Mike Rowbottom: The long and the short of Schult's world record

On June 6, 1986, a discus thudded into the earth at the Neubrandenburg stadium, prompting the large East German who had just hurled it to noisy celebration. Understandably so, as Jurgen Schult - for it was he - had just improved, nay shattered, Yuriy Dumchev's 1983 world record of 71.86 metres with an effort of 74.08.

As the Big Lebowski would put it, the dude abides, man. Schult's world record, the longest standing of any currently credited to male athletes, this week racked up its 10,000th day at the top of the all-time listings.

East German Jurgen Schult's world discus record is the longest standing among those currently held by male athletes

And the obvious question has to be - will it ever be beaten?

Since that day others have crept close to that mark - Lithuania's double Olympic and world champion Virgilijus Alekna came within 20 centimetres of it in 2000, and six years later Estonia's Gerd Kanter managed a throw of 73.38m. So the obvious answer would appear to be - yes, eventually.

Similarly astounding marks set by male athletes have eventually been eclipsed. When Bob Beamon sailed out in the thin air of Mexico to a world long jump record of 8.90m at the 1968 Olympics, adding fully 55cm to the previous mark, he collapsed in shock when he realised what he had done, and was reportedly told by Britain's defending champion, Lynn Davies: "You have destroyed this event."

It took 22 years for anyone to surpass that mark - fellow American Mike Powell was the man who managed it, setting the current record of 8.95 in holding off the favourite, Carl Lewis, to win the 1991 world title. Powell's own record has thus stood now for 22 years, although he has to maintain his position for another three years to match the distinction of his legendary US compatriot Jesse Owens, whose world long jump record stood from 1935 to 1960.

Bob Beamon's 8.90m long jump at the 1968 Olympics in the thin air of Mexico City remained unbeaten for 22 years

Other male athletes who sport badges of honour in this regard include Lee Evans of the United States, whose 1968 400 metres time of 43.86sec stood for 20 years, and Britons Jonathan Edwards and Sebastian Coe. The latter was world record holder at 800m from 1979 to 1997, while Edwards's 1995 triple jump of 18.29m is still there 18 years later.

Back in another era, US hammer thrower Pat Ryan, a naturalised Irishman, set a world record of 57.77m in winning the 1920 Antwerp Olympic title, a mark which stood for 25 years and which would, incidentally, have won him an Olympic medal as late as 1952.

Schult's mark may have the current edge in longevity as far as men's competition is concerned, but it has to give best to two of the current women's world records - the 1985 clocking of 47.60 by East Germany's Marita Koch, and the 800m time of 1min 53.28sec established in 1983 by Jarmila Kratochvilova of Czechoslovakia.

Here comes that obvious question again. Ready? Will these marks ever be beaten?

Again, you have to say yes, eventually. But these marks...well. Very eventually.

And here we hit the problem with track and field records of the last 40-odd years. The suggestion, if not proof, of doping infractions.

The sad fact is that any East German sportsman or woman engaged in international competition throughout the 70s and 80s - whether it was athletics, swimming, rowing or whatever - will have found it virtually impossible to have escaped the directives of the state-run doping regime, the grim details of which emerged 10 years after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

Koch, inevitably, is among those athletes indicted by those findings. And although there was never any proof that Kratochvilova took performance-enhancing substances, the circumstances of her dramatic rise in achievement at the age of 32, coupled with her broad-shouldered, muscular physique raised a barrage of questions. I recall the stock answer given was that she had built up her muscles by working hard shifting hay on the farm. It could have been so.

Jarmila Kratochvilova of Czechoslovakia wins the 1983 world 800m title - her world record stands from 1983

At last weekend's inaugural London Sports Writing Festival at Lord's cricket ground, I chaired a talk alongside fellow writers Richard Moore and Jeremy Whittle on the subject of Cheating in Sport - all three of us having recently produced books broadly on that subject.

Inevitably, the subject of doping soon emerged - like a dismembered body in a canal - and more than one member of the audience raised the question of whether they could trust stand-out performances they had witnessed.

One questioner recalled the odd feeling he had when he saw Usain Bolt shatter the world 100m record at the 2008 Beijing Games and asked, a little plaintively, if such a performance could be believed, particularly in the light of the impending inspection of the Jamaican Anti-Doping Commission. To employ a metaphor from another sport, I stepped in to play a straight bat, offering some reassurance, on historical and physiological grounds, that Bolt may indeed be the real deal.

But I added a quote from Kathy Cook, Britain's 1984 Olympic 400m bronze medallist, on how she felt about the revelations concerning her main rivals, including Koch.

Britain's Kathy Cook pictured after taking bronze in the 1984 Olympic 400m final

She was, as she confessed, angry and disappointed. But she was also puzzled. "I don't know how you could win a race knowing that you had cheated and gain any satisfaction from it," she said. Memorably.

My fellow panellists swiftly pointed out that professional sport nowadays was not about satisfaction, but money. Partly true. But as I added, not entirely true. Why, for instance, do multi-millionaire sportsmen such as Pete Sampras or Roger Federer keep pushing for further titles? Professional sport is about money, but also glory.

And longevity? That's just a historical detail.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.