We changed the title to make it more descriptive and clear what this thread is about. It was initially entitled, "Is Sydney McLaughlin the only female to run a male qualifying time?"
Quick, someone do a breakdown of the vertical clearance demands and hip height of all of the athletes, I’d like to see where Syd McLaugh fits with respect to the vertical distance cleared on each hurdle
Just want to point out that the "new" thread title "Sydney McLaughlin's PB would place her 11th at NCAA regionals, is she the greatest female athlete ever?" is much LESS descriptive than the original title. The latter is clearly comparing SM vs men. Please modify it to:
"Sydney McLaughlin's PB would place her 11th at NCAA men's regionals, is she the greatest female athlete ever?"
Exactly. The new thread title is awful. I read it as a mocking slight against Sydney. I had no idea it was a comparison to men's times.
If the administrators are going to change a header, make sure it's toward improvement instead of toward confusion.
the hurdle events are wildly uncompetitive compared to the open races. sydney's WR is super impressive, but not to same degree as, for example, sifan hassan's achievements. actually, it isn't even close
Watching the 400hs. Looking at the seedtime PRs, Sydney McLaughlin would have placed 11th in the first round of hurdles in the East region. Is there another female in T&F history that could place 11th in a men's regional NCAA race? Does this make her the greatest female athlete of all time? If not, what female has comparably run a time faster in their respective events? How would that female athlete stack up at the NCAA men's regional?
Would Hassan not have a shot at making NCAAs in the 10,000? Sydney would have no shot over the men's hurdle heights.
Not really. Sure her pr would have qualified. But that is a lot like saying I could have beat Centro in the Olympics.
the hurdle events are wildly uncompetitive compared to the open races. sydney's WR is super impressive, but not to same degree as, for example, sifan hassan's achievements. actually, it isn't even close
400mh has a different hurdle height for men and women.
I would not mix women and men times.
Of course, her time remains extremely impressive, like all T&F world records.
As a Canadian Champion 400mH, I can tell you for certain the average height of women athletes are taller now, This is not a put down at all of women 400mH, just that the height they decided for the women should have been at least 3" higher. Slow motion video of women 400mH racers show that on the far turn especially their clearance height is so high that they can carry the trail leg tucked under allowing them to keep the speed high and the stride length long. Not so much lately, but a couple of years back, women brought their trail leg around the hurdle in the other lane so that the leg was lower than the hurdle height.
It would be fun if they had an exhibition race if 4 of the lanes the hurdles were set at men's height and 4 of the lanes were set at the legal women's height and vice versa to see how fast men could run with the women's lower height. I ran 23.5 for 220yd low hurdles, because of my height, but at intermediate height I was much slower, not so much for the distance but because my flexibility sucked.
Hard to say what hurdle heights should be. As a 400m hurdler (36") with a 32" inseam, that's four inches below intermediate hurdle height (and 10" below college high hurdles!). For taller hurdlers the clearance was much greater. Was that fair?
Radcliffe's 2:15:25 in 2003 was only 25 seconds off the men's qualifying mark for the 2004 olympic marathon. That's the best female performance in history. Offscore results aside.
She won the British Championship that year in London - men included.
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