Sydney McLaughlin's PB would place her 11th at NCAA regionals, is she the greatest female athlete ever?

Different height hurdles.

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.

I agree. All of the men's 400m hurdlers have faster 400m PR than Sydney. Unless one of the guys crashes into a hurdle I think it would be near impossible for them to lose in a 400m race with the same hurdle height (30 or 36 inch, doesn't matter)

Would Hassan not have a shot at making NCAAs in the 10,000? Sydney would have no shot over the men's hurdle heights.

What's a woman ?

That's a little different, since the race is moreso weather dependent or pace dependent. But that is another good example. Athing Mu or SAFP don't even come close to qualifying for an 800 or 100.

I didn't consider the different hurdle heights. I would be curious to see what Sydney would with 36 inch hurdle. If she ran a 52 at 36 inch hurdles, she would still qualify for the NCAA regional meet, which I believe she would still be the only female that could claim that.

Similar vein, might only a handful of guys in the NCAA who could beat Gifey's half marathon time.

Gidey's *** autocorrect

If you ignore the differences in implements, Ealey, Allman, Anderson and Price could all win the competitions. ;)

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.

This has probably happened before, but I feel like the more relevant comparison would be her to the women's flat 400 — there’s only 6 women with faster flat 400s at regionals than SML’s hurdles pb.

Heike Drechsler would have faired pretty well with her 7.63w.

The title is not descriptive and clear, since it doesn't mention a comparison with male times. Her PB would place her #1 at NCAA Regionals and #1 at every other race in the world ever.

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.

I'm considering her olympic accomplishments and the number of times she broke the world record, I vote Yes to answer the question. Hasan has been the greatest in different ranges but Sydney has been the greatest in her event.

If you're going to change a thread title under the guise of making it clearer.... at least make it clearer.

I may be misremembering, but I think she was the fastest person in the UK that year

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?"