![]() Less experienced runners might try to rise up quickly and take quick steps to put themselves into an early lead, but two-time Olympic 100 gold medalist Carl Lewis differs. "If you're thinking, 'Are my arms too wide, are my arms too close together?' it's over for you. "I'm like, 'All right, I'm waiting for the gun and getting set,'" says Gatlin, the 2004 Olympic 100 gold medalist. They should take a deep breath and hold it.Īmerican Justin Gatlin says the start is all about instinct. In addition to listening for that starter's pistol, Warren Doscher writes in "The Art of Sprinting," sprinters must make sure their feet are properly set and that the balls of their feet, ankles, knees and hip joints are in alignment. If you anticipate it and you're wrong, you're going to be out." "You don't want to anticipate the gun you want to react to it. "A lot of races are won and lost because a sprinter does not react properly to the gun," says two-time Olympic 100 medalist Ato Boldon of Trinidad and Tobago. Therefore, if you start sooner than a tenth of a second after the gun, it will be considered a false start. Research has shown that a person cannot hear the gun and react in under a tenth of a second. You can even be disqualified if you start too soon after the gun fires. The rules used to be that you could false start once and be given a second chance. I just try to listen for the gun and react." The worst thing you can do is false start. You can't do anything else until the gun goes off. "Listen for the gun," says English Gardner, America's top female sprinter. When the record did fall, it was another American, Willie Williams who took the title of ‘World’s Fastest Man’ setting a time of 10.01 seconds in 1956.Īfter West Germany’s Armin Hary ran 10 seconds flat in 1960, attention turned to the first man to break the 10-second mark.Apart from the men wondering how they might beat Bolt, there is one thing sprinters say they are focused on after they position themselves in the starting blocks. However, while his 100m record was equalled on 10 occasions, it took a full 20 years for anyone to go faster. Then just two months before the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Owens broke the official 100m world record with a stunning run of 10.2 at the NCAA Track and Field Championships.įour golds followed at Berlin 1936 as he put in a legendary performance in the capital of Germany. READ MORE: The greatest 45 minutes in sport Just a year earlier, Owens had pulled off what has been dubbed “the greatest 45 minutes in sport” when he managed world records of 9.4 in the 100 yard dash, 8.13m in the long jump, 20.3 in the 200 yard dash and 22.6 in the 200 yard low hurdles at the Big Ten Championships in Michigan, USA. Nine more years transpired until Canada’s Percy Williams set a new record in 1930.īut given the nature of the hand-timed records - each only timed to a tenth of a second - six more men would equal that record of 10.3 seconds before 1936, when the great Jesse Owens lowered the mark to 10.2. Jesse Owens The progression of the world recordĪfter Lipincott’s first official world record in 1912, it took a full nine years for the mark to be broken when Charley Paddock of the USA shaved a full two-tenths of a second from the world’s best time with a 10.4 second run in 1921. READ MORE: World Athletics Championships preview READ MORE: Worlds Athletics Championships Day-by-day Now with the 100m race World Athletics Championships scheduled to begin on 15 July, looks back at the evolution of the 100m world record. No other sprinter has broken the 9.60 second barrier, with Bolt registering 9.63 seconds at London 2012 and Tyson Gay and Yohan Blake both hitting 9.69 seconds set in 20 respectively. Until, that is, Jamaican legend Usain Bolt set the current world record in August 2009 - almost 13 years ago.īolt’s time of 9.58 seconds saw him reach an astonishing 44.72km/h when he hit full stride in the 100m final of the Berlin 2009 World Athletics Championships. Since 1987, the men’s 100m world record has never stood for more than three years and three months. This was also when records began being timed in hundredths instead of tenths of seconds. ![]() The first 100m world record to be ratified by the IAAF was recorded 110 years ago in 1912, when the USA’s Donald Lippincott was timed running 10.6 seconds in the qualifying round of the Stockholm 1912 Olympics.įor the next half a century, records were hand-timed before automatic timing for a world record became a requirement in 1977. The 100m has long been seen as the acid test for the world’s best sprinters with the holder of the men’s world record often referred to as the 'World’s Fastest Man’.
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