“And here is what made Seme an excellent coach. He knew I had been coaching myself. He first wanted to understand what I had been doing, mostly on my own, to bring me to the point where he would notice me. And I told him. I was doing the things I’d seen athletes at bigger schools with actual tracks do. I told him I would run by myself when I wasn’t taking care of my family home. I remember Seme nodded and then just added to the foundation I’d laid for myself. He found my running form to be too loose, he felt I swung my arms too much and held my head too far back. He would eventually help me get to the form that made me a winner—arms locked in close to my body, chest high, head centered. Seme was a coach who understood where you were. This is why, despite everything that came between us in the future, I will always say he is the best coach I’ve ever had. He became like a father to me. Seme knew when to push and when we needed to rest.

“Michael’s program improved upon whatever I’d built running barefoot and alone on those dusty grounds in Limpopo as a teenager. His philosophy was, “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” “We’ll just keep doing what you’ve been doing, Caster,” he would say. He believed in stretching things out, moving along slowly, conditioning, and then when the body was ready, you hit it. He didn’t rush things; he didn’t push until he was absolutely sure. Michael was one of those coaches who didn’t believe in pain; he believed in slow buildups. Maria’s style was hardcore. If the plan for the day was to run 200s in 27s, then that is all we were doing, no matter what. Maria did not rest me well, but she made me a beast, she recreated in me an image of herself. Verster was different from them. Verster believed in gut feelings. Before every session, he would ask me how I felt that day. It was an interesting thing for me. And I could be honest with him. If I said, “I don’t feel like training hard today,” he would honor that.

“It would be better for athletics and athletes if Sebastian Coe focused on real cheaters instead of focusing on rare but completely natural biological variations in women or the transgendered athletes who are supposedly waiting to take women’s medals. It would be even better if the sporting powers focused on the things that women really need to become better athletes—they can start with equitable pay, making sure we can do our jobs without being harassed physically and mentally, creating a system where resources are distributed fairly.” (Semenya “The Race To Be Myself”, p.295)

“I think of marathoner Eliud Kipchoge’s words on his success: “Learn to say no, learn self-discipline, avoid complaining.

Runners’ times have also fallen because the pool of talent from which elite athletes are drawn has widened. The athletes against whom Abrahams competed in 1924 were white men who had received a university education in Britain or the United States. Strikingly, today most short-distance and extreme-distance champions are, respectively, of West African and East African descent. Inclusivity – which allowed people from diverse nationalities and social classes to compete for gold – together with sports engineering, the scientific analysis of the determinants of performance, nutritional advance and systematised training protocols, gave us sub-ten-second sprints and sub-two-hour marathons.

We run faster because of the accumulation of collective knowledge about sports engineering and nutrition. With the aid of coaches this knowledge becomes collective intelligence – know that becomes know how. We eat better apples because plant species were carried across the world and because of the accumulation of collective knowledge of techniques of cross-breeding. The collaboration of Sam Mussabini and Harold Abrahams won an Olympic gold medal, and the collaboration of botanists at Washington State University, local growers and breeders and marketing and branding agencies produced the Cosmic Crisp. By accumulating collective knowledge, applying collective intelligence and practising the division of labour on a global and inclusive basis, humans have become better at ... almost everything.