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> If you take that model seriously, Usain Bolt could have been anybody in the entire history of mankind.

No model is perfect, but I don’t have the slightest clue why you think that would follow.

Because it fits by multiplying random variables. It cannot explain why records are improving, i.e. why Usain Bolt didn't live 100 years ago.

It can explain it. Better training and better equipment are (at least) two variables that improve people timings. Maybe a century ago there was an Usain Bolt, just didn't had neither the proper training, nor equipment, and those low factors avoided better timings.

And nutrition of course.

Except the model was fitted on people from the same period in the same region.

Also, Ethiopian runners would be a counterargument. It's just reading way too much in a model that probably was there before the data. Seeing how everybody defends it as "learning", the example was sought to be described by the model.

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