Incredibly slow 100m dash in first olympics -- explain

[misterW]

First, some background as to how this question came about:

I used to teach at a small (~40 kids /class) school in a rural area. Track is the last sport played before the school year ends and I had been regularly updated by various students on how the season was progressing. On the last day of school, partly as a joke and partly to satisfy my own curiosity, I challenged one of the students to a 100 meter race. The 100m dash was not his best event (he ran middle distances), but he was the fastest on the team, so I figured he would be a good yardstick. I had always considered myself fairly fast, but we did not have a track team when I was growing up and I had occasionally wondered how I would have fared in this sport. I am 34 and do not run, although I keep myself in decent shape.

Not surprisingly, I lost -- but not by more than a yard or two.

Recently, I came across a web page (http://www.hickoksports.com/history/olmtandf.shtml#m100) that listed out 100m dash times, starting from the first modern olympics in 1896. Apparently, the gold medal winner in that year won in 12 seconds flat. The student who beat me did not make the finals of the local sectional meet after running an 11.78 in the semis.

So a high school junior, not known for his sprinting, ran faster than the fastest man in the world in 1896?! Considering that I narrowly lost to him, its quite possible that I might have been able to beat 12 seconds as well.

How is this possible? I know track shoes, tracks, and technique have improved...but this is high school, so I doubt he had top of the line shoes, and he is certainly not coached by accomplished sprinters. Unless they were running though mud or tall grass, this makes no sense to me.

Please explain.

[Bearflag70]

Wow. I'm curious too. I ran a 100m in PE class in 8th grade in 12.00.

[AK84]

IIRC the winners were awarded silver medals at Athens 1896. The great Paavo Numri's times are now beaten by women. It is pretty standard in sports especially atheletics, as the sport becomes more professional times reduce.

[enalzi]

My very first thought is that sneakers weren't invented yet. I don't know what they ran in, but I imagine even cheap shoes from Wal-Mart would do better. Also, according to Wikipedia, no one broke the world record (which is doesn't list).

[Zeke N. Destroi]

My uneducated WAG would be threefold: 1) better nutrition 2) more leisure time 3) we know much more about how to develop the body for specific tasks - ie explosive strength for sprinting.

But I'm talking off the top of my head and largely out of my ass.

[Shagnasty]

Almost all sports are like that even if you just look back one - three decades let alone well over 100 years. Athletes today are simply bigger, stronger, and faster than they ever have been and it can get to the ridiculous point like you just described. There are select individuals from the past that would be very good today but the effect is much stronger in the team sports for lots of reasons.

We had a thread on this recently:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=526967

[Chronos]

As I understand it, the modern Olympics were started by gentlemen, for gentlemen. The reason for the "amateurs only" rule was to keep out the hoi polloi, who couldn't afford to compete if they weren't getting paid for it. And people of leisure are not generally noted for their athletic fitness.

[misterW]

I understand what all of you are saying....but this seems to go beyond that. If I were comparing a top athlete from present day to one from 1896, then one would expect them to be better for all those reasons: nutrition, training, technology, etc. But I am not comparing athlete to athlete. I have NEVER run competitively, I do not jog AT ALL, I have not regularly played any sport that even involved bursts of sprinting in OVER TEN YEARS, I have NO IDEA what good sprinting technique involves, and I did not train for my race with the kid AT ALL. And I am not some super athlete -- if we lined up random males who appeared to be fairly athletic, I would expect to run faster than many, but we probably wouldn't have to line up too many before we found one faster than me. There is no way that I should be running a time comparable to a gold medal winner of any time period.

I don't think you are fully appreciating just how slow 12 seconds is. Look, one of the posters above noted that they ran 12 seconds, not in a track meet, but in 8th grade gym class!

There must be some other factor at work. One thing I noticed was at the next Olympics, 4 years later, they were running a FULL SECOND faster. What happened? 11 seconds is a MUCH more believable time for an Olympic champion from long ago. Was there some weird conditions at the 1896 Olympics?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

The people competing in 1896 were not really athletes either. They were rich guys goofing off. it was like an international company picnic.

[Shagnasty]

There must be some other factor at work. One thing I noticed was at the next Olympics, 4 years later, they were running a FULL SECOND faster. What happened? 11 seconds is a MUCH more believable time for an Olympic champion from long ago. Was there some weird conditions at the 1896 Olympics?

Besides the points noted above, I don't think they had a good benchmark to shoot for. Track and field runners today have a very firm idea of what they need to shoot for down to the 1/100th of a second. They didn't have that then and their clocks weren't even very good. Today's sprinters will risk severe injury to beat a time but there was no reason to do that then plus their competition was just almost as lame as they were.

