As somebody who knows very little about athletics/the olympics and cares little about them, I have to admit, I'm surprised that Kenya isn't there. I always thought they dominated running, or maybe it's just long distance running?
Different sort of build usually, 'Fast Twitch' muscles are big and bulbous and tend to fatigue faster and are built for sprinting, whereas 'Slow Twitch' muscles are longer and slender and enable long-endurance distance running. That is why the great Kenyan long-distance runners are slight of build and carry no excess weight in big bulbous muscles. Usain Bolt is a one-off individual in that he is tall and angular compared to e.g. Gay, Powell, Blake etc. who are very muscular. That is also why Usain takes a little while to get going in the 100m compared to Gatlin for instance but why he is also so fast in the 200m and will probably be so in 400m etc. if and when he decides to take on those distances.
To be fair, Olympic long distance runners are extremely fast in the short distance as well. Mo Farah can run the final lap of a 10000 meter race in under 51 seconds.
The long-distance advantage for most of the East African runners comes partially from a small evolutionary difference. Because much of Ethiopia/Kenya consists of high plateaus, there is a tendency towards larger lung capacity and a higher tolerance of lower oxygen concentration, which is a massive natural advantage.
Frankie ran under 10 seconds 27 times. The 4 sub-10-second runners from Namibia's much larger neighbor South Africa ran under 10 seconds a total of 7 times combined. Can Namibia help it if it concentrated all its talent into one man? Besides, how many of these other runners have raced a cheetah? https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/9d/3d/92/9d3d926b144cc36024ce418a85e1df4d.jpg
These figures naturally need updating each year, which as of Aug 2018 are USA on 55, Jamaica 20, UK 10, Nigeria 8 still (which includes a Portuguese/Nigerian runner), Trinidad 6, South Africa 5 and Canada 4. Honourable mention should go to France with 3 and China, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Qatar, St Kitts, Turkey and Zimbabwe all with 2, and Antigua, Australia, Bahamas, Cuba, Italy, Japan, Namibia, Netherland (Antilles), Norway and Oman all with 1 runner. Also it seems common that runners are born in Jamaica and compete for another team (including Linford Christie (UK), and Kemar Hyman who ran for a Cayman Islands team). If you take population size into account, it suggests Jamaica has more sprinters per person than anywhere else - 1 per 145,000 people. However from the full list, Saint Kitts has had 2 sub-10 runners, Antigua & Barbuda had 1 sub-10 runner which gives them 1 top sprinter per 28,000 and 103,000 people respectively. So perhaps those two are the best places to find sprinters.
First time I read the description I thought this was a 10 second quiz and thought, "just because they have to run fast, doesn't mean we have to guess that fast. This is ridiculous." Thankfully I was wrong.
That was 'wind assisted', so doesn't count towards official records. He has actually recorded 9.69 'wind assisted' in Stockholm, but his official (non wind assisted) best is 9.89.
Hi Quizmaster. I’d like to give a you a special vote of thanks for including the names of the runners in the answer section. That saves me having to Google them. 😊
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Fredericks
Is Frankie Fredericks four people?