We know that Usain Bolt is one man that does his surname justice. Officially the fastest man on the planet, and with four Olympic gold medals behind his name, he may arguably be the best sprinter that the world has ever seen. But how does he stack up against former medalists?

The New York Times was kind enough to crunch the numbers, and ranked Bolt among all the previous medal winners. Basing their outcome on over 100 years of Olympic data, and using each runner’s average speed, they came up with the following: Bolt is still the fastest one around.

If you were going to put them all in a race together, the London version of Usain Bolt would come in first place, with a massive following of Olympians behind him, including the US’s Jim Hines, who was the first to break the ten second barrier. Carl Lewis is also left in the dust, almost 3 metres behind the Jamaican.

It’s interesting to note how humans have been getting faster and faster over the years. To put this in perspective, Bolt’s time of 9,53 seconds is 2,4 seconds faster than the first place finisher at the 1896 Olympics. This is as much a sign of human progress and evolution as it is breaking through the mental barriers holding us back.

I’m almost certain the nine second barrier will be broken eventually, hopefully in our lifetime.

Check out the source below to see their research in video format.

[Source: NYTimes]