Anyone who watches the NFL can see that big guys are training to be fast, very fast. The age of lithe runners is over forever, even for middle distance. Running was bound to become a sport of natural born freaks of nature like everything else, so now it's here. Now they're going to look for runners with a certain level of anaerobic white twitch muscle fiber, a given stride length and the necessary physics needed to run fast. Height will be an advantage.

" He simply looked like a new, improved version of humanity. "

So - how much time went by before Al Davis was texting "Lightning" Bolt, persuading him to stop by Oak Town on his way back to Kingston?

As a fan of pro cycling I am waiting for the doping controls to return before I crown this runner. Welcome to modern sport.

Mr. Kamiya,

Just thought I would mention that Mr. Thompson, the silver medialist, is from Trinidad & Tobago, I do believe, not Great Britain as stated in your article.

"The same thing holds for sprinters in track. Carl Lewis, arguably the greatest track athlete of all time, was 6'2", the same height as Richard Thompson of Great Britain, who took the silver medal behind Bolt."

Actually, Thompson is from my home country of Trinidad, same as Ato Boldon.

f=ma - real sporting -ain't it?

Remember this NFL guy (Packers all-star)? Not so long ago? He was average tall, and skinny by current standards.

I have read that the entire Netherlands nation are huge, due to good nutrition and low stress. I know little people who have giant kids.

Gary, your own kids probably will be huge. No worries, Squirt.

Even the all-stars are about as big as Gary Kamiya. Many are smaller. Best hockey players ever. This is true. I have seen them up close.

I rest my case.

FWIW Gary, by far the most successful Formula One driver of all time, Michael Schumacher, is also 5-9. (Mario Andretti is 5-6, by the way.)

Successful drivers over 5-10 are very rare in F1.(They have difficulty fitting in the cars, for one thing.)

...there's always equestrian, right?

It's so hard to get hyperbole and cod-outrage just right, but this article nailed it!

Laugh-out-loud funny, and yet informative and pacy.

Great sports writing!

(And as a 6 foot 6 beanpole, I, for one, welcome our new, taller, overlords... *grin*)

Alright, this guy comes out and easily demolishes a record that has been incrementally improved by hundreths of a second for a long time now. If he had run a full race, people are estimating he might have shave more than a tenth of a second off the record, something that has been unheard of for decades!!!

Why is no one questioning if there wasn't cheating going on here. This reminds me a lot of when Ben Johnson easily won the race a while back.

I fear this record may be coming out of the books just as fast as it went in ...

actually, with the coming crisis in food production, the future belongs to an emerging super-race of fuel-efficient midgets who will easily dominate the world while their larger rivals die out due to undernourishment and chronic listlessness and fatigue as a result of their unfulfilled caloric requirements -- kind of like how SUVs are biting the dust now that fuel costs so much!

My Dad "Pee Wee" was mid-Atlantic champion in the 60 yard dash when he was only 14 during an era when Caucasians could still compete successfully at that short distance. He stood about 5'6" in elevator shoes! At one time during the 1960's I ran a 440 yard dash in 50 seconds flat that at the time was almost an American record. I'm 6'1" tall and I weighed about 145 pounds at the time of the feat. When my Dad was still in his late forties and I was in my late teens I still couldn't beat him at 50 or 60 yards! While I was just thinking about getting out of the starting blocks, he had one and half or two steps on me! I would catch him at about 75 to 80 yards, however, and then blow past him. But at 50 to 60 yards and under he was the man!

I mentioned to my Dr. not so long ago that this body once ran a 440 in 50 seconds flat. He gazed briefly at me and with a twinkle in his eye he punctured my balloon with the perfect squelch, "Fred, not with that body you didn't!"

I’m now someone who is more mature, experienced, knowledgeable and cheerful--someone who takes his work seriously, but who doesn’t take himself too seriously!

Early on I learned the shortest distance between two people is laughter!

Little men can still be tall in stature. But it's usually valid that a good big man can beat a smaller man especially a physically much smaller man. Just look at the unusual physique of Michael Phelps and his recent jubilant swimming success.

you're good-looking too. There is gigantism as well as dwarfism. Life is probably easier for those who are what's known as a "good average"

Yes, the Dutch are freakishly tall -- in Australia where I grew up, I'm quite tall (183cm); here, I'm barely average. And that's just compared to the women. It's like walking the streets with a bunch of Amazons.

I think it's all the milk they drink. Every lunchtime, adults sit around the table at the office, eating sandwiches and drinking milk. This may also explain the extraordinary teeth everybody seems to possess.

It's a good thing it's such a small country, otherwise I fear the world would be run by giant Dutch mutants.

You little people run along now, the grown ups need to discuss things. We would have been winning the sprints long before now, we just never got around to it (you know, because of all the cash we're earning from our careers, and the near constant sex. It's not easy)

What about women?? The average height of American MEN is 5'9".

Average height of American women is about 5'4" I believe. Last I checked women were as human and as much citizens of the world as men.

Men are not the standard of everything. I'm only 5' and I can see over much less than Gary Kamiya.

Further, not every woman prefers tall men. Take heart Gary.