[Lord Mondegreen]

From my extensive research into Olympic sprinting history (well, OK, watching "Chariots of Fire") I seem to recall that there were no starting blocks back then. A standing start on a poor surface with non-grippy shoes can really impede acceleration.

As pointed out above, the 1896 Olympics were for Gentlemen. It's highly unlikely that the fastest men on Earth were competing.

[Non GQ stuff: I've done a lot of running, but only long distance. 12 seconds for 100m doesn't seem all that slow to me. I'm wondering whether some people are confusing 100 yards with 100m.]

[misterW]

The people competing in 1896 were not really athletes either. They were rich guys goofing off. it was like an international company picnic.

Is that true? It makes the time make more sense...I mean, 12 seconds seems much more in line with a fast guy at a company picnic than at an International track meet, thats for sure.

It says here (http://www.hickoksports.com/biograph/burketom.shtml ) though, that "As a student at Boston University, Burke won the AAU 440-yard event in 1895, the IC4A 440-yard in 1896 and 1897 and the 880-yard run in 1898." That makes him appear to be an athlete of some kind. Did they have collegiate track teams in those days? or are these just referring to some races they had within the student body?

[Crafter_Man]

Not sure if this is the answer, but I found this:

According to Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1896_Summer_Olympics),

the curves of the track were very tight, making fast times in the running events virtually impossible

And here (http://www.h2oswimming.com.au/about-h2o/swimming-tidbits.html),

The original track of a similar age in Athens was renovated in the 1800's and again in preparation for the first Games of the Modern Olympiad, held in 1896. The track, in pristine condition today has sweeping marble grandstands to seat over 70,000 spectators. Although its tight curves no longer make it suitable for running races, it is often used for special events and concerts.

[misterW]

[Non GQ stuff: I've done a lot of running, but only long distance. 12 seconds for 100m doesn't seem all that slow to me. I'm wondering whether some people are confusing 100 yards with 100m.]

Of the 24 high school runners in this year's section IV semi-finals, only THREE had times that were over 12 seconds. And I don't think central NY is a hotbed for sprinters.

[misterW]

Does anybody have any information on exactly how it was determined who would be competing (for the US or abroad) at the 1896 Olympics?

[Chronos]

the curves of the track were very tight, making fast times in the running events virtually impossible That might be relevant for longer races, but for a 100m race, you probably wouldn't even need the curves at all. A track built around a football field (for any given value of "football") is going to have straight sections along the sides longer than 100m.

[j_sum1]

I did my research watchig Chariots of Fire too. Added to the gentlemen factor is also the level of participation -- which was then very transport dependent. The games were not as high profile 110 years ago. Selection criteria often ammounted to who could get there to represent their country. (And pay their own way to do so.) You didn't necessarily end up with the best international athletes.\On top of this, in an event like the 100m the goal was to win -- not necessarily to beat the clock. If there was a significant difference in ability between the top two contestants (which could be due to the quality of last night's dinner as much as the calibre of the athlete) then there was little incentive for the winner to break too much of a sweat.

[UDS]

That might be relevant for longer races, but for a 100m race, you probably wouldn't even need the curves at all. A track built around a football field (for any given value of "football") is going to have straight sections along the sides longer than 100m.
Nitpick: At the stadium used for the 1896 Athens Olympics, the track was not built around a football field. (In fact, that is generally true of Olympic stadiums.)
Fussy nitpick: Where "football" has the value "Australian Rules", the playing field is oval, and has no straight edges on any side.

[Markxxx]

A couple of the above posters hit the nail on the head with the fact that in the beginning the Olympians had to pay their own way.

Supposing you were a fast runner but couldn't make it to the host city. Tough luck for you. Unless you found a sponsor you sat the competition out.

Places like NYC and Chicago used to host Athletic Clubs,in the late 1800s and as one poster noted, rich people belonged to them and part of the fun is these clubs would have trainers who, in addition to training these rich guys would also compete against each other. This was a very early example of sponsorship.

The clubs would give the athletes minimal work and a salary and a place to live. Usually the club competition was local, you know club versus club and rich people would consider it a status symbol to belong to the club that won.

The Berlin Olympics were really the first Olympics used by a nation to "show off" so to speak. Before than the Olympics were just another sporting event. Something that is nice, but not to invest time in.

So when you choose people on minimual talent and the ability to pay their own way or leech off rich people, you're not going to get world records.

Then you have to add this to all the technical details the poster above noted.

[Nava]

Those athetes weren't specialists, the same guy might run the 100m dash, then go for a 5K, and later toss a javelin.

Now if someone running 100m does something else, it's 200m.

