Do World Records Make AnySense?

Every olympics there are some new world records. It got me thinking whether athletes as a whole improve over time, too. Is there reason to think that every successive ration of athletes is better than the generations that came before? And then, if so, do world records even make sense? I mean, or athletes only really ever competing against their own cohort, not really the past? You think so? There's no doubt in the broad measures of the global population that overtime with economic growth, general human physical condition has improved. We live longer, we grow taller, babies are born heavier. Every single measure of human physical performance, on average, improves overtime in societies which are experiencing economic