Inside "Project 99": Why the 800m Is Faster Than Ever and the Race for the First Sub-1:40

To get back on task about the article...Its an interesting theory. Im not sure im convinced that the average first lap differential of .7 seconds and 2nd lap of less than a second in 15 races is significant enough to be noteworthy? It would be cool if it was, because lets be honest it's not often that very well entrenched dogma (2 sec diff for the 800m being optimal) gets retired. I just wonder if this sample size, this small of change and this current crop of 800M guys not being the same as the last (not comparing apples to apples) is too much to ascribe meaning . I actually might be better convinced that its the bicarb and a few races that worked out the way they did. I mean Hoppel changed his training, coach and location? I know if you went back 5, 10 or 20 yrs you find athletes running a slower first lap that didnt work out well for them. It's NOT as though nobody ever tried this approach? And they are running 1:45? There is reason why we say 2 sec differential...lot more data. But athletes are all different, maybe we have a crop that races better this way.

Everything here is posted ultimately as an opinion. Facts are selected for that purpose. Look at the thread titles. They effectively invite an opinion. Your simplistic black and white view of these issues makes you unable to see this. But what is most obvious is your inability to cope with opinions you don't like. Yet a diversity of views is what this site allows. You should confine yourself to a fan site. Debate is something you can't handle. You show that yet again by completely ignoring the question I posed above: "So what is going to enable athletes to improve by a greater margin than what they've been able to achieve in the last 43 years?"

My figure was what was required to get to 1:40-flat, not beat it. Other than a glib assertion of progress, nothing you say explains how this will happen.

Absolutely nothing coming out of Kenyan sport can now be trusted. They have lost all credibility after years of confirmed doping violations. They make the E Germans almost look respectable.

David Rudisha was probably an almost perfect athlete in his event. He also ran the perfect race at London 2012. And yet for all his enormous abilities he was ultimately only able to put 0.82 secs between his record and that of Coe's, 31 years earlier. 12 years on Rudisha's record still stands - but is being threatened. But for those who think sub-1:40 is possible, how will a clean athlete be able to improve Rudisha's mark by a bigger margin than he was able to achieve in respect of Coe's and Kipketer's records set decades earlier?

It's funny how people pick a champion, usually of their own generation, and think that that person can never be outdone. For some it's Peter Snell. Some will argue that Coe's performances are better than any other that have followed because of x, y, and z. For others, it's David Rudisha who is the standard which must never be equaled. The truth is that these greats of the past would be great today and would run faster today, but there's no reason to expect that todays athletes cannot possibly achieve what they have. It might be fun to debate who would win in a head to head, but we will never know and that's fine. I first saw Marco Arop running on a livestream of the Canadian U20 championships and he looked like he was just trotting as a group of very good, but seriously outclassed, runners flailed helplessly behind him. He had only just started running and was obviously a great talent. The other top guys all have similar stories because they world class talents. These guys are operating at a different level and they're pushing each other to greater things. Why not just enjoy it? You know the past greats tend to give credit to the newer generation, probably because they know how difficult it is and give respect where it is due.

That isn't really the issue. It is how does a runner today make a bigger jump in the record than was achievable by all the best runners combined in the last 43 years. How likely is that in the near future?

For sure it's possible.

Being better, running faster.

How - when progress over 40 years by fantastic athletes has only been 0.82s?

I can shed light on this. Been coaching 20+ years and now have high school athletes running 1:51 whereas past couple of decades best I could get was 1:53s. Training methodology and biomechanics has been our breakthrough. And I do think the comfort of Victories is helping. I’ve averaged around 7-8 800m men ever since I started.

You're comparing high school athletes to a succession of the best 800m runners in history? So if you were coaching the world's best they would easily be sub-1:40 by now. What is the "training methodology and biomechanics" that would have enabled Rudisha to run sub-1:40?

Without Rudisha and Kipketer and Coe and Cruz injured while in best shape (ignoring the doped Amos), three months ago you would have said sub 1:42 is impossible.

