Interactive Infographic: How Do Olympic Gold Medalists Compare?

Look, kids! You can actually SEE when people started taking roids! If those two individuals in Women's Javelin and Men's Long Jump do not raise your eyebrow, nothing will.

I'm young-ish, so I don't remember these people, and maybe they were the freak athletes that these charts display, but unfortunately I find it hard to believe that they would even be an outlier if they were breaking those records this year.

On another note, thanks PopSci! This is really a neat graphic to see how athletes have progressed in different sports. It's also really interesting how the times dropped from the first Olympics in 1896 to the next, when people were aware that training would be required.

Not to say in some (or even most) cases steroid use isn't a factor but claiming steroids in every case is pure and simple BS. Especially if you don't bother to understand the science involved in some of the situations. In the case of Beamon and the Men's Long Jump they attributed most of the added length to his jump to environmental factors.

@ToomeyND
Also if you read the thing you would have seen that the javelin used that year was banned....

Please learn to read before making yourself look like a fool.

Oh fish and feathers. I've been informed about 18 times that my IE8 does not support the canvas tag -- so I'm locked out from this awesome graphic.

Don't be so unfair popsci. I am but a poor grasshopper using XP IE8 is all that I can strive for. IE9 would require the thrice cursed Vista or the twice point 5 cubed W7

Come on now, all of you people crying "Steroids". Definatly arent too smart. Over time alot of things have change to add to these differences. The different training technniques to better the person training. The LARGE amounts of supplements that are legal to help build their muscles. All of that and mainly more of how the person trains aids in the differences from way back then. The training techniques used today give better results than ur typical situps and pushups. Do you think that now in 2012 that they are searching and testing STRICTLY for any signs of steroids use or past steroid use? Please, think about what you're saying before blurting out sensless, childish opinions. Thanks again.

@ford2go
All you need to do is download a proper browser like Firefox or Chrome. IE is old news.

@Shasta McNasty
Its not "steroids" anymore, it's "performance enhancers"
And no, they don't, and cant possibly test for all of them.
But you are right, not every great performance is a result of "performance enhancers"