Will a human ever outrun a Ferrari? Of course not. Human performance is inherently limited, and many factors restrict our speed, including how quickly our blood can deliver oxygen and how fast our muscles can twitch. Unless we undergo significant genetic engineering, we’re about as fast as we’ll ever be.

So how do we know this? Well, human performance, like many other traits, follows a bell curve distribution. This means that most people fall within the average range, near the peak of the curve, with only a small percentage being exceptionally slow or fast. As we move farther away from the peak, the number of individuals with that level of performance drops off exponentially. In the case of sprinting, this means that the fastest sprinters have already reached the flattened, tapered part of the curve. As a result, making significant speed improvements will become increasingly difficult.