Fastest 100 meters ever

[Guest]

Michael Johnson's Atlanta Olympics 19.32WR had 100m splits, I recall, of 10.12 and 9.2.

Isn't it reasonable to say that Johnson's 10.12 around a turn might be the fastest 100m ever run?

The proof would be the average differential in the 200/220 PRs of great furlong runners who recorded times both on the straightaway and on the curve . . . sprinters from Jesse Owens to Bobby Morrow to Tommie Smith. My guess is that the average differential in their straight vs. curve PRs is 0.4 seconds.

If so, Johnson's 10.12 is the equal of a 9.72.

[tafnut]

to split hairs:
1. it is obviously not the FASTEST because 9.78 is faster than 10.12. And 9.69 is the fastest ever anyway. (wa - alt Thompson 96)
2. You are assuming MJ is as inefficient a curve runner as the others. He certainly was a much better curve runner.

[Guest]

MJ split 8.9 in the 3rd 100 of a 400 one time. Can't remember if it was a relay leg or an individual race. The writeup was in a T&FN a couple years back.

[tafnut]

but that was a running start. The fastest there is probably Bob Hayes' 8.6

[Per Andersen]

The splits for the top 3 in Atlanta in the 200 were: 10.12-9.20
10.14-9.54
10.18-9.62
Carl's split in L.A. in '84 was 10.23.
Using Karlgaard's logic Fredericks, Boldon + Carl all ran their fastest ever 100 out of the blocks in a 200m race. How likely is that? Let's get real. No matter how fantastic that 19.32 is Johnson was a 10.1 sprinter out of the blocks in the 100. If he could run in the 9.7s or 9.8s he would surely have tried it during his long career. I would rank him behind Tommie Smith and McKenley in the 100 the only other 2 with similar talent. I cant't remember what Henry Carr did in the 100.

[Guest]

Pete --

You actualy make my point. MJ's first 100 meters in Atlanta was FASTER than some sub 9.9 runners.

MJ ran an out-of-the-blocks 10.12 around a curve at near sea level. That's astonishing. "Tafnut" says, well, MJ was more efficient than most around the curve. I won't argue with that.

But let's quantify what efficient means.

History says the great furlong runners like Owens, Morrow and Smith ran about 0.4 seconds slower around the curve. If MJ was more efficient, let's assume his penalty was 0.3 seconds.

That means MJ ran the equivalent of a straight 9.82 in his first 100 meters in Atlanta. Not the fastest of all-time, but up there.

He was a career 10.1 runner you say? Well, how many times did he actually run the 100m during his peak years? With a multi-million dollar income, why would he risk it?

MJ's 19.32 (at low altitude) is the best men's record, IMHO. It will last 20 years.

[Guest]

Per! (Not Pete!) Sorry, too early in the AM.

[Guest]

In The Guinness Book of Track & Field Facts & Feats, Peter Matthews said that 200m times around a curve are generally 0.3 to 0.4 seconds slower than straightaway times. Empirical evidence using world lists from the 20s and 30s bears it out. Any physicists out there care to do the calculations for energy requirements?

Don't forget, we never got splits for Tommy Smith's 19.5 for 220y on a straightaway. I don't know what kind of surface it was on; taking different running surfaces into account, today's top sprinters may not be much faster than Hayes and Smith.

[magpie]

>He was a career 10.1 runner you say?
>Well, how many times did he actually run the 100m
>during his peak years?

10.09 @ '94 nattys in knoxville.

[tafnut]

I'm thinking .2 efficient as in I doubt that's worth better than a 9.92, but that is also amazing when you think he's only halfway thru the race. The 9.20 second half is amazing because the big guys only run .84 - .84 as the fastest 10 meters in the really fast 100's so he was holding speed pretty darn well.

[gh]

Rich K wrote:

<MJ ran an out-of-the-blocks 10.12
around a curve at near sea level. >

Actually, Atlanta is not near sea level; 991ft (302m) up actually. You have to add at least a few 100ths to his time for that aid compared to actual sea-level.

As an aside, note that before Coors Field came along at ultra-altitude to throw baseball numbers out of whack, recall that the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was known as "The Launching Pad" because of the number of homers hit there. Guess why that happened.

gh

ps--maybe some native Atlantan can confirm a story I heard at the Olympics: the altitude of Atlanta is such that despite there being about 111 different streets in Atlanta with the word "peach" in them no peach trees grow within many miles of the city. True?

