I have always loved the middle-distance running events. Being a Brit, this seems automatic as I grew up watching the exploits of Coe, Ovett, Cram, and Elliot winning titles and setting records over…
Something to consider is that super shoes seem to offer diminished returns in faster and faster races. So in relatively slower events 1500 and up the advancement is noticeable but in an event as fast as the 8 it has a much smaller effect. In a addition better pacing by both pacers and lights are less impaxtrul in the 8
The big change in tracks occurred (60 to 70) years ago, cinder to not cinder tracks. The big change in shoes occurred (60 to 70) years ago, leather to nylon. Men were racing 800m on cinder in leather shoes 80 years ago in 1:. There are only so many (44.xx to 47.xx) 400m men who want to train for 800m. Eight-hundred meter training is more difficult than 400m training and more difficult than 1500m training and injury rate for 800m athletes is worse than 400m athletes and 1500m athletes.
Shoes are a big part of it, they haven't had the same impact as they have on every distance 1500 and up. The other factor is that there just isn't a mega-talent in the event to raise everyone else's game post-Rudisha. It should've been Brazier, but alas. I believe that if there was a 1:41 athlete currently competing, some of the guys currently running 1:43/44 would get into the 1:42s chasing him, like we're seeing in the 1500 with all the fast times behind Jakob.
Not at just the USA level but globally. Without the likes of Rudisha, Brazier, Amos, the event is just awful. Please give me some reasons to get excited for the 800.
Why does the 1500m seem to be progressing as an event while the 800m isn't?
They have to have sprint speed, and the ability to develop endurance, without getting injured. Even if they posses these traits, they have to want to do it.
Just a guess -- the new shoe tech has a much bigger effect the longer the distance.
This goes back well before the shoe tech. When Coe ran 1:41.73 the WRs for other events were 3:31.4 / 7:31.2 / 13:08 / 27:22
Fair enough.
Just a guess again, then -- the 800 is in no man's land between distance running and sprinting and there are just less people that specialize in it than in the 400 or 1500.
Why does the 1500m seem to be progressing as an event while the 800m isn't?
Because he pulled 1:43 out of his badonkadonk is why. A reasonable way to do this analysis is to consider a fixed percentile time, say 95th, of all global event performances up until say 2000; or model that underlying data using a best fit Gaussian and pick the first standard deviation. There are other reasonable ways to do it so as to be systematically uniform across the distances but what this author did is just random.
Why does the 1500m seem to be progressing as an event while the 800m isn't?
Did anybody read the article? This graph is 1912-2023. It has nothing to do with super shoes, or even tracks, or wave lights, or anything technology-related. It simply is an inherent aspect of the 800. Young talents flame out in the 800 more than any other event. Anybody who has seriously attempted 800 running knows that it’s a fickle event and improvement is very hard to come by, as well as highly nonlinear. It’s also extremely difficult to train for properly. There is still no real consensus on the “best” way to train for the 800, and in my experience it’s pretty much a crapshoot what is going to work and what isn’t for a given runner. It’s simply a weird event.
Why does the 1500m seem to be progressing as an event while the 800m isn't?
Because he pulled 1:43 out of his badonkadonk is why. A reasonable way to do this analysis is to consider a fixed percentile time, say 95th, of all global event performances up until say 2000; or model that underlying data using a best fit Gaussian and pick the first standard deviation. There are other reasonable ways to do it so as to be systematically uniform across the distances but what this author did is just random.
