Kylian Mbappé is excessively fast.
In the race, he would undoubtedly beat the average Frenchman without breaking a sweat.
However, if there is one person on this planet who would easily put it in their rearview mirror, it is Usain Bolt, the fastest man in history, world record holder for the 100m in 9.58 seconds during the World Championships in Berlin in 2009.
However, for a little over 24 hours on X, the two men have been compared for their ability to run fast.
At the origin of the fire, a post from the BBC, a very serious English media outlet, on Elon Musk's social network which has been viewed nearly 10 million times.
On it, we read that “Kylian Mbappé achieved a speed estimated at 10.9 seconds over 100m.
That's just over a second shy of Usain Bolt's world record.
» The post does not provide more context, does not say when this performance was measured, but leaves us with this very reductive observation, repeated massively: the PSG n°7 has “only” 1.3 seconds to envy the Jamaican.
“Even in athletics, it’s complicated to measure max speed”
This is not the first time that Kylian Mbappé's speed has earned him being compared to Bolt: in April 2019, an article from the Daily Mail takes up a sequence broadcast on "French television", which analyzed an acceleration of the Bondynois facing at Monaco.
He would have reached a maximum speed of 38 km/h, more than Bolt's average speed during his world record (37.58 km/h).
A speed reached in a fraction of a second, where Bolt had precisely reached a maximum speed of more than 44 km/h on his record.
Above all, believes Pierre-Jean Vazel, national coach for the French Athletics Federation and member of its performance optimization unit, these measurements are very approximate at best.
“Even in athletics, it’s complicated to measure max speed,” he declines.
You need sophisticated equipment, you also have to
smooth
the curve because you accelerate and decelerate with each step... for Bolt, for example, we reached a maximum speed of 12.3m/s after 65m of running, so at the end of 6/7 seconds.
»
Distances and sprint times that footballers rarely have the opportunity to practice in the middle of a match.
“The average length of a sprint in football is 20 m, or 3 seconds,” continues Vazel.
They don't even have time to reach their maximum speed.
» And even so, the conditions in which these races are carried out are so different that comparisons are quite pointless: “the surface of the field, the shoes, the starting position… everything is different.
»
“10.9, of course it’s fast… for someone who doesn’t train for sprinting”
The question of comparing the fastest footballers and sprinters is obviously not new and, fortunately, some have set out to find answers in practice.
In 2011, the English television channel Sky Sports, as part of a program called “Tested to the limit”, brought together Cristiano Ronaldo, then a reference for speed in football, and the best Spanish sprinter Ángel David Rodríguez, whose 100m best was 10.14 seconds.
The two men are tested in two events: a straight line sprint, won by the Spaniard, and a... zig-zag, won by the Portuguese.
“Footballers have smaller strides, which allow them to change direction, avoid opponents, and shoot at all times,” explains Pierre-Jean Vazel.
Ronaldo's was 2 meters, compared to 2.4 for Rodriguez.
In sprinting, you should develop a longer stride: between 2.3 and 2.7m for the best in the world.
But footballers don't need it.
»
Why, then, always want to compare these two worlds that do not bring much together, on the basis of figures plucked from completely different contexts?
“Speed is a sort of standard measure of human physical performance,” analyzes Vazel.
Before, it was more about strength.
But in reality, it doesn't really speak to people, speed: we see what it represents on the dashboard of the car, but it continues to create a buzz (laughs).
»
Proof of this is: even with a time of 10.9 seconds over 100 m and “only” 1.3 seconds more than Usain Bolt, Kylian Mbappé would not be a reference in the discipline: “More than 5,000 men have done this time in 2023. In France, 200 men and around forty women have completed this time, it would be 9th among cadets, those under 18.
10.9, sure is fast...for someone who doesn't train for sprints.
»
Despite his obvious qualities and his elimination capacity, it is difficult to even count on the fact that Mbappé would make a good competitor in the sprint.
“It's presumptuous to say:
such an athlete would be capable of doing that
, when we don't even know his physiological data in detail.
You can just roughly see how he moves on the field.
His acceleration is a weapon and is one of his strengths, but it is light to say that he would make a good sprinter.
» Keep in mind the next time that comparison to Usain Bolt, the greatest sprinter of all time, inevitably surfaces.