the sub-10,20,44 club

Carl Lewis

Lol, wow you are taking this stuff fairly serious...ok...

hell give me a hurricane force wind and I'll run under 10s...the point is johnson never did...not in the wind , not in the sun, never ....nope....

I never said bailey would have beat Johnson in the 200m...Johnson was easily the king at that distance. No use even postulating what time he could achieve...it wasn't his race.

Johnson was crushed by Bailey in the first 75 meters of the 150m race...all 'experts' thought it would be the other way around. You reference using Johnson's 'ability' right after the olympics, but not bailey's?? anyway, doesn't matter...Johnson lost.

No ill-will to Greene at all...he was/is awesome. Bailey won the Olympics at 29...had pretty much given up racing , and came back for one more shot...there was no expectation he was going to continue improving or even be able to keep up his speed. I won't lie though, It was nice to see a Canadian win fairly (after the Ben Johnson fiasco in 88).

Sorry that all this seems to make you bitter.

Jedsdead wrote:

Bailey won the Olympics at 29...had pretty much given up racing , and came back for one more shot...there was no expectation he was going to continue improving or even be able to keep up his speed.

He had no expectations for the Olympics and was about quit....but kept racing until 2000 and even ran a 10.20 in '01?

Went from "I may just quit" to a hanger on, eh? You sure sound like you k ow your stuff. Maybe that's should weigh my view on your thoughts on Johnson and the 100.

This whole post is about people who COULD potentially do the sub-10/20/44. Who may or.may not have been able to do it in the past is straying from the point of the post, but in the end, one could say "well none of them HAVE done it, so who cares". So, I dont quite understand the "but Johnson didn't...he diDn'T, I cOuLd rUn SuB 10 iN a huRRiCanE!!!!" bent when you could just say that to the whole post, essentially. Not just Johnson and the 100.

And I'd put money on a +20 mps wind not getting you to a sub 10.5 as we speak. So.... Sure, I'm bitter. People are annoying. They make me bitter, yes.

You conversely sound pretty bitter about the mid 90s sprint scene, yourself. So. Pot. Kettle.

Michael Johnson could have been a 9.9 low of 9.8 high 100m guy, what he lacked was acceleration which is way more trainable than too speed.400/200 runners do not train acceleration, as often and it is not as important for them. Some long sprinters can shave 1-2 tenths of a second of their 100m just by improving their acceleration in the first 50m. Johnson's running style was not suited for fast acceleration, modifying his technique would lead to much faster 100m times.Bolt shaved much more time off than normal when he switched because his coach optimized his form to maximize 100m performance. With a good coach Johnson could have done the same, he had a terrible acceleration.

CB4 wrote:

Carl Lewis

Also, I call out Carl Lewis from the past as a no since I've not seen nor heard of him dropping any Holloway type 4x4 legs, meaning we'd have to rely solely on his 200 as indicative of what his 400 potential would be. Frankly, I would say he largely underperformed in the 200, so thinking he'd be able to extend out yo 400 back when sub 44s were even more rare than they are today seems like a faulty assumption.

And beyond all that, I feel like his LJ work would have prevented him from ever getting to a fitness place where chasing a sub 44 400m would be viable.

I think that there is a small possibility Michael Johnson could have been the 100m world record holder. He improved his 200m almost half a second after his 10.09. He also ran the bend in 4.35 sec bolt ran this in 4.32. You also have to consider that neither Johnson's mechanics or his training was conducive to a fast 100m.Even when doing speed work he never went close to all out, he was too afraid of injuring himself, as another poster said that's why he stopped running 100s. I believe he was very far from his 100m potential. Michael Johnson would ran a faster 100m just by running more 100m dashes, most sprinters run more than 6 in a year before getting their best race.

I think Ackbar sucks, but there is a non-zero chance of sub-10 in 1996, and only in 1996.

YES he was slower than Bailey in the 100, but Bailey would have gone 9.7’a had it not been for the million false starts. Ackbar could very well have been 9.9x, especially with a good wind. He was fully jacked in 96 especially in Atlanta, and that can make the difference.

His vmax and blocks were no good, but his middle acceleration was not bad, and his SE was great. He had a shot in 96.

