In the fifteen years after Mexico City Tommie Smith’s 200m world record proved far more vulnerable than the 100m record of Jim Hines. Smith’s mark took three years to be approached (Quarrie 19.86) and Hines’s took nine (Leonard 9.98). Eleven years after Mexico, Smith’s mark was the first to be broken (Mennea 19.72A) and by a greater margin than Hines’s mark, which endured for fifteen years (C. Smith 9.93A). In 1983 Tommie’s record was also the first to be broken at sea level (Lewis 19.75) four years before Jim’s was in 1987 (Lewis 9.93).
At the dawn of the nineteen-nineties 9.95 remained the stronger time, bettered by smaller increments than 19.83 and approached less frequently for two decades following Mexico City. At the end of 1989 sub 10 and sub 20 were equally common occurrences. Pietro Mennea’s decade old world record of 19.72 appeared in serious jeopardy from Olympic champion Joe DeLoach and his training partner Carl Lewis, Olympic champion at 100m in a new world record 9.92.
But by the early nineties these trends had slid into reverse and the stagnation of the deuce has now become endemic. Whereas 19.83 was once as common as 9.93, nowadays it is as common as 9.86, a time not even approached until three years after three athletes had already run 19.75 or better. Remarkably, Lewis, history’s first consistent 9.9 100m performer and the first man to ever run 9.86, achieved 19.75 at sea level in his first ever sub 20.00 clocking, as long ago as 1983 and only one month after he recorded his first ever 100m run under 10.00 seconds (9.97).
All-time:
1968 9.95 1 performance by 1 man
1968 19.83 1 performance by 1 man
1983 9.93 1 performance by 1 man
1983 19.72 1 performance by 1 man
1989 9.93 4 performances by 2 men
1989 19.72 1 performance by 1 man
1989 9.95 6 performances by 4 men
1989 19.83 7 performances by 4 men
1989 9.99 22 performances by 8 men
1989 19.99 23 performances by 11 men
1991 9.99 38 performances by 11 men
1991 19.99 30 performances by 12 men
1991 9.86 1 performance by 1 man
1991 19.72 1 performance by 1 man
1993 9.93> 7 performances by 5 men
1993 19.83> 8 performances by 5 men
2005 9.93> 71 performances by 20 men
2005 19.83> 20 performances by 8 men
2005 9.99 312 performances by 49 men
2005 19.99 120 performances by 31 men
2005 9.95 151 performances by 32 men
2005 20.02 148 performances by 36 men
2005 9.86 23 performances by 11 men
2005 19.83 22 performances by 9 men
2005 9.82 5 performances by 3 men
2005 19.72 5 performances by 3 men
Since the Mexico City Olympics, nine men have run 19.83 or faster on twenty-one occasions, and thirty-two men have run 9.95 or faster on one-hundred-and-fifty-one occasions.
Why, having achieved the greatest longevity, has Hines’s 15 year 100m record ultimately been bettered by far more people in the FAT era than T.Smith’s 11 year record, and in a far more condensed period of time? By 1993 five people had bettered 19.83 and seven had run faster than 9.95. It really is only in the last ten years the formbook for what it takes to be world class in the 100m has been ripped apart. The short sprint has progressed whilst the long sprint has stood still.
TOMMIE SMITH 19.83 is still ranked NUMBER NINE all time at 200m THIRTY-SEVEN years after he ran it in a world record race in Mexico City. In 2005 the average all-time top ten 100m athlete has a PB which is six years old. In 1997 this fell as low as two years old. Nobody in the top 10 recorded their best mark before 1991. In 2005 the average all-time top 10 200m athlete has a PB which is fifteen years old. The top ten still contains marks from 1968, 1979, 1983, and 1988, which is to say they are 37, 26, 22 and 17 years old respectively. The 100m all-time top ten average surpassed Mexico City world record level by 1993. The 200m average has yet to reach this height.
Jim Hines was still ranked number nine all time at 100m until about a decade ago. 9.95 was pushed down to #10 all-time by Donovan Bailey in 1995, #12 by Frankie Fredericks and Ato Boldon in 1996, #15 by Maurice Greene, Tim Montgomery and Jon Drummond in 1997, #18 by Obadele Thompson, Bruny Surin and Seun Ogunkoya in 1998, #19 by Tim Harden in 1999, #20 by Bernard Williams in 2001, #22 by Dwain Chambers and Shawn Crawford in 2002, #23 by Patrick Johnson in 2003, #26 Justin Gatlin, Francis Obikwelu and Asafa Powell in 2004, and #27 by Leonard Scott in 2005. Here he now resides in history, temporarily.