The first modern Olympisc were sort of a pilot implementation; a lot more things changed between them and the second ones than between two and three. News of the competition sparked interest, which got more people involved, people having trained and competed longer as well as more specifically...

[bengangmo]

I would venture to suggest that timekeeping may have played a part also.

I doubt that it was all that accurate, and if it was manual, may have been out by a good amount

[Chez Guevara]

As pointed out above, the 1896 Olympics were for Gentlemen. It's highly unlikely that the fastest men on Earth were competing.The IAAF ratified the first official 100 metre world record at 10.6 sec in 1912.

Before that, several athletes were reported to have run 10.8 sec, this being the unofficial world record going into the 1896 games. The top bananas at this distance in 1896 were Bernie Wefers (US) and Charles Bradley (GB). The reasons for their absence in Athens were probably financial, but information concerning these two athletes is pretty thin on the ground.

[Chez Guevara]

Does anybody have any information on exactly how it was determined who would be competing (for the US or abroad) at the 1896 Olympics?In some cases at least, it was merely a matter of who wanted to go and could afford the trip.

One of the original members of the IOC was the Swede Viktor Balck. His strategy for building the Swedish Olympic team for Athens went like this:

...he just sat in his office waiting for those who were interested to get in touch with him. It turned out that only two people thought that going to the Olympic Games in Athens was a worthwhile endeavor. Of the two people who were interested in going, only one, Henrik Sjöberg, could afford the trip. He paid for the trip to Athens out of his own pocket and with money given to him by his club.The British didn't seem to be push that hard for representatives, either.

This was a period of “Olympic darkness" in Great Britain. A little odd perhaps, considering all the local Games that had been held there over the years. But the two British IOC members showed a total lack of interest in the Games in Athens. Consequently, the British team was very small. Only five athletes went to Athens, and they did so on their own initiative. The team did get a little bigger once they it arrived in Athens, two staff members from the British Embassy and a student, visiting Athens temporarily, joined the team.Incidentally, the student happened to have his tennis raquets with him so he entered the tournament and won it.

O tempora o mores.

Link (http://www.sok.se/inenglish/athens1896.4.18ea16851076df63622800011310.html).

[Alka Seltzer]

One poster already mentioned that the timing probably wasn't that accurate. Another factor is that the athletes may not have been using the modern starting position. I'm not sure when it came into use. The film Gallipoli (set in WW1) has runners using a mix of crouched and standing starts for the sprint, don't know if that is authentic.

[Alka Seltzer]

According to his wiki page the winner was using a crouch start, although it was rare at the time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Burke_(athlete)

In the 1900 olympics the winner posted a time of 10.8 seconds in a heat, so the slow times in 1896 were probably down the calibre of the competitors.

[ShibbOleth]

I'd also question the timing of the informal event mentioned in the OP. How did you time it down to 100ths of a second? Who timed it? I'd bet there's a decent margin of error there, too.

[Chez Guevara]

Does anybody have any information on exactly how it was determined who would be competing (for the US or abroad) at the 1896 Olympics?Mark Dyreson's book Making the American team: sport, culture, and the Olympic experience (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j7jdxzd3sxMC&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&ots=TrSo7-Mpj8&dq=1896+athens+athletes+shoes&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html) tells the story of how the US team of 13 or 14 was recruited.

US participation in Athens was driven by William Milligan Sloane, a professor of history at Princeton and the US member on the IOC. The team comprised four athletes from Princeton, five from the Boston Athletics Association (BAA), one from the Suffolk Athletic Club (SAC), two US Army captains, and a swimmer of unknown origin. This adds up to 13, but other sources give 14.

The American Olympic Committee, formed in 1893, played no part in organising or financing the team. The Princeton contingent was funded by a wealthy anonymous donor, possibly one Robert Garrett. The BAA (including the SAC member) raised some funds from its membership but was ultimately bankrolled by a stockbroker, with guarantees from the Governor of Massachusetts.

The adventures of the US team in Athens are chronicled between pages 40-50.

[runner pat]

I'd also question the timing of the informal event mentioned in the OP. How did you time it down to 100ths of a second? Who timed it? I'd bet there's a decent margin of error there, too.

Stopwatches of those days were only capable of timing to within 1/5th of a second.

[Dahu]

Just my WAG as well, but I think the tracks back then were all cinders. Must surely be quicker running on a modern hard surface. Maybe a second per 100m?

[BigNik]

Unless they were running though mud or tall grass, this makes no sense to me.
For the record, they were running on grass, and not the nice, even playing-field type grass that most people would associate today with athletics competition. Flat ground, certainly, but not manicured to a level surface.

I believe that the sprints were also run from a standing start at the time. Later, when the crouch start became popular, racers would bring a small hand-shovel to carve a starting block out of the turf.