No reason to believe Rudisha represents the ultimate 800m version the human species can offer.

Someone more talented than Rudisha and Kipketer and with more advanced training will run sub 1:39. In 5 years? 20 years? 50 years? We just have to wait, then we will see.

It wasn't. But 1:40.91 - 1:39.99 is way too much for you. You failed. You always will.

It will happen if someone runs at least 0.92 seconds faster than David Rudisha did at the 2012 Olympics. Wilson Kipketer would have run 1:40.5 in 1997 in Zürich with good pace distribution. With current shoes and on the fastest track and with wave lights, he would be sub 1:40. A better talented athlete with better training for sure also can run sub 1:39.

Wonderful! How you explicitely point on the 0.91 improvement here! To get 1:40.00. That's what was meant in the thread title: Race for the first sub 1:40.

Any great 800m runner is dreaming to run 1:40.00.

What a laughable person you are.

Agreed.

Having said that: Rudisha himself could have run faster on that day, had he been able to draft for 400 m.

On the other side, looking back four decades: Coe competed with the advantage of legal blood transfusions and no out-of-competition tests, Cruz with undetectable blood transfusions and very rudimentary out-of-competition tests, Kipketer with undectable EPO and blood transfusions and rudimentary out-of-competition tests. Rudisha competed at the infancy of the ABP under the corrupt Diack/IAAF. Then there were no more 1:40/1:41s for over a decade (aside from Amos who went too far) until the current generation of superspikes.

I wasn't referring to 1:39.9. Where did I say that? Just another invention of your own mind. But your points still don't address how any athlete in this era is going to knock more off the record than the best have been able to do in 43 years. There is only one way it is going to happen - we are seeing it with the latest Kenyan athletes. It has nothing to do with talent, training or spikes.

Dreaming doesn't get anyone to sub-1:40. But dream on.

So you think super-spikes will beat what doping achieved? I'm surprised that the spikes haven't been banned if they are more performance-enhancing than EPO.

Whether the leader goes out in 49.28 as Rudisha did in his WR or Arop did today in Brussels, or the leader splits 50.28 then runs even/negative splits as we've seen happen in this summer of 1:41s, cannot see anyone getting down to 1:40.00 or faster anytime in the foreseeable future.

1:40.00 is a wonderful round number to target as the next insurmountable record to be broken. However, unlike the 4-minute mile prior to the 1950s, this is a barrier that does appear to be beyond the reach of humans at this point in time -- and likely for years and years to come.

Simple math dictates that one of the 400 splits be in the 49s, possibly even a high-48. To run that fast then add on another 400 in 50-point -- resulting in either a positively or negatively split race -- the athlete must also have the raw speed necessary to run an open 400 in 45-low or even sub-45 to feel comfortable enough to tolerate the inevitable lactate build-up over the final 200.

In other words, the man who breaks 1:40 in the 800 must also, at the same time, be one of the world's better 400 sprinters.

Current 800 training methods do not allow for that level of sprint training while 400 sprint training does not allow for that level of endurance work. As a result, today's long sprinters do not have the endurance necessary for a 1:40/800 while the 800 guys do not have the speed necessary for a 45/400.

Simply stated, 1:40.00 is where the war between anaerobic vs aerobic cannot be resolved. Humans, as currently constructed and currently trained, cannot breach this barrier. It is real, not imagined.

Now, can Rudisha's 1:40.91/WR be broken? Absolutely. Likely, by a few tenths of a second, probably in increments of hundredths of a second. And, within this next Olympic cycle, since so many are now running 1:41s with the closest just recently coming within 0.20.

But 1:40.00? We are likely two or three generations away -- barring new (illegal) genetically engineered modifications, new (illegal) wonder drugs, or new (presumably legal) super tracks -- for a human being to have a futuristic biochemistry and skeletal structure necessary to run this fast.

A more realistic title for Project 99 would have been Project 100, as anyone living today breaking 1:41.00 would have achieved a performance touching upon the limit of current human capacity in this event.