How do we even know the tracks back in the day weren't a little short?

How did 7 people downvote this post?

Democrats must be historically illiterate.

Upvote.

I'm not used to people being so stupid, but we are talking about Democrats who think that the moon landing occurred in 1968!

My high school built its track in 1975. They built it for 400 meters but marked it for 440 yards. There was around 12 inchces of track between the actual edge of the track and the inside of the lane lane one stripe all the way around the track. then in the early '80s when the state went to meters... the remarked the track to meter lanes.

In practice we seemed to stay outside the lane one markings and it became instinctual. But I remember that in meets that in the 800 we had guys from other schools trying to pass on the inside and in the longer races guys from other schools would get inside of lane one on the turns sometimes because they weren't used to the track.

This sounds like a parent I dealt with who was trying to get me to let his son have the school 200 record. "How do we know they even did automatic timing right in 2004?"

The real issue is that one second used to be just a little bit longer.

Swarthmore's track has entered the chat

Good point and junior high/middle School tracks were 330 yards. Races at that level were the 330, 660, and 1320 back in the day. Now granted mistakes were made when marking dirt tracks for local meets, but usually high school meets were better. There are exceptions though: At a CIF prelim meet in the early 1980s, someone marked (dirt track) the 220 yard dash incorrectly and all the heats produced scorcher times. Even at the famous Arcadia Invite one year (mid 90s), a starter placed the 800 meter runners on the 400 meter stagger lines, Oops!

Yes we did. The first flight to the moon was Apollo 8 in December of 1968. First landing in 1969.

en.wikipedia.org

Apollo 8

Apollo 8 (December 21–27, 1968) was the first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth's gravitational sphere of influence, and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times without landing and th...

Open link

(just read the first sentence for your answer)

Rubik's Cube

As straightforward as measuring is, I bet there are scores of tracks that are off by a bit. When my high school track was reconstructed (for $$$), I could not believe it – it was not even level. When it was painted, you could easily see all the dips and rises. It looked like a contour map. My track coach, who wanted to be coaching baseball, shrugged his shoulders when I pointed out some of the issues. He said the new track was fine. So I went to my school principal’s office, and asked his admin if I could get a meeting. When we met, I suggested we take a walk to the new track. Upshot: the track was torn out and completely redone. Was the new track accurate? I should have measured, but at least the hills were gone.

You failed math. If your time was 2:00.7 or higher, you wouldn't have broken 2:00 for 800 meters.

Believing in the moon landing is one thing, believing Wikipedia is a reliable source is a whole new level of crazy

I think the truth is we don't know if they were, or frankly still are if they were built decades ago, exactly 400m. And why assume they're shorter? Discrepancies in planning versus construction could lead to longer tracks as well. But I'd put it in the same classification as hand timing, which was still used in the Olympics until 1968. That the error was small enough no one thought it created any sort of disadvantage either way. So if your track was 400.5m or 399.5m, that was within the margin of error at the time.

You guys are ridiculous. I think Wikipedia is extremely biased as well, but for a basic recent historic fact like an Apollo mission, it does just fine and I figured the top result would do. My dad worked at NASA and I grew up around Houston HQ, so that's my research. Go do your own.

how do we know they weren't a little long?

If there were measurement errors the tracks were just as likely to be long as short.

I could tell you that I almost ran a sub-3 marathon Apollo 8).

Doesn't mean I went there.

High school tracks are always a little long or short.

if it’s really important to you;

To set records, the track is going to have to be measured by a surveyor who uses laser sets, not a wheel.

The times I’ve attempted LDR track records, the surveyor has come back with something that isn’t exactly 400m, but usually within the allowable margin.

I began my running in elementary school on a cinder track. I loved that track. It has been removed since then. It saddened me to see what they replaced it with.