Jan Železný vs Usain Bolt

Longtime statistician/author Dale Harder of Castro Valley, California, says that the best men's world record is in the javelin, not the 100 or 200.
His take on the subject:

Jan Zelezny's JT of 323'1 (98.48m) is actually the best mark of all time based on empirical results. No one else has come within 5% of him. Indeed, multiplying his WR x .95 results in 306'11 (93.56m). The javelin throw is the only event to have just one person higher than the 95% level.

However, to fairly compare most field events with runs (the high jump and pole vault are exceptions which are explained below) you would probably think that you would divide running WRs by .95 to get results to fairly compare with field event marks. But, if you divide 9.58 (Bolt's 100m WR) by .95 you get 10.08 (rounded off) and roughly 150 men have bettered that mark. So 150 men can run within 5% of the world's 100m record, but only one man came with 5% of the javelin record. Zelezny's better but not that much better. Read on for more.

To make comparisons fair, without going into the physics of it, one needs to take the square root of .95 (roughly .975) and use that as the divisor for races. You then should find that dividing 9.58 by .975 is about 9.83, and 4 men have reached that mark --which is rare, but not as rare as Zelezny's javelin throw. Next, if you divide Bolt's 19.19 (his 200m WR) by .975 it equals about 19.68, with 6 men reaching that mark. This would indicate that Bolt's 100 m is actually better than his 200m mark despite the general feeling that Michael Johnson's old 19.30 record was the mark of the ages.

If one also uses another measure, and that it to compare the ratios of world records to all-time 100 best marks for each event, then the same conclusions are reached. (Unfortunately more space is needed to fully explain all of this.) Those of you who are mathematically or arithmetically inclined may want to do some calculations yourselves. If you do the .95 calculations you should first subtract 1.00 meter from the HJ and PV marks since they are the only two events to be so influenced by the athletes' centers of gravity; then add the 1.00 meter back on to achieve your .95 level.

Source: Trackandfieldnews.com

Jan Železný	Usain Bolt
PB 98.48	PB 100m 9.58, 200m 19.19
1987 IAAF World Championships in Athletics 3rd	2007 IAAF World Championships in Athletics 200m 2nd
1993 IAAF World Championships in Athletics 1st	2009 IAAF World Championships in Athletics 100m 1st
1995 IAAF World Championships in Athletics 1st	2009 IAAF World Championships in Athletics 200m 1st
1999 IAAF World Championships in Athletics 3rd	2008 Olympic Games 100m 1st
2001 IAAF World Championships 1st	2008 Olympic Games 200m 1st
1988 Olympic Games 2nd
1992 Olympic Games 1st
1996 Olympic Games 1st
2000 Olympic Games 1st