Usain Bolt's 200m record has not been beaten for ten years and Florence Griffith Joyner's for more than thirty years. And what if the secret behind beating records was to use mathematics? Thanks to a mathematical model, Amandine Aftalion, CNRS researcher at the Centre d'analyse et de mathématique sociales (CNRS/EHESS), and Emmanuel Trélat, a Sorbonne Université researcher at the Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions (CNRS/Sorbonne Université/ Université de Paris) have proved that the geometry of athletic tracks could be optimised to improve records. They recommend to build shorter straights and larger radii in the future. These findings are to be published in Royal Society Open Science on 25 March, 2020.