How many people out of over 7 billion can run a sub 30 second 200m and a sub 60 second 400m?

I blame modern day vaccines making everyone slow

Daz wrote:

Well there must be something seriously wrong with most males then because only 2 guys in my platoon can run sub 60.

Did they wear spikes and run it on a rubberized track?

Were they allowed multiple attempts on different days with good weather?

Did they taper for it?

Were they given incentives to break 60?

And most importantly, how many of them spent years training exclusively for the 400?

fisky wrote:

SprintTriathlon wrote:

Wow, if that is true, maybe I will change my focus, at 58 and untrained for speedevents I sometimes stride 30 seconds 200meters (flying start), just getting the speedendurance and at age 60+ I may be kinda 1 in a 100million.

According to WHO, the 60+ population is about 1 Billion. According to MastersRankings, the number of runners who ran 400m faster than 60 seconds in 2018 was 12 at 60-64, 2 at 65-69, and 1 at 70+. (Of course, not all meets are included, but logically anyone who could run this fast would run in a major meet somewhere in 2018.)

15/1 Billion = 1.5/100 million.

Wow, now I am so disappointed, I would not be one in a 100million but 1.5/100million. Then there is no use!

Joke aside, I did start to think I might change my focus (but after I have completed Norseman).

59.9 seconds is slooooow wrote:

Daz wrote:

Well there must be something seriously wrong with most males then because only 2 guys in my platoon can run sub 60.

Did they wear spikes and run it on a rubberized track?

Were they allowed multiple attempts on different days with good weather?

Did they taper for it?

Were they given incentives to break 60?

And most importantly, how many of them spent years training exclusively for the 400?

God knows but we all exercised at least 3 hours a day, nearly everybody was training sprints with weight vests and I know that isn’t 400 specific but if sure is more than 99% of guys 18-24 are doing.

Time is on my side,Yes it is wrote:

A little over 7 billion people in the world now. How many of them can run under these times?

If all of them were trained from birth and were given the appropriate resources? About half of them, or around 3.5 billion, would be able to do it in at least one point in their lives. The few disabled or extremely untalented guys who couldn't do it (5-10% of the male population) would be balanced out by the few girls who could (5-10% of the female population). Of course, there would only be a few hundred million who could do it at any particular time since you would have 80 year olds who ran that time 60 years ago and 5 year olds who wouldn't be able to get under 60 until 10-20 years later.

I scrolled through PrepCalTrack and picked a recent all-comers meet that had a lot of participants so that I could get a decent sample size. 42 boys ran the 400, and three-quarters of them ran sub 60:

Now consider this:

- Most of them weren't seniors, and it may have been their first season or even their first time racing a 400.

- Some of them weren't even in HS yet. There were at least 3 milers who were likely in this category since they failed to run sub 8.

- The best HS runners weren't even at that meet. They were at the "California Winter Championships" in Arcadia HS that same day.

- This was a meaningless early season meet that people mostly trained through. For most of them, their PRs were a lot faster.

- The 400 probably wasn't the main event for some of those guys.

This was probably the slowest meet with a large sample size that I could find, and despite all of those factors, the vast majority of them still broke 60. And besides, the most athletic guys aren't even running the 400, they're in the football, basketball, and/or baseball teams. Even the football guys who come out for track to work on their speed only do the 100/200. And there is a ton of undiscovered talent out there - we've all heard stories of lazy guys who did nothing but smoke weed all day and decided to run track on a whim or to be with their friends. They end up posting some incredibly fast times before being cut for poor work ethic and skipping too many practices.

otter wrote:

Greenstem wrote:

It could be possible that there are a couple of people who can't break 30 seconds in an open 200 hundred but can run say 31 for the first 200 and then close in 28.99 with the rolling start coming into the second 200.

No, I don’t think so.

Yes it's obviously possible.

Obviously anyone breaking 60 seconds for the 400 will run at least 200m of it in under 30 seconds, but the point is that somebody might be really slow off the blocks (or start) and so not be able to break 30 seconds in an actual 200m, but could just possibly break 60 seconds in a 400m.

Bad Wigins wrote:sub 60 400 without a sub 45 300:

14.90

15.25

14.90

14.90

Could also go sub 60 without a sub 45 300 and a sub 30 200 by:

15.1

15.1

15.0

14.75

If you are talking about who can run a sub 60 400m right now, as in today, it would be very few.

Your prime candidates would be between the ages of 16 and 24 and male. There would be virtually no one over the age of 40 accomplishing this.

Therefore, if 99.9% of the 7 billion people ran a 400m race today, only .1% would succeed in running sub 60. That's still 7 million people and even that seems a bit high to me. Maybe it should be 99.99% would fail and .01% would succeed. That would be more like 700,000 achieving this hypothetical goal.