Sure, 400 times are coming up a lot for two big reasons:
-A man would have to be capable of a long ways below the women’s 400m WR in order to be capable of both 10.49 and 29:01.
-Most all of the guys we believe could beat the women’s 800 through 10k WRs have never recorded a FAT 100 or 200 time, so the best we can do is extrapolate down from their 400 times.
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Count me among those who don’t think anyone could have done this. If you’re