[fiddlesticks]

I recall watching some of the film footage of Jesse Owen at Berlin in 1936 during the recent Championships and it showed the sprinters digging holes for their feet in the cinder track at the starting line. According to this (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/563736/starting-block) Britannica article, the use of starting blocks were legalized in the 1930's, so the first Olympic track events with blocks must have been at London in 1948.

[BigNik]

You'd have to have hated running in the 400m a day later...

Now that I think about it, I think there's a scene of people digging starting blocks in Chariots of Fire which was set in, what, 1920? 1924?

I don't remember whether it was on grass or cinder, though.

Checking Wikipedia, it says that the winner of the race was the only one to use the newfangled "crouch start", which necessitated a ruling. No word on starting blocks, but it's a reasonable assumption to make that they weren't in use.

[Chez Guevara]

Now that I think about it, I think there's a scene of people digging starting blocks in Chariots of Fire which was set in, what, 1920? 1924?

I don't remember whether it was on grass or cinder, though.The running surface at the Athens (1896) stadium was certainly loose cinders. I believe every Olympic stadium up to and including Tokyo (1964) used a similar surface. Mexico (1968) was the first Olympic venue to feature a synthetic rubber track.

[misterW]

I'd also question the timing of the informal event mentioned in the OP. How did you time it down to 100ths of a second? Who timed it? I'd bet there's a decent margin of error there, too.

I think you misunderstood the original post. The informal race between myself and the student was not timed at all. After the race, I looked at the fact that (1) the student had beat me by a narrow margin, and (2) the student had run an officially timed 11.78 a week earlier. From this, I inferred that I would quite possibly be able to run a time under 12 as well.

[TJVM]

Incidentally, the student happened to have his tennis raquets with him so he entered the tournament and won it.


I love that story, just because it's so far removed from the intensity of the current games.

"Hey, I'm British, too! Can I be on the team?"

"Sure, why not. By the way, you don't happen to have a tennis racquet, do you?"

[jtgain]

In addition to what everyone else said:

1) 1st Olympics; not a big deal. Most competitors probably never heard of it.
2) If they did, It was 1896. Can't just book your tickets on Orbitz. Would require a many weeks long journey by ship just to get there, again for a nothing competition.
3) You would have to be independently wealthy to make the trip.

It would be like if we started the Doper Games next year and all of us showed up, began drinking, and ran the races. Who could imagine that in 113 years the Doper Games will be THE pinnacle track and field event in the entire world? And then they look at our times and can't understand why..

[Number]

For those who used Chariots of Fire to research, there is a pretty good miniseries from 1984 called The First Olympics: Athens 1896 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086713). I'm sure it takes historical liberties, but it's entertaining and includes several of the points mentioned here. Tom Burke's use of the crouching start is portrayed as being inspired by the action of a revolver.

The cast includes David Odgen Stiers, Louis Jourdan, Angela Lansbury, and a young David Caruso. It's available on DVD from Netflix and elsewhere.

[misterW]

It would be like if we started the Doper Games next year and all of us showed up, began drinking, and ran the races. Who could imagine that in 113 years the Doper Games will be THE pinnacle track and field event in the entire world? And then they look at our times and can't understand why..

Well, it certainly seems as if lack of top competition accounts for part of the explanation. But it really wasn't like the Doper games. Suppose instead of the best sprinter in the world, the only people who showed up were the 257th best, the 300th best, and the 574th best. They were still trained runners, right? Based on my experience, I'm still surprised they didn't get less than 12 seconds. But perhaps I'm underestimating the effect that track surface, shoes, etc. would have.

It would be interesting to take an athlete with a known time on a modern track with modern shoes, etc. and then see how much his time increased while subjected to conditions that replicate the first Olympics.

[GIGObuster]

The running surface at the Athens (1896) stadium was certainly loose cinders. I believe every Olympic stadium up to and including Tokyo (1964) used a similar surface. Mexico (1968) was the first Olympic venue to feature a synthetic rubber track.

That and the thin air were some of the reasons why in the long jump, Bob Beamon improved the world record by such a margin that the tool to measure the jumps that day was not long enough to measure his amazing jump.

[Chez Guevara]

That and the thin air were some of the reasons why in the long jump, Bob Beamon improved the world record by such a margin that the tool to measure the jumps that day was not long enough to measure his amazing jump.A fact often overlooked amid the excitement concerning Beamon's prodigious leap in Mexico is that the previous world triple jump record was improved five times by three different athletes.

[Astroboy14]

But I'm talking off the top of my head and largely out of my ass.

Which would place your head... :D

[Toxylon]

So a high school junior, not known for his sprinting, ran faster than the fastest man in the world in 1896?!

