NO END IN SIGHT RECORDS WILL CONTINUE TO FALL IN NEW CENTURY, EXPERTS PREDICT SKY IS THE LIMIT.

Byline: Steve Dilbeck Staff Writer

That was some century for athletic endeavor. We were bigger, faster, stronger. We reached dizzying heights and then went higher. We routinely trampled records. We evolved into a physical marvel, then laughed at our pubescence and matured to another level.

Every decade we were better. We learned more about training, our bodies and our sport, and the result was an almost endless stream of superior athletic performances.

Which begs the question as we enter into a new century: Are we approaching the limits of human performance?

At some point it has to end, doesn't it? The body can run only so fast, leap so high. Somewhere there has to be a ceiling on athletic accomplishment . . . doesn't there?

Maybe, but not one anybody is eager to identify.

"They used to say that years ago, that there were limits," said Dan McCann, a professor of exercise science at Gonzaga University. "But everyone kept getting proved wrong, so people have stopped saying that.

"I don't see any end in sight, it's just going to keep going. I don't think there is a limit."

Coaches, general managers, ex-athletes and those in scientific research point to a multitude of reasons why new athletic achievements will be reached and records will continue to fall into the next millennium.

For despite great strides made in nutrition, training and technology, more is on the horizon. Greater numbers of athletes are being identified throughout the world, and more are specializing in a specific sport at a young age. New sports, particularly for women, offer new opportunities. Then there are new drugs, over the counter and otherwise. And most ominous, the prospect of genetic engineering.

Add it up, and few expect the growth in athletic performance to subside in the near future.

"I think the potential is perhaps almost endless," said Anita De Frantz, vice president of the International Olympic Committee and former Olympic medal winning rower. "This is just the beginning, not the end."

NO END TO RECORDS FALLING

There were times when people weren't so sure records would fall. Certain numbers seemed beyond approach. None more than the sub 4-minute mile, a frustrating and glamorous barrier to milers for decades. Then on May 6, 1954 a young Oxford medical student named Roger Bannister ran it in 3:59.4, and suddenly all things seemed possible.

There has been no looking back. In track and field, in all sports, records are written in pencil. The record in the mile has now fallen to Hicham El Guerrouj's 3:43.13.

Times are no longer kept by the tenths of a second, but the hundredths, as if an acknowledgment that we are straining to keep alive these record-shattering ways.

"I can see continuous but infinitesimal improvement going on for quite some time," said Nick Warner, professor of physics at USC. "When we're measuring speed of swimming in hundredths of seconds, I'm sure we can continue to shave off the odd few hundredths every now and then. I don't suddenly see somebody running a 3-minute mile.

"If you start really pushing the outside, you're going to run into the structural limitations of the bones and the body, the ability to take impact, to repeat motions at great speeds, or simply to lift somebody out of the starting blocks."

Warner said stress fractures and dislocated shoulders now seem more common at top levels, signs he wonders are not suggesting a limit to what the body can endure.

But Richard Bergman, chairman of the USC physiology department, said efforts to scientifically gauge the body's athletic limits have been elusive.

"It's possible to calculate the maximum amount of stress the bone structure can withstand, but to my knowledge no one has calculated the maximum possible performance," Bergman said. "The reason is we don't have real good measures of what it takes to do certain kinds of things.

"That's why certain unbelievable individuals occasionally exist. Somebody like Einstein, who was so much more intelligent than everybody else, is an individual who probably wouldn't have been predicted. Maybe Tiger Woods wouldn't have been predicted, either."

SIZE DOES MATTER

Records have continued to fall in large degree simply because the modern athlete has continued to grow in size. We're not just living longer, we're livin' larger.

"The past 50 or 100 years, Americans in particular (EMDASH) and probably other advanced countries (EMDASH) have gotten larger and stronger and more agile than ever before," said Dr. Frank Jobe, the ground-breaking orthopedist. "If you talk to clothing manufacturers, at the turn of the century they used to make more size 36s (coats) for men, but now they make more 42s."

But it's not just in the United States. Countries throughout the world are improving their diets, and the results are quickly becoming obvious.

"I've been to Asia many times, and I've noticed over the last 13 years people there are generally getting taller," said Bob Girandola, a professor of exercise physiology at USC. "And a lot of that has to do with nutrition.

"So if people in general are getting bigger, the athletes are going to get bigger. I remember in football when the average offensive lineman used to weigh 250 in professional football. Now it's unlikely to see someone under 300."

Bigger, Gonzaga's McCann said, typically leads to being more powerful and greater performance. Every time observers begin to think they have a feel for the body's limitations, along comes a new prototype. The rules continually have to be rewritten.

"Originally when they were trying to break 10 seconds in the 100 meters, people thought it was physically impossible, but it wasn't," McCann said. "It might have been for the people who were running at that time because of their size and the amount that they trained. But now that they're bigger and stronger and more powerful, it's not a limitation anymore.

"You just can't extrapolate into the future based on the past. It doesn't seem to work. It hasn't worked in the past."

Training has been another area of vast improvement. The linebacker doesn't do the same exercises as a swimmer, a sprinter the same as a wrestler, the pitcher the same as a gymnast.

"The science field has developed a little more, so that we know the specificity of exercise if you want to improve," Girandola said. "It's not like you jog for everything."