[Guest]

Two reasons-

1. altitude

2. the Braves pitching was consistently some of the worst in baseball for the first 20+ years the stadium existed.

[Guest]

yeah, but Hank Aaron wasn't hitting off the Braves' pitchers!

[Guest]

Yeah, but the launching pad boosted old Henry's totals. He was slowing down until he got new life down there.

This is b.s. comparing MJ to the best 100 meter men. C'mon. You're comparing apples and oranges, to use a worn out analogy.

[X King]

I do take Split Times of Track and Field races from my Video-Tape Analysis and when I looked very closely at the tape(after many attempts,with 10.12s and 10.13s),I found Michael Johnson at the 100m mark in 10.14s. So his corrected 100m Splits were 10.14s/9.18s. And according to JRM's calculations a 10.12s curve is worth 9.94s for a 'normal' 100m runner. So MJ's 10.14s which I found is worth around 9.96s. And he didn't train for the 100m. So if he trained for it, he would of run around 9.76s-9.80s. But's that just my opinion. And who said that MJ ran an 8.9s Split for the 3rd 100m of a 400m race??? That's absolutely obscene the Fastest ever 3rd 100m of a Men's 400m race taken by Sientific or Video-Tape Analysis research is 10.10s by Alberto Juantereno(CUB) in 1976. The Fastest 100m section of 400m race was made by Jerome Young(USA)9.86s 100m-200m in the 1996 USA Olympic Trials.
I'll have to check my corrected (and combined figures from other research) 10m Splits of Michael Johnson's 200m World Record in Atlanta OG in '96 to find his Fastest 100m Split.

[Guest]

Track is full of voodoo conversions and approximations, which should be taken with appropriate grains of salt, but somebody thinks they've come up with a formula for equating turn-running 100s to real 100s? C'mon!

We've all seen little squatty guys who eat up the turns and on the other side of the coin the daddylonglegs characters who are fighting like mad to get a normal stride. To say there's one calculation that would accomodate these two opposing somatotypes is frivolous.

That tight little stride MJ used obviously made him a great turn runner. (And somehow he figured out how to make it work for another 100 metres--wow!)

[dj]

First Bill Carr and now Bernie Wefers! Where will it end? I'm waiting for Lon Myers to chime in, and maybe Horry Lee or Billy Byrd Page.

[Pheidippides]

>First Bill Carr and now Bernie Wefers! Where
>will it end? I'm waiting for Lon Myers to chime
>in, and maybe Horry Lee or Billy Byrd Page.<

Bunch of kids.

[X King]

I found it. The Fastest 100m Split Time from the Splits that I took from MJ's 19.32s in Atlanta OG 1996 was; 8.76s from 40-140m. His Fastest 10m Split that I took during that race was a 0.86s which he did no less than 4 or 5 times.
He is thought to of had either a 0.84s or 0.85s Split according to other 'Analysists'.

[luv2run]

>Two reasons-

1. altitude

2. the Braves
>pitching was consistently some of the worst in
>baseball for the first 20+ years the stadium
>existed.

The stadium also had a lot of effects outside of altitude because the current stadium sits right across the street (the old Olympic stadium reconfigured). Of course reason #2 was a big reason, but the Braves players also hit a lot of homers. One year 3 players hit 40 or more homers (Johnson, Aaron and Evans). That was when 40 HR was a big number. Humidity might be a factor as well although being at about 1000 feet is a factor (BTW, I think the current stadium is now the third highest behind Coors (~5200 feet) and possibly the BOB in Phoenix (Phoenix and Atlanta are at about the same elevation).

Braves fan since I was old enough to know what baseball was.

[Guest]

Could be the "launching pad" has to do with density altitude. This is a phenomenon well known to pilots. Example: Lake Tahoe is 6200 feet. But on an 80 degree day, a plane's wings and prop will get no more lift out of South Lake Tahoe's airport than if the airport was at 9,000 feet on a 60-degree day.

I vaguely recall the air temperature during MJ's WR was in the high 80s/low 90s. So the density altitude may have been around 4,000 feet.

Now, whether density altitude affects runners as it does wings and props, I have no idea. Is there a physicist in the crowd?