I don’t doubt that you’ve seen a split given that suggests a 37 last 200m, but I’d bet my life that it was 39sec and something. I would put more weight on the accuracy of the splits given by Cordner Nelson in T&FN than Sports Illustrated. The IAAF official World Record Progression book also gives 39 and bits and that gives 100m splits for Ryun for the entire race based on video scrutiny!? I’m away from home at moment so can’t remember which source has which time, but one has 39.1, the other 39.3, and for last 400m they have 53.3 and 53.6.
I’d love to know whether it was a 400m or 440yd track and exactly where the marks were where they took all those strange (e.g 210yds!?) splits from?
Also footage of the entire race would be good.