Entering the 1996 season, Hines was #10 ranked in the record books and Smith was #6. In the decade since the season Michael Johnson recorded 19.32, Hines has free-fallen seventeen places whilst Smith has dropped just three, passed only by Frankie Fredericks, Ato Boldon, and Shawn Crawford, high calibre athletes who share the distinction of running 9.8 on three different occasions the same year they recorded 19.7.
At the start of 1994 9.95 and 19.83 seemed broadly comparable performances. Five men had bettered 19.83 and seven men 9.95. Nowadays 9.95 has been achieved roughly as often 20.02. By contrast, nine men have run 19.83 or faster on twenty-one occasions whereas eleven men have run 9.86 or faster on twenty-three occasions. Why have only eight men broken 19.83 when thirty-one have broken 9.95, a mark that for so long seemed to be the longer distance’s superior?
If the 200m WR had progressed exactly in proportion with the 100m WR since 1968, Asafa Powell’s 9.77 would be equivalent to 19.48 today and Carl Lewis’s 9.86 would have equated to 19.66 in 1991. If the 100m WR had progressed exactly in proportion with the 200m world record since 1968, Michael Johnson’s 19.32 would be equivalent to 9.70 today and Pietro Mennea’s 19.72 would have equated to 9.90 in 1979.
Hypothetical 100m/200m WR progression based on Hines=Smith
10.04 / 20.00
10.00 / 19.93
9.95 / 19.83
9.93 / 19.79
9.92 / 19.77
9.91 / 19.75
9.90 / 19.72
9.86 / 19.66
9.85 / 19.64
9.84 / 19.54
9.79 / 19.52
9.77 / 19.48
9.70 / 19.32
On this scale 19.72 was definitely ahead of its time when very few people could challenge 9.95, but now that era has long since passed, and 19.72 is clearly outstaying it’s welcome as a useful benchmark for where 200m running really should be. But is this scale reasonable? On the face of it Hines and Smith’s times did seem to stand the test of time as being roughly equivalent until the early nineties. During the 1980’s similar build-ups of depth above and below the two marks broadly coincided, albeit with the early mark of 19.72 far beyond anything the 100m had yet to offer, other than Ben Johnson, who’s times were on another planet still.
If 19.72 really was the equivalent of 9.90, for each 9.8 run we could reasonably expect a 19.5/19.6 performance in the deuce, assuming of course that the two events were run equally often by comparably talented athletes. This actually doesn’t sound too far off base considering Carl Lewis, an athlete we know to be an all time great at both distances, ran his five best times in the 19.75-19.84 range when his 100m times were in the 9.92-9.97 range. This is not to predict that ALL 9.9 athletes should run 19.7, but rather ONLY the sprinters who are equally competent at both distances. Certainly Frankie Fredericks’s bests of 9.86 and 19.68 stack up approvingly, but as for the other elite 9.8 runners with formidable reputations and gold medals at 200m, such as Boldon, Crawford, Greene and Gatlin, well they seem to lag behind off kilter. In order to explain the seemingly sub-par performances by their peers, it might be worth considering then that both Carl Lewis and Frankie Fredericks were significantly superior 200m runners than they were 100m runners. And yet the scale would have that Lewis’s and Frederick’s shared PB of 9.86 is ahead of their respective 200 best of 19.75 and 19.68. Does an adjustment need to be made, especially when above the Mexico City marks, this scale also equates 10.00 with 19.93 and 20.00 with 10.04? This is the biggest discrepancy. Through 1991 20.00 and 10.00 were actually achieved in broadly equal numbers by a similar amount of athletes. And after that, why has there been a hoard of sub tens instead of sub twenties?
It might be instructive look more closely at the man who recorded 9.93 and 19.75, the first low altitude times faster than the old Mexico City world records, and who should thus be thought of as the true heir to Jim Hines and Tommie Smith.
Carl Lewis was never to improve on his 19.75 first clocking beneath twenty seconds. Incredibly on that occasion he didn’t even run properly through the line, easing off considerably before he crossed it. In truth he never ran the distance often enough to properly explore his full talent. Once again, his eventual 100m WR 9.86 indeed suggests 200m potential of 19.66 compared to the times of Hines and T. Smith. But he was eight years away from 9.86 shape in 1983.
