NYTimes: One Race, Every Medalist Ever

Following on the heels of Usain Bolt’s amazing results yesterday in the Olympics, the New York Times has a great visualization of the last 116 years of 100-meter Olympic Runners showing how the race has consistently gotten faster over the years, and how they would stack up against today’s athletes.

Based on the athletes’ average speeds, if every Olympic medalist raced each other, Usain Bolt (the London version) would win, with a wide distribution of Olympians behind him. Below, where each sprinter would be when Bolt finishes his race.

via One Race, Every Medalist Ever – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a computer graphics programmer and news junky that's been working in the field for the last 15 years. He's responsible for visualizations generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, ytnef, mullion support in ParaView, and VizWorld.com.