Speed & Exponentially Increasing Human Prowess
· Free Press Journal
Mbappé just hit 38 km/h. Again.
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Not in a sprint lab. Not with wind behind him and spikes on a track. In a match. With a defender pulling his shirt, 70 minutes on the clock, and 50,000 people screaming.
And 10 meters behind him, the referee is also running. He won’t hit 38. But by full time he’ll have covered 13 km. Backwards, sideways, with a whistle in his mouth and 22 athletes trying to make him irrelevant.
We used to clap for humans who ran a 4-minute mile. Now we barely blink when a winger outruns a car in a school zone. When did this become normal?
1. The body is no longer the limit. The system is.
38 km/h isn’t magic. It’s data.
Mbappé’s speed comes from GPS vests that track every step in training, sleep rings that tell him when to recover, nutritionists who weigh his rice, and physios who know his hamstring is 3% tighter on the left.
The referee’s 13 km comes from the same system. 20 years ago, refs jogged. Today they’re elite endurance athletes. FIFA makes them pass Yo-Yo tests. They have analysts who study player patterns so they’re already moving before the ball is.
We didn’t suddenly evolve longer legs. We evolved better support.
2. Speed is the new language
When Mbappé hits 38 km/h, he’s not just running. He’s speaking.
To the defender: “You can’t catch me.” To the crowd: “Watch this.”
To the 12-year-old watching on his phone: “This is possible.”
Speed compresses time. A 90-minute match now has 15 more sprints than it did in 2010. TikTok trained our brains for it. Football delivered it.
But here’s the twist: the fastest players aren’t just fast. They’re fast and thinking. Mbappé at 38 km/h still knows where the goalkeeper’s near post is. That’s not muscle. That’s CPU.
We’re breeding athletes who are Ferraris with navigation systems.
3. The invisible athletes
We celebrate the 38 km/h. We forget the 13 km.
The referee. The wicketkeeper who squats 500 times. The kabaddi raider who holds his breath and calculates 3 defenders. The hockey midfielder who covers 11 km on turf in 45°C.
Pro sports have created a new class of human: the endurance specialist who never scores.
A Premier League referee in 2024 averages 11.8 km to 13.5 km per game. That’s a half-marathon every 4 matches. With people abusing him the whole time.
When did “fitness” stop being for players only? When the game got too fast for slow people to keep up.
4. Are we breaking humans to make them better?
This is where it gets uncomfortable.
More speed = more hamstring tears. More distance = more ankle surgeries. Mbappé’s club has a room full of cryo chambers and sports scientists precisely because 38 km/h breaks bodies.
And it’s trickling down. 14-year-olds in academies now wear GPS vests. They’re told “you only ran 9.2 km today. The standard is 10.5.”
We’ve turned play into output.
In India we see this already. Parents asking coaches: “Beta kitna km bhaaga?” instead of “did you enjoy it?”
The danger isn’t the 38 km/h. The danger is that we start thinking anything less is failure.
5. So what is human prowess now?
It used to be: strongest, fastest, highest. Now it’s: recoverable, adaptable, data-literate. The best athletes today aren’t just physical freaks. They’re managers of themselves.
Mbappé recovers in 48 hours and does it again. The referee manages his positioning so he doesn’t have to sprint 40 meters in the 89th minute.
The badminton player tracks HRV on her watch and skips practice when her body says no.
Prowess is no longer brute force. It’s intelligence applied to biology.
And it’s spreading. Your delivery partner does 15 km on a bike with an app telling him the fastest route. Your nurse does 12 km on hospital floors. We’re all becoming endurance athletes, just without the cameras.
6. The next 100 years
In the past 100 years we went from bullock carts to metro. Sport did the same. In 1954, Roger Bannister broke 4 minutes. People cried. Today high schoolers run 3:59.
Where do we go from 38 km/h?
Maybe 40. Maybe we don’t. Maybe the next leap isn’t speed, but sustainability — athletes who can play 100 matches without breaking.
Maybe it’s fairness — tech that helps a referee at 13 km see what a player at 38 km/h does.
Or maybe it’s kindness — remembering that behind every GPS number is a person who gets tired.
Final whistle
Mbappé will slow down one day. The referee will retire. But the bar they set won’t come down. We now live in a world where ordinary humans watch extraordinary humans and say “that’s normal.” That’s the real revolution.
Prowess isn’t just about running faster. It’s about expanding what we believe a human can do.
And then asking the next kid: “What if you tried?”
Maybe he won’t hit 38.
But he might run 13. And that would’ve been impossible to his grandfather.
So watch the speed. But don’t miss the stamina. Don’t miss the brains. And don’t miss the fact that every record is just an invitation.
Your turn.
Dr. Sandeep Goyal heads The Red Lab, Rediffusion's insights hub