As others have pointed at, no. The fastest man in the world (or ten) were probably nowhere near the 1896 Olympics arena.

In addition to a vastly bigger world population (ie. number of people genetically inclined to run very fast) now, even developing countries today have extensive athletics programs cherry-picking the very best national runners and sending them competing and training abroad. The fastest people in the world really are running in today's competitions. Not so in 1896.

[AK84]

I have seen the 1896 Stadium, the 100m dash had a very sharp turn at one point. That probably influenced the reletivly slow timings. And secondly on the issue of 1896 and the best atheltes, it should be recalled that sports at the time was not as it is now, participation in active competition was at that time something which only the gentry could do (for the most part). So many of the worlds best were in Athens.

[Chez Guevara]

I have seen the 1896 Stadium, the 100m dash had a very sharp turn at one point.It is highly unlikely the 1896 100 metres was run round a bend.

Wikipedia has two clear photos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panathinaiko_Stadium) of the Panathinaiko Stadium. This source (http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Greece/Prefecture_of_Attica/Athens-426812/Things_To_Do-Athens-Panathenaic_Stadium-BR-1.html), confirmed elsewhere, gives the track length (204.07 metres) and width (33.35 metres).

It's pretty clear that it's just as easy to run a straight 100 metres down that track as it is at any other Olympic stadium used since 1896. In fact, it would be possible to run a straight 192 metres on it, as competitors used to do in the ancient Olympics, as recorded in the first paragraph in there (http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/athletics/story/2008/05/01/f-olympics-200and400m-history.html).

[astorian]

I'm surprised nobody has pointed to the elephant in the living room.

The 1896 Olympics were a lily-white affair!

At any recent Olympics, you'll find that nearly ALL of the top sprinters are black men of African descent.

The times were slow for a lot of reasons in 1896, but the biggest reason is that the vast majority of the world's fastest runners weren't competing.

[robby]

On a related topic, I was always bemused by the fact that my 100m freestyle swimming time was fast enough in 1986 (my high school senior year) to win the Olympics from 1896 through 1920.

(In 1924, Johnny Weissmuller of Tarzan fame was the first Olympic swimmer to beat my fastest 100m freestyle time. He beat the 2nd-place finisher by a full two seconds. My fastest 100m time was one second behind Weissmuller, so my time would have earned me a Silver Medal in 1924. By 1928, all Olympic medalists were faster than me.)

What's strange about this is that I was never a world-class swimmer by any stretch of the imagination. I swam competitively for just 3 years in high school. In 1986, I was fast enough to place in the top three in my local high school conference, but did not finish in the top three in the Sectional match. I never made it to the State meet.

So how could I have swum faster than the Olympic winners for a 24-year stretch a few decades previously? :confused:

It gets stranger. The 1904 Olympics was conducted in open water. One of the events was the 1-mile swim. The results (http://www.databasesports.com/olympics/games/gamessport.htm?g=3&sp=SWI) for this race had times slower than I swam for an open water mile swim just a few months ago, and I am not in nearly as good shape as I was in high school. (Today I'm just a 40-year old occasional swimmer who swims a couple of times a week.)

(BTW, the standard explanation is that improved training and swimming techniques have dramatically improved swimming times over the years.)

[Edward The Head]

On a related topic, I was always bemused by the fact that my 100m freestyle swimming time was fast enough in 1986 (my high school senior year) to win the Olympics from 1896 through 1920.

What's strange about this is that I was never a world-class swimmer by any stretch of the imagination. I swam competitively for just 3 years in high school. In 1986, I was fast enough to place in the top three in my local high school conference, but did not finish in the top three in the Sectional match. I never made it to the State meet.

I'd say this is because you swam a 100 yard race and not a 100 meter race. I'm pretty sure that in the US all high school teams swim meets in yards pools. Summer leagues, which usually aren't high school teams, might do long course meets which would be in 50 meter pools. Weissmuller's times would still be enough to get him in the top 10 in US Maters records for most age groups from 18 on up.

I can swim a :58 100 yard race, which in a long course pool comes out to be a 1:06-07 time. So even my times would not have won anything in the Olympics, 1896 or not.

I wonder if the OP is confusing meters with yards, I always thought that in the US almost everything done in high school sports was done in yards, but I never did track. I'll have to ask my wife and see what she says.

[robby]

I'd say this is because you swam a 100 yard race and not a 100 meter race. I'm pretty sure that in the US all high school teams swim meets in yards pools. Summer leagues, which usually aren't high school teams, might do long course meets which would be in 50 meter pools. Weissmuller's times would still be enough to get him in the top 10 in US Maters records for most age groups from 18 on up.

