mondo vs cinder

[Guest]

How would today's athletes fair on a cinder track surface , say 1500m times. Are there any colleges that still have cinder tracks used in comp?

[jsquire]

I don't have my T&FN back issues in front of me, but I remember an article dealing with this sometime in the last year or two. The conclusion was that a well-groomed cinder track was only marginally slower than a synthetic one. Arthur Lydiard claimed the difference is about 0.2 seconds per 100m in "Running the Lydiard Way", for what that's worth -- he didn't always base his statements on facts.