Of all the things that attract people to the Olympics, record-breaking performances are surely near the top of the list. People sit in anticipation at the venues, or huddled around TV’s at home and in pubs, waiting for records which once seemed inconceivable to be smashed by the latest crop of top athletes. And then four years on, they do it again, ad infinitum, or will they?

Back in 1968, Jim Hines made history when he was the first man to officially break the 10-second barrier for the 100m sprint at the Olympics in Mexico City. He won the race with a time of 9.95sec, and held the 100m record for 15 years. Last week all but one of the 10 sprinters competing in the 100m sprint ran under 10 seconds, and Bolt set a new Olympic record with a time of 9.63 seconds. It wasn’t only the sprinters that set new records, athletes from almost every discipline broke records in their respective events with a total of 37 new world records being set at this year’s Olympics, down six from the previous games. But how do athletes manage to consistently set new records, especially when the previous records seemed to be at the very limits of human capability? Experts say it’s not any single thing.

“There is almost certainly a species limit in terms of physical capabilities, and I suspect we might be in the range of that,” said Carl Foster, an exercise physiologist at the University of Wisconsin, Lacrosse. “But every time scientists say humans are not going to go any faster, they’ve been shown to be wrong. You can take that one to the bank.”

Factors that contribute to the continual improvement of athletes include technological advances, a larger pool of potential competitors, bigger devotion to training and the human mind. The latter, they say, may play one of the most crucial roles.

“There’s no evidence that people going faster today have better engines than people 30 or 40 years ago. Believing something can be done frequently means it can be done,” said Michael Joyner, an exercise researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

With that said, external factors undoubtedly also play a very important part. Better technology – “[l]ighter bikes, deeper swimming pools, fiberglass pole-vaulting poles, synthetic tracks” – all add to performances and can push athletes to greater heights than their predecessors regardless of their inherent genetic talents. Of course, the numbers game can’t be ignored either. With a population of over seven billion people, there is an almost endless pool of athletes out there and with more of them trying more new sports the chances of future Olympians emerging is greatly increased. In addition, many sports which previously may have been sidelined are receiving much more mainstream support and coverage which translates to “professional athletic opportunities” exploding, meaning that athletes can focus exclusively on training instead of trying to cram in workouts somewhere in between holding down a full time job.

All of that considered though, is there an actual limit to human capability?

Through calculations of maximum power output, oxygen use, heart function and other factors, some researchers have attempted to predict what the absolute limits of human ability will be. Much-debated estimates include 1:58 for the marathon (a five-minute improvement over the current men’s record of 2:03.38), and 9.48 for the men’s 100m.

They say that and yet I have no doubt that in Rio in 2016 a host of new records will be set. Again human bodies will have been pushed beyond scientific comprehension, forcing the experts back to their numbers and calculations, ad infinitum, because they’ll never understand that it’s not about the numbers or the calculations, or even the physics, it’s about the athletes and how much they want it.

[Sources: Discovery News, Wikipedia]