I can swim a :58 100 yard race, which in a long course pool comes out to be a 1:06-07 time. So even my times would not have won anything in the Olympics, 1896 or not.No--that's not it. I was actually converting my times from 100 yards to 100 meters. (Which, granted, introduces its own problems because the 100 meter race is inherently longer, but it's the only way to compare my times to that of the Olympic results.)

Anyway, my fastest 100-yd freestyle was 55.10 seconds, competed on a short course. Ignoring the short vs. long course distinction, and assuming I could maintain the same pace for a 100-m race, my time corresponds to a 1:00.26 100-meter freestyle time. As I stated, this is faster than the winner of the Olympics through 1920. I grant that it's not entirely a fair comparison because of the short vs. long course distinction, and open water vs. a pool, but on the other hand, I'm no Olympic-class swimmer, either.

Besides, if you go back to the 1896 Olympics, it's no comparison. The gold medal winner for the 100-meter freestyle won with a time of 1:22.2 (http://www.databasesports.com/olympics/games/gamessport.htm?g=1&sp=SWI). You could have won that year, too. ;)

Incidentally, the swimming events in the 1904 Olympics were actually measured in yards, but were also conducted in open water (in an artificial lake).

[Dahu]

Fascinating thread this.

I've looked at the mens marathon results for the 1896 games. If you compare them to the 2009 London marathon, there are 855 runners who would have beaten the winners time, 1,282 who would have beaten the silver medalist, and 1,316 who would have beaten the bronze.

Also 31 women who beat the winner, 77 the silver, and 80 the bronze.

Admittedly, it's 2.2km longer these days. But still...

[shiftless]

I wonder if the OP is confusing meters with yards, I always thought that in the US almost everything done in high school sports was done in yards, but I never did track. I'll have to ask my wife and see what she says.

There are schools here in Virginia who use meter pools and thus compete at metric distances (short course). I've even seen one pool that used a 33.33 yard standard.

I too suspect the OP is mixing yards and meters. Typically the US uses YARDS for its measurements while the rest of the world uses some odd, made up, unit called the METER (or even METRE...!?) Nobody knows why. This constantly causes problems for Americans and so the rest of the world should just cut it out.

[Flymaster]

There are schools here in Virginia who use meter pools and thus compete at metric distances (short course). I've even seen one pool that used a 33.33 yard standard.

I too suspect the OP is mixing yards and meters. Typically the US uses YARDS for its measurements while the rest of the world uses some odd, made up, unit called the METER (or even METRE...!?) Nobody knows why. This constantly causes problems for Americans and so the rest of the world should just cut it out.

Nah. You can find plenty of schoolboy 100m races in the US, listed online (seriously, officially timed stuff, state meets, and the like), and 12 flat would be a truly mediocre time in all of them. I mean, a 12 second 100m dash is the kind of time that a pretty good high school athlete runs, not anything remarkable. It's a varsity time, but it's not a particularly impressive one. If you go to any high school track meet in the country, you'd be pretty safe betting that you'd see a sub-12 second 100m that day, assuming they race a 100m race.

[Flymaster]

To make the California High School state meet in the 100m, it seems boys have to run a 10.74 (http://www.cifstate.org/sports/state/track_field/index.html). That's fast. Really fast, apparently approximately equivalent in difficulty to a 4:15 mile, but still...it's achievable by a decent number of high school athletes in CA. 12 seconds...that's easy-ish. Probably about as common as a 5:30 mile.

[Edward The Head]

No--that's not it. I was actually converting my times from 100 yards to 100 meters. (Which, granted, introduces its own problems because the 100 meter race is inherently longer, but it's the only way to compare my times to that of the Olympic results.)

You should try using an online converter, (http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/results/conversions.asp) that gives a conversion for the 55.1 a 1:01.5 for short course and 1:03.85 for long course. Still you'd be winning quite a lot of Olympics! I've found that conversion tool to be pretty close, at least for me.


Besides, if you go back to the 1896 Olympics, it's no comparison. The gold medal winner for the 100-meter freestyle won with a time of 1:22.2 (http://www.databasesports.com/olympics/games/gamessport.htm?g=1&sp=SWI). You could have won that year, too. ;)
Well I can do that in practice, maybe I should invent a time machine and get me a gold!

Incidentally, the swimming events in the 1904 Olympics were actually measured in yards, but were also conducted in open water (in an artificial lake).
I thought at least one Olympics was done in yards, I just didn't see it when I was looking. I've seen film of some of them, they even do the open turns and everything. I wonder what they could do with even just a pair of jammers and goggles.

[yo han go]

Anyone knows how many people actually ran under 10.00?

[Chez Guevara]

Since the introduction of electronic timing in 1968, 70 athletes have legally broken the 10 second barrier.

