Bruce Lee 1940-1973 On his legendary quest to become the best fighter in the world, Bruce Lee discovered that you always had to be faster than the other guy. Lee brought whole new ideas to the speed at which the human body can move through his experimental training techniques in the late fifties and sixties. “All the strength or power you have developed from your training is wasted if you are slow and can’t make contact,” wrote Lee in one of his many papers on speed training. “Power and speed go handin-hand; a fighter needs both to be successful.” Lee focused his rigorous training on practising the art of movement with some odd exercises, such as trying to extinguish a candle merely from the draft caused by the acceleration of his punch. The results of Lee’s focus and tireless dedication saw him achieve some extraordinary feats of speed: he could snatch a coin from a person’s open palm and leave another behind before they could close it; and strike someone from a metre away in just 1/500th of a second. Lee’s incredible speed meant that many of his fight scenes and nunchaku routines needed to be slowed down on film so that people could see the action. Lee sadly passed away in 1973 but in the thirty-plus years since his death no one has come close to the way in which he mastered moving the human body. Ed Andrews
Simone Origone 1979Flying down a mountain at over 200kph is not for the fainthearted, but for record-breaking speed skier Simone Origone, it’s no big deal. As the fastest skier on the planet, he’s defied the limits of what is possible on snow. Growing up in the town of Aosta in the Italian Alps, Origone was practically raised on the mountain. His childhood was busy with regular coaching from his father who helped him grow his unrelenting hunger for speed and guided him into speed skiing. His career moved as fast as he did and in 2004, during his debut year on the speed skiing circuit, Origone earned his first victory at a World Cup contest in the resort of Sun Peaks, Canada, hitting a speed of 200.89 kph. His talents were spotted and he joined the Italian national team. Simone Origone went on to rule the sport and won a number of World Cup gold medals in Austria, Italy and Sweden in the 2005 season. The next year at the famous Kilomètre Lancé (flying kilometre) would be the defining moment of his career. Origone set a new speed skiing world record of 251.4kph, making him the fastest non-motorised man on land. Five years may have passed since that record, but Origone’s career is not over and there’s a chance he will smash the record again. Jon Harris
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