun.com<\/a>, Robert Johnson makes a strong case for Bolt being clean. He\u2019s been busting records since he was a boy, and he may be one of those rare athletes \u2013 think Babe Ruth in his day or LeBron James today \u2013 who is simply way better than his peers because of his rare physical attributes.<\/p>\n<p>In Bolt\u2019s case, he \u201cis huge but has the coordination and quickness of sprinters who are normally much smaller.\u201d In short, \u201che\u2019s a tall freak.\u201d \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Newser<\/a><\/p>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\">Related articles<\/h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul zemanta-article-ul-image\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/olympics\/2013\/08\/04\/newser-usain-bolt-speed\/2616661\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/plugins\/rss-poster\/cache\/5e391_190815370_80_80.jpg\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/olympics\/2013\/08\/04\/newser-usain-bolt-speed\/2616661\/\" target=\"_blank\">Physicists unravel mystery of Usain Bolt\u2019s speed<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newser.com\/story\/171683\/physicists-unravel-mystery-of-usain-bolts-speed.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/plugins\/rss-poster\/cache\/5e391_190785754_80_80.jpg\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newser.com\/story\/171683\/physicists-unravel-mystery-of-usain-bolts-speed.html\" target=\"_blank\">Physicists Unravel Mystery of Usain Bolt\u2019s Speed<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thenigerianblog.wordpress.com\/2013\/08\/01\/scientists-explains-usain-bolts-extraordinary-speed\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/plugins\/rss-poster\/cache\/5e391_190019244_80_80.jpg\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/thenigerianblog.wordpress.com\/2013\/08\/01\/scientists-explains-usain-bolts-extraordinary-speed\/\" target=\"_blank\">Scientists Explains Usain Bolt\u2019s extraordinary speed .<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/?px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/plugins\/rss-poster\/cache\/cf314_zemified_h.png\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Usain Bolt\u00a0is a large guy as far as sprinters go, and his 6-foot-5 frame does not exactly make him a model of aerodynamic perfection. Usain Bolt poses after winning the 100m in 9.85 in the Sainsbury\u2019s Anniversary Games at Olympic Stadium on July 26. Photo: Kirby Lee \/ USA Today Sports But as his time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[3258,830,885],"class_list":{"0":"post-21689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-mysport","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-sport","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}