would Sydney McLaughlin be much faster in 400m?

Mu vs Syd in an open 400m thread*

i was thinking the same thing yesterday. they don't seem to slow her down much. similar to warholm. 1.5 to 2 seconds slowdown. maybe.

She does have legit speed though. 22.3 in the 200 at age 18. if she works under 22, a low 48 doesn't seem impossible.

The hurdles slow her down about 2.0 to 2.2 seconds. Which puts her at 49.2 to 49.4 in a flat 400.

That's an excellent time. But not the world record 47.60 time that some clueless people on here think she can run.

“World record 47.60”******

I'm actually surprised the 400mh isn't significantly faster. 11.07W 22.3 with 12.65 hurdling speed should really get her 400 differential to something like 49.00 + 1.5-2 which would be 50.0-50.5.

Imagine she would be similar to Warholm, who is competitive in Diamond League races but not a WR challenger.

Maybe if either focused on the 400 flat, they might be better. 4x400 should be a good indication, and McLaughlin was the slowest leg on that great US team from last year. I think any of her, Mu, or Steiner could contend for medals in the 400, but it wouldn’t be a given and they wouldn’t dominate.

Agreed there is no possible way she approaches AR territory let alone WR. No one is touching 47.6.

First of all, Sydney's PR in the 400 is 50.07, not 49.0.

And adding only 1.5 seconds for the hurdles to a woman's 400 flat time is almost impossible for any woman to do. Probably the only woman in history who can do slightly under 2.0 seconds added for the hurdles is Dalilah Muhammad.

You are using faulty numbers, which makes your conclusion faulty.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee had 200 and 100h times almost identical to Sydney McLaughlin. So if your theory was correct, than Jackie Joyner-Kersee could have run sub 51 in the 400h, when in fact she wasn't even in the ballpark.

Sydney had nearly a second in her yesterday. The WR is still very soft.

And a Sydney/Mu 400 matchup? Sydney by 1.5 seconds over Mu.

Is it time to raise the hurdles? What are they, about 16 inches? 18?

Syd barely has to do anything more than lift her lead knee a little to get over those middle school barriers.

"Alright hurdle crew... all the way to the bottom! Past the last click!"

Make the athletes hurdle already. Raise them.

I'd say there's a very good chance of her running 50 mid in the 400mhs at worlds, would love to see her focus on other events and get her flat times down. She's capable of sub 11, sub 22, and sub 49 if she wants it. The tricky part for her seems to be getting her steps right. Which is why she's spent time working on being able to alternate her lead leg for hurdles.

There are too many idiots here, none of you understand the hurdles. Your stride pattern is locked in, the only way to get faster is to take faster steps, not longer steps. Her stride would be much longer in a flat 400. She was very conservative in her most recent record, she was even with the field 200m in. She can run 50.5 in the 400h and sub 48 open 400 with just a year of training exclusively on the flat 400.

Great question dude 😂

Athing has already run 49.5, so you are saying that Sydney could run 48.0?

That's not even close to happening.

If you don't know enough about track to know the height of the women's 400 hurdles, then you aren't qualified to decide whether or not they should be raised.

You aren't even close. Sydney can lower her record by .1 or .2 at Worlds, max.

Only 2 women in history have ever broken 52.0 and you think Sydney can go 50.5? C'mon, get real.

No, that's not what is happening. She IS getting her steps right.

She learned to alternate legs so that she can run 14 steps instead of 15 steps between hurdles, for the first 5 hurdles.

And then in a final, for hurdles 6 - 10 she does 15 steps between hurdles and uses the same lead leg.

In heats, she does 16 steps between hurdles for the last 2 or 3 hurdles, so she can run slower and conserve energy.

Go back and watch her 51.41 world record at .25x speed on YouTube and you'll learn what she is doing.

Yes, there are too many idiots here, and you are one of them.

Sydney simply doesn't have the foot speed to run sub 48. And no one else in history been able to run sub 48 either, unless they were on a massive amount of steroids.