Records are generally broken in increments. Perhaps the most famous example in sport is the men’s 100-metre dash. For decades, whenever it was beaten it was generally done so by one or two one-hundredths of a second.
Then Usain Bolt came along. His time at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin (re-watch here if you have a spare 9.58 seconds) shattered his own world record by more than a tenth of a second. That sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen.
