Survival of the fittest: the changing shapes and sizes of Olympic athletes
- Written by Tim Olds, Professor of Health Sciences, University of South Australia
Darwinian “survival of the fittest” means that the bodies of Olympic athletes are becoming more specialised, more differentiated – and much more extreme.
The gold medal shot-putter from the 1896 Games, American Robert Garrett, weighed 81 kilograms; the 2008 and 2012 champion, Poland’s Tomasz Majewski, weighed in at 142kg.
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