Powell is surprising because he gives ip, and because of his mechanics. He is a full-on sprinter, not a runner. No way he was going 43.x with that form, IMO. No way. And he used to do 300’s and even 400’s in training.

Lewis, hard to say. He had it all, except for the pacing. I’m pretty sure he could have gone 44.x, but 43.x is a stretch.

Bednarek: possibly.

Norman: I do believe that he might be sub-10, but of course not 9.86. I would need to see a legit sub-10 from him. I will say quite possibly.

I think 43.x is harder than most people here think.

Speaking for ALL short sprinters, the 400 SUCKS

yop wrote:

I think that there is a small possibility Michael Johnson could have been the 100m world record holder..

Absolutely not.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

yop wrote:

I think that there is a small possibility Michael Johnson could have been the 100m world record holder..

Absolutely not.

For how hard I went on defending a possible sub 10 for MJ, I would equally refute the other extreme of him being a viable medal threat or (obviously) a WR threat in the 100.

Really the only value of pursuing a sub 10 for MJ would have been to just be able to stake a claim in this so called group of sub-10/20/44. He managed just fine getting to 19.32 without making a 100 a part of his repertoire. So, it's not like he NEEDED it.

I'm just of the opinion that, at his peak, he probably could/would have run a hammy-safe sub-10. But he probably wasn't going to have much more access to sub-10 territory than a 9.95ish (depending on conditions).

If I recall correctly, Johnson ran his 10.09 in the semis of the USATF Champs in 1994. I think he ran the final but DNFed with an injury. So he really did try to join the sub-10 club but maybe thought better of it when he got hurt.

Part of the reason for the design of the Baylor training program was to answer the question, "How do we get Michael Johnson through a full season without getting injured?" For whatever reason, he was injured a bit more than average for a 200-400 guy..

Don't forget, that Atlanta track where he ran 19.66 and ultimately 19.32 was fast as sh!t. It beat up Gebresellassie's legs so bad he couldn't come back in the 5000 after winning the 10000.

I was at the 1996 Trials and they had Olympic practice tracks around Atlanta, same specifications as the Olympic stadium track. I did a workout one day one one of those tracks. Man, that surface was quick but I could barely walk the next day. My Achilles was totally beat up from that fast but very hard track.

Their was a small chance, his top speed and sped endurance was superior to 9.9 sprinters.Improving his more than terrible acceleration could have lead him to a 9.8.

1994 was Before his peak, there is no reason to believe 10.09 was anywhere close to his potential.

About his injuries though I think it was caused by training. If you never run all out in training then all of a sudden you race all out, your body is not prepared.

thanks for continuing to make my points for me...

yup, Bailey quit competitive track after high school...was a b-baller!! Only came back to it in 91ish...won the Olympics at 29. Yes he kept competing after, but as most un-juiced athletes go (including Johnson), his times came down every year after. He admitted several times that he had peaked already and he was just trying to hold on to the career in the spot-light as long as possible (and collect sponsorship funds along the way).

But I still hold on to the belief that I could crack 10.0 in hurricane winds...might need an elvis onesy flightsuit to help as though.

MJ though...sorry 10.09 was the best he could do. In all seriousness though, the reason I stand by this point is that Johnson (based on age) would likely have peaked between 92 to 96. The World Record for the 100m was 9.86/9.85 at this time. If you go back and look at how many times people ran under 10sec during these years, it as often only 5 - 8 times. So the very best 100m sprinters in the world were barely cracking 10s at this time...and MJ was not a top 100m sprinter. He did not have the start or acceleration t get into the top tier.

I take nothing away from him - 10.09 is an incredible time (which was at the wind max 2.0m/s)...but to drop another 0.10 from this time is still a massive stretch.

Gay and Bolt definitely. Johnson almost certainly.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Wallace Spearmon yet. Personal bests of 9.96/19.65/45.22 all from 2006-2007.

Going from 45.2 to 43.99 isn't easy, but he was still running sub-20 second 200s in 2012, so you'd think he might be able to stretch out to the 400 at some point in his career.

Yeah I was thinking about spearmon he held the 300m record before Lyles, he could probably do it.