The Jamaican Olympic sprinter has taken the sports world by storm with his blazing speed. Usain Bolt has set the world record for the 100m and 200m sprint and has already accumulated 6 Olympic gold medals. Bolt is an 11-time world champion and has become a household name throughout the world. Watch how fast Bolt is when racing against other runners. Warning: don’t blink or you might miss it.
Usain will go down as one of the fastest sprinters in the world but how fast is he really? Let’s find out:
Usain Bolt’s record breaking 100m time in Berlin was 9.58s which is insane. He ran at an average speed of 23.35mph! It gets even better; Bolt reached a top speed of 27.44 mph! That is absurd for a human being. His 200m time is just as impressive running it in 19.19s with an average speed of 23.31 mph. This is extremely fast without a doubt and most humans cannot come close to these speeds. But how fast is Bolt compared to land animals? Surprisingly, not very.
An elephant’s top speed is roughly 25 mph which is just about two mph less than Bolt’s top speed of 27 mph. It’s crazy to think that an elephant can run that fast given their superstition and size. But what’s even harder to grasp is the fact that an elephant is almost as fast as the fastest man in the world. A domestic cat is faster than Bolt reaching top speeds of 30 mph. Here is a representation of his speed compared to other land animals:
So to humans Bolt is extremely fast, but when compared to animals Bolt does not look so fast anymore. I’m not discrediting Bolt in any way, shape, or form. He is still a hell of an athlete and one of the most naturally gifted athletes and the fastest runner in the world. However it’s mind blowing when you compare his speed to other animals and see how much slower Bolt looks compared to these animals.
I found this article to be interesting since we compared the fastest human to other species, and the statistics make human speed seem obsolete but humans actually have more endurance than any other animal according to a study .
There is no doubt that Usain Bolt is the fastest human to be ever recorded. An astounding top speed of 27.44 mph is something we have never seen; until Bolt’s record breaking 100m run in Berlin. Humans, coming from the Hominidae family, are most closely related to the chimpanzee, the gorilla, and the orangutang. Now obviously there are animals, such as the cheetah, that would smoke Mr. Bolt in a race. However, compared to other animals from the Hominidae family, Usain has the clear advantage. According to Speed of Animals A chimpanzee and gorilla can reach a max speed of 25 mph, while an orangutang can only reach max speeds of 3 mph. Although we might not be the fastest mammals to walk the earth, we take the gold medal in the Hominidae family.
I like how you put everything into perspective. Sometimes we all get so caught up in his “fastest man in the world” epithet that we fail to recognize in the scheme of things, he can’t even come close to some animals. Something that would’ve been interesting to put inside the article was to dissect the anatomy of Usain Bolt and see if there is anything special about his body type that gives him a competitive edge when running.
Very interesting article. Funny to think how inferior we are physically compared to other species around us. I wonder how we would rank in comparison if the chart included how long each species could sustain a top speed. I know a cheetah can run 60 MPH, but they can only sustain that momentum for an extremely short period. Would be interesting to compare the endurance and speeds of human to that of wild animals.