This season there was a lot of discussion of the US HS 800 record being under threat and it led me to do some research on the record holders and top HS 800 times over the years. However, something just struck me that there's a big jump between Granville's HS record and Brazier's US Jr. record. 1:46.45 vs 1:43.55 is massive for just a year difference and (after doing some rudimentary math based on other records) has one of the biggest percentage difference between Jr. and HS records on the list. In fact, the only other similar record difference was Erriyon Knighton's Jr. 19.49 vs Noah Lyles 20.09 but I consider this more of a record keeping issue, because Knighton is clearly a next level athlete and thus was "too good" to be counted as a high school record like Lyles.
So what gives? It's not just Granville vs Brazier here, as Will Sumner made a jump like this just this season and the previous record from Jim Ryun was in the 1:44s, while all the top high school times cluster in the 1:46s-1:47s. Is there some magical, physiological thing that happens for 800 runners going from 17-18 to 18-19 that just doesn't play out in other events? Is this just a case of a few athletes coming into their peak at a convenient age between the records? Or is my metric completely off and it's all within reason compared to other events? Discus!