It is worth remembering that initially Smith’s time was less troubled than Hines’s, and was approached first, broken at altitude first, and broken at sea level first. At the end of 1989 Smith and Hines were both ranked #4 all-time having been passed by three athletes each. Tellingly, Hines’s mark had been bettered 0.03 by Lewis, 0.02 by C.Smith, and 0.01 by Burrell. Smith’s mark had been bettered 0.11 by Mennea, 0.08 by Lewis, and 0.08 by DeLoach. Lewis aside, Burrell, C.Smith, Mennea and DeLoach may be thought of as equally accomplished athletes at their best, setting records, winning medals. So as things stood at the very top entering the1990’s, 19.83 might be considered an inferior mark to 9.95. The larger number of athletes knocking on the door BEHIND 9.95 conceals the lack of depth in the 200m to follow on the progression pointed towards by Mennea, Lewis and DeLoach already AHEAD of 19.83, by making 9.95 seem like the more pressured, weaker mark when actually it wasn’t. The 100m exploded beyond 9.95 in the 1990’s, but for some reason the 200m stalled at 19.83, increasingly playing third fiddle to the 100m and 400m. Despite having stolen a march into faster territory, the deuce fell into retreat.
Perhaps 9.95 took longer to improve than 19.83 because the latter was simply an inferior mark. So keying off Mennea instead of T. Smith, and C.Smith instead of Hines, both of whom set altitude world records faster than those from 1968, Lewis’s eventual 9.86 WR now suggests 19.59 potential. His first 9.92 WR suggests 19.70 potential.
It’s perhaps not frivolous to imagine Lewis running through the line in Indianapolis in 19.70 in ’83, and then ending his sprint career in 19.59 on that fast Tokyo track with the wind softened and reversed, perhaps in a fierce battle against a young Michael Johnson. (MJ ran 20.01 into –3.4 and 20.06 into –3.1 on that track in one day. Switch that to +1.5 and bingo. Add in Joe DeLoach’s injuries, Mike Marsh and MJ’s misfortune in Barcelona, and the survival of 19.72 until Atlanta ’96 appears remarkably serendipitous)
Assuming a (plausible) progression before Atlanta to 19.59, 19.32 would still have represented an incredible butchering of the existing world record, but it does throw into relief how antiquated Mennea’s 19.72 eventually become in an age where the 100m improved and the 200m stood still. (An alternative indicator is that Donovan Bailey’s 9.84WR proportionally converts via the more conservative Mexico City ratios to 19.61, and he only advanced the record by a bare whisker.)
An improvement from 19.59 to 19.32 anticipates a matching jump to 9.73. Nine years later and Asafa Powell has taken us as far down as 9.77, which of course confirms our belief that 19.32 is ahead of its time and is the superior record, especially as accepting 19.32 and 9.77 as equal would equate 19.72 with 9.97! However, even without Michael Johnson, an advance from 9.86 (Carl Lewis world record) to 9.77 today fits nicely hand in hand with a 200m jump from 19.59 to 19.40. Suddenly 19.32 falls into focus as an extremely good record that has stood for a decade and will be extremely tough to break, but nonetheless one which is not so far out of step with the 100m progression catching up behind it as some would have you believe, because yes, over time, the deuce got neglected and the depth of performances near Pietro Mennea became extremely weak in the same manner marks around Tommie Smith did before it, and at the same time the one hundred metres was exploding into its golden era, making the old 100m records look relatively weak when in truth it was the other way around. Michael Johnson was the only two hundred meter sprinter who kept pace with the rapid march of the shorter discipline, triumphantly surpassing it in one particular landmark race, possibly capacitated by his unique gifts as a 400m runner. The 100m sprinters are already reeling him in though, and finally, some of them appear to be casting their eyes back towards the deuce
10.07 / 20.00
10.00 / 19.86
9.95 / 19.76
9.93 / 19.72
9.92 / 19.70
9.86 / 19.59
9.84 / 19.55
9.79 / 19.45
9.77 / 19.40
9.73 / 19.32
This new scale intuitively looks off base at first because we are too used to equating sub 10 with sub 20. The truth is these days the majority of good sprinters focus mainly on the 100m, an event that is far more lucrative, far more prestigious, and far more often run. For the few top runners who do compete it is often an after thought against mediocre competition. Those who specialise in the 200 are often failed 100m runners. Years ago this was not so much the case. If these facts were reversed 200m times would quickly tumble. The better 200m specialists sometimes dip just under twenty seconds without being able to threaten ten seconds in the hundred. The event is underdeveloped and has been for a long time. Not convinced these times match up fairly? Here it is line by line, focusing solely on equally accomplished doublers:
10.07 and 20.00
Wonderfully enough these happen to be the personal bests of Valeriy Borzov. He was Olympic Champion at 100m and 200m over thirty years ago and was considered to be an efficient sprinting machine.
