The Evolving Olympic Athlete is a set of interactive images depicting the changes in Olympic athletic records from 1896 to 2008. Visitors to the site can click through each image to see the decline in race times for running and swimming events. Visitors can also click through to see increases in distances for jumping and throwing events.
Applications for Education
The Evolving Olympic Athlete could be a nice little resource for prompting students to think about why race times have consistently decreased over time and throwing distances have increased.
I learned about The Evolving Olympic Athlete from Larry Ferlazzo who has a great list of resources for teaching and learning about the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.