TECHNOLOGY MAKES A DIFFERENCE

Jobe designed an entire series of exercises for pitchers to build arm strength and help avoid injury. And athletes are not just training better, but often longer.

U.S. Olympic swimming coach Mark Schubert said record times started dropping dramatically in the '60s and '70s not only because the technology of the pools improved, but because swimmers started using goggles. With less eye irritation, he said they doubled their training time.

Schubert, however, predicts a records overhaul at the 2000 Olympics because of continually improved techniques and another leap in technology: new fabrics. He said the latest fabrics are far superior in drag coefficient to even shaven skin.

"In the Olympics you're going to see a lot of new suits coming out that are actually going to go down the swimmers' wrists and to their ankles (EMDASH) full body suits," Schubert said.

"Quite frankly, I don't see an end to records being broken. At this Olympics, because of the combination of the improved technique and improved suits, you're probably going to see more records broken at this Olympics than have ever been broken before."

De Frantz said any sport that incorporates technology, will only see improved performance in the coming years. Whether it's better bicycles, blades on an oar, running surfaces, golf clubs, car engines, shoes, skates, skis, rackets or whatever, it's constantly being improved.

Even baseball witnessed the destruction of Roger Maris' home run record two seasons ago by Mark McGwire, who crushed 70 with a 6-foot-5, 250-pound frame that would dwarf over most Hall of Famers.

McGwire plays in several new retro-styled ballparks that are smaller than many of the older ballparks and the stadiums built in the '70s. But not everyone agrees the modern ballplayer is physically superior to the player from 40 years ago.

"I don't think they're greater athletes," said Tom Lasorda, the Dodgers vice president involved in baseball for 50 years.

"There aren't as many guys who throw 100 mph. Take the Dodgers. Just tell me where you look at guys who are really hard throwers now. They're all throwing forkballs and cut fastballs.

"Baseball has regressed. When I was growing up 50 years ago the only two sports people played was baseball and boxing. Nobody played golf or tennis, only the wealthy. Nobody played basketball when there was no money going to play professional basketball. The same with football. The only two major sports guys partook in, because it was an opportunity for them to make something, was boxing and baseball. And I believe those are the two sports that have regressed, while the others have progressed."

SPECIALIZATION LEADS TO BETTER ATHLETES

Certainly there are more sports, and more money in them, than at any time in our history. That breeds interest, which begets more athletes and a greater opportunity to discover the unique talents.

"It's almost like survival of the fittest," McCann said. "As we grow in population, there are more individuals on the end of the continuum who have these potentials. And because sports is such a revered activity now, and there are millions of dollars in it and everyone is interested, there is more reason for people to pursue it.

"Back in the '40s, '50s and '60s, there probably wasn't that much interest or opportunity for people to become professional athletes. When I was a track runner back in the '60s, there was no way you could make a living running track. Now a guy like Michael Johnson, or all the world record holders, they're millionaires. You can be sure if there are any talented people out there, there's a much higher chance they're going to end up professional athletes. It's more obvious to everyone there is the potential for career, wealth and popularity."

Worldwide, too, talent is being discovered in areas to push the athletic envelope. World records in track are set by athletes from Brazil, Morocco, Algeria, Ethiopia.

"What's happening is what used to be third-world countries are getting developed and the individuals out of there that have the genetic abilities are being found," McCann said. "They're finding athletes we didn't even know existed before. Who's to say what we might find?"

The increasing number of new sports in itself offers fresh opportunities for new accomplishment. And women are now being given nearly the same number of sports opportunities as men.

"I think the world of women's sports is just going to be explosive," De Frantz said. "That's where the dramatic increases will continue to come from.

"The 2000 Olympics is the 100th anniversary of women competing in the Games. In 1900 women had two sports to compete in. In 2000 women will compete in all but two (EMDASH) wrestling and boxing."

Those who participate in athletics often are choosing a singular sport early, and concentrating on developing those specific skills. The three- sport star continues as a vanishing breed.

"We're starting to see kids specialize at a very early age," said Lakers vice president Jerry West. "Instead of participating in everything, you're seeing kids play just one particular sport year-round. Sports have become very selective.

"In basketball we're seeing some incredibly physically gifted athletes who also have incredible skills. In the past, we might have had some unbelievably physically gifted athletes, but maybe they didn't have the skill."

Every time a sport seems to have peaked, a Michael Jordan, Ken Griffey Jr., Michael Johnson, Janet Evans or Tiger Woods comes along to raise the bar.

Somewhere out there, there may be limits to human athletic performance, just no one able or ready to identify them.

"I would be surprised if most people who read literature in this area didn't say, `Well, we just don't know,' " McCann said.

"The safe bet is we're going to get better, we're going to get bigger, we're going to get faster. I don't think you're going to find anyone who will put their reputation on the line and say this is as good as it's going to get."

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Illustration, photo

Illustration: (Page 1 -- color) NO END IN SIGHT

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Carl Lewis

Roger Bannister

Mark McGwire

Illustration by Eric Barrow/Daily News

Photo: Michael Johnson set a world record in the 200 meters in the 1996 Olympic Games, and experts believe future generations will continue to lower the mark.

Doug Mills/Associated Press