10.00 and 19.86
Don Quarrie won Olympic gold in the 200m and silver in the 100m. His FAT bests were 10.07 and 19.86 but he had hand-timed world records ratified at 19.8 and 9.9 seconds.
The ability level of the most talented young athletes recently that do both events neatly abides with the ratio too. Francis Obikwelu stepped up in 1999 with 10.01 and 19.84. John Capel emerged with 10.03 and 19.87 in 1999. Justin Gatlin broke out with 10.05 and 19.86 in 2002. Shawn Crawford ran 9.99 and 19.85 in 2002. All four have concentrated predominantly on the 100m since then and have improved tremendously. If they concentrated on 200’s instead those times would drop significantly too. The amateur NCAA encourages doubling whereas the professional Grand Prix circuit makes it an after thought. One would assume Kostadinos Kederis fell within this ability range also.
9.95 and 19.76
As discussed above, Jim Hines’s 9.95 initially survived as the superior record to Tommie’s Smith’s 19.83. Perhaps the 200m should have gone a little lower in Mexico. 9.95 was just a whisker slower than Lewis and Calvin Smith ran in the 1980’s. 19.76 would have been just a whisker slower than Lewis and Joe DeLoach ran in the 1980’s.
9.93 and 19.72
Calvin Smith 9.93 and Pietro Mennea 19.72 were the first men to eclipse the sprint records from the Mexico City Olympics and reigned simultaneously with these marks.
1992 Olympic 200m gold medallist Mike Marsh led the world that season in both events with times of 9.93 and 19.73.
9.92 and 19.70
Carl Lewis was pushed to his absolute limit by rocket fuelled Ben Johnson in Seoul and chased him home in 9.92. If he had run through the line five years earlier during the most inspired race of his career he might not have had to wait so long for his first individual world record. A 0.05 improvement to 19.70 seems plausible.
9.86 and 19.59
Leroy Burrell 9.85 / 19.61w
Frankie Fredericks was the best 100/200m sprinter present at the Atlanta Olympics, and he won two silver medals chasing two world records. His 100m time of 9.89 at the games was a notch below his season best 9.86, and on this scale would equate to 19.65, which is within 0.03 of his actual run.
Carl Lewis improved his WR 9.92 to WR 9.86 during the course of the 1991 season, aided by a very fast Tokyo track. Had he run the 200m on that surface, who knows? Michael Johnson was on course for a monstrous time there if not for the huge headwinds he encountered at his first major championships. If anyone in history could have run the elusive intermediary time in between Mennea’s altitude assisted 19.72 and MJ’s Atlanta 19.32, it’s Carl Lewis, ideally in Tokyo, perhaps neck a neck with Johnson himself. Frankie’s form in ’96 points to the vicinity of 19.59.
It’s worth noting none of the successful 100/200 doublers ever ventured any lower than this at 100m. 9.84 remains the preserve of guys like Donovan Bailey, Bruny Surin and Tim Montgomery, who basically never ran the 200m. That’s not to say they couldn’t have cooked a fast time, they just never tried. Asafa Powell will probably drop something sick the moment he finds a way to stop hurting himself running the curve. Maurice Greene just didn’t run the 200 enough to demonstrate what his true ability was, but the 100 definitely is his strongest event by some distance. At their best Ato Boldon, Frankie Fredericks and Carl Lewis were high 9.8 guys who should be ashamed of themselves for only racking up one 19.6 between them. Justin Gatlin, Shawn Crawford and Francis Obikwelu still have time to push down into the low 9.8’s and 19.5’s. Gatlin and Crawford in particular look like time bombs waiting to drop at least 19.6 sooner rather than later. Wallace Spearmon, Tyson Gay and Usain Bolt closely resemble the most talented trio of specialist young 200m runners to emerge since forever, but if they intend to focus on the deuce it will take 19.6’s at a bare minimum to command comparable respect to that afforded the elite tier from the hundred.
9.84 and 19.54
Donovan Bailey only shaved Burrell’s WR by 0.01 in ’96 and Johnson cleaved 0.40 off Mennea’s WR, yet there was still a lot of interest in the much hyped 150m match race a year late. Bailey even had the upper hand before Johnson pulled up, despite having no track record whatsoever at any distance beyond 100m. 19.32 is clearly the superior mark, but maybe it’s not quite as far ahead as some made out.