There's a list of them here (http://wapedia.mobi/en/10-second_barrier). Note that it records only the first time an athlete ran under 10 seconds, thus for example Usain Bolt is listed as the 58th runner to achieve this feat with a time of 9.92 seconds on 17 May 2008.

[ivan astikov]

I've not read the rest of the thread, but I'm guessing it has something to with wet galoshers!

[robby]

You should try using an online converter, (http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/results/conversions.asp) that gives a conversion for the 55.1 a 1:01.5 for short course and 1:03.85 for long course. Still you'd be winning quite a lot of Olympics! I've found that conversion tool to be pretty close, at least for me.That's a neat converter!

Using this converter from short-course yards to long-course meters, I would have only won gold up to 1908, and would have gotten a silver in 1912. By 1920 (no games in 1916), I would have been off the medal stand, having just missed a bronze medal by 0.65 seconds. ;)

It's still amazing to me that average high-school swimmers would be getting comparable times just 65 years later.

[yo han go]

Since the introduction of electronic timing in 1968, 70 athletes have legally broken the 10 second barrier.

There's a list of them here (http://wapedia.mobi/en/10-second_barrier). Note that it records only the first time an athlete ran under 10 seconds, thus for example Usain Bolt is listed as the 58th runner to achieve this feat with a time of 9.92 seconds on 17 May 2008.

Great link mate. Briefly looked at the flags and then I saw aussie flag and I went WTF. Top sprint is African roots people domain. We all know that. As I thought, it sure to be some kind of a mixed race or Aborigine.

But Wiki agrees. They confirm one mixed Aborigine/White mentioned in previous paragraph in that club. And a fast honkie among the elite (Polish, and some time ago and not fully confirmed) not on that list. Not to take my racism elements seriously, just being little surprised, since there I do not recall any blond people in sprint finals since I am born.

[misterW]

I too suspect the OP is mixing yards and meters. Typically the US uses YARDS for its measurements while the rest of the world uses some odd, made up, unit called the METER (or even METRE...!?) Nobody knows why. This constantly causes problems for Americans and so the rest of the world should just cut it out.

You are incorrect. See for yourself: http://www.dyestatmetro.com/?pg=reg1-2009-Outdoor-NY-Section-4-Qualifier

Of note: in the semifinals, of the 24 runners, ONLY 4 ran slower than 12 seconds. And we are talking about an area with lots of small, rural towns -- not exactly a competitive area for sprinting.

[misterW]

I'm surprised nobody has pointed to the elephant in the living room.

The 1896 Olympics were a lily-white affair!

At any recent Olympics, you'll find that nearly ALL of the top sprinters are black men of African descent.

The times were slow for a lot of reasons in 1896, but the biggest reason is that the vast majority of the world's fastest runners weren't competing.

If I was asking why nobody ran under 10 seconds that would be more relevant. I'm asking why trained athletes in the prime of their life (I know that due to the nature of the event, they weren't the fastest runners of their day -- who cares, they were still trained athletes), couldn't run faster than a slow high school kid.

[misterW]

That's a neat converter!

Using this converter from short-course yards to long-course meters, I would have only won gold up to 1908, and would have gotten a silver in 1912. By 1920 (no games in 1916), I would have been off the medal stand, having just missed a bronze medal by 0.65 seconds. ;)

It's still amazing to me that average high-school swimmers would be getting comparable times just 65 years later.

And now we're talking about Olympics that were presumably attracting top level competition? And you were an average high school swimmer, no special suit, no steroids... This is even more mind blowing than the sprinting comparison because it takes technology out of the equation. Can anyone explain this?

[Flymaster]

And now we're talking about Olympics that were presumably attracting top level competition? And you were an average high school swimmer, no special suit, no steroids... This is even more mind blowing than the sprinting comparison because it takes technology out of the equation. Can anyone explain this?

The technology is MUCH more in the equation:

They were wearing wool full body suits (http://z.about.com/d/swimming/1/0/U/9/1920_duke_start_1621538.jpg). A speedo and a Mach3 is just as big of a techology jump as waffles on a rubber track.

[Chez Guevara]

Not to take my racism elements seriously, just being little surprised, since there I do not recall any blond people in sprint finals since I am born.You would have to go back to at least 1980 for the 100 metres, I think.

Certainly, since 1984, all 56 Olympic 100 metre finalists have been of African-American origin. In 1980, the year of the US-led boycott, there were 6 Europeans and a couple of Cubans. The hair colouring of the Europeans is unknown to me, except for the victor Alan Wells (GB) who had black hair, but one of them might have been blond. I'll let the experts sort that one out.

The last blond-haired Olympic gold medallist at the distance was the German Armin Hary (http://www.tierraunica.com/.a/6a00e551962103883300e5540759bf8834-500wi) in 1960. Hary was also the last white runner to set a new world record for the 100 metres, a feat he achieved in winning that Rome final.

[runner pat]

If I was asking why nobody ran under 10 seconds that would be more relevant. I'm asking why trained athletes in the prime of their life (I know that due to the nature of the event, they weren't the fastest runners of their day -- who cares, they were still trained athletes), couldn't run faster than a slow high school kid.

Training was almost non-existent in those days. Besides the fact that training for any race was a mix of myth and malarky, as pointed out upthread, Olympic competitors were men of leisure, thus limiting the pool of potential athletes.

Just as an example, Walter George set a mile record of 4:10 with training that consisted of "100-ups"(running in place for 100 steps) and walking 1-2 km.

I don't imagine training for sprints was any more scientific.

Today, you have modern tracks, starting blocks, understanding of technique, strength training and nutrition plus a much bigger pool of athletes to choose from.

Any high school runner who can't break 12 sec. untrained is generally moved to the middle/long distance races.

[Chez Guevara]

In 1980, the year of the US-led boycott, there were 6 Europeans and a couple of Cubans. The hair colouring of the Europeans is unknown to me, except for the victor Alan Wells (GB) who had black hair, but one of them might have been blond. I'll let the experts sort that one out.It would seem that Aleksandr Aksinin (http://www.visualrian.com/images/item/105274) (USSR), who finished 4th in this event, was blond. :)

[GuanoLad]

Do Americans use metres for athletics? At what level do they make the shift from imperial to metric? I seem to recall seeing a lot of people still refer to it as the "100 yard dash" for example.

Edit: Oh, I see that's been partially discussed earlier in the thread.

[Eyebrows 0f Doom]

Certainly, since 1984, all 56 Olympic 100 metre finalists have been of African-American origin.


:dubious:

[runner pat]

Do Americans use metres for athletics? At what level do they make the shift from imperial to metric? I seem to recall seeing a lot of people still refer to it as the "100 yard dash" for example.

Edit: Oh, I see that's been partially discussed earlier in the thread.

All official competition(high school, college, national and international) is in meters although some high schools still have old tracks that are in yards and the races are referred to in a mix of imperial and metric. (1600 meter=mile, etc)There are still a few exceptions such as the mile and 2 mile are still official high school distances for some record purposes, although the metric distances are separate.

[Chez Guevara]

:dubious:Sorry, that should have read something like, 'athletes of West African descent including African Americans'.

[AK84]

Frankie Fredricks was of SW African decent. And Lindford Christie......... well no ones figured him out.

[Edward The Head]

And now we're talking about Olympics that were presumably attracting top level competition? And you were an average high school swimmer, no special suit, no steroids... This is even more mind blowing than the sprinting comparison because it takes technology out of the equation. Can anyone explain this?

There's also the advent of goggles, you'd be surprised at how hard it is to see the wall without them. Modern swimmers also spend a lot more time in the water, a lot because of the goggles. There's also flip turns versus open turns, which would make a huge difference in time.

I swim with a guy who swam in college in the early 60s. He doesn't like to swim meets with goggles on, he's so used to swimming without them.

[Lord Mondegreen]

As a distance runner, I think it is worth noting that the Marathon at the 1896 Olympics was run over a distance of 40km and won in a time of 2:58:50 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Marathon#Modern_Olympics_marathon). That would give (assuming he could have kept up the pace) a standard Marathon time of 3:08:39. My 46 year old sister-in-law has run faster Marathons than that on several occasions and is nowhere near an elite runner.

More evidence that we really can't draw any conclusions from the 1896 results.

[robby]

...More evidence that we really can't draw any conclusions from the 1896 results.Sure we can. I'll start---they were incredibly slow. :D

[misterW]

I found some records that clear things up for me. As some have noted above, the 100m sprinters in the 1896 Olympics were not even 2nd rate -- they were just rich guys who happened to be in the first Olympics. This (http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/tfn/archive/results.jsp?sex=M&disciplineId=1&id=1) has the US collegiate national championship records going way back. Prior to 1896, people were running 10 second flat 100 yard dashes, which calculates (http://www.ahsdistance.org/track/alltimelists/conversion.html) roughly to around 11 seconds for 100m. These are the sort of times that were winning four years later at the next Olympics. And 11 seconds without modern shoes, tracks, crouching starts, etc. isnt too shabby.

Somebody in decent sprinting shape with access to shoes and a track should run 100m with and without the modern technology and see how much it affects things. I will try to get the track team kid I mentioned in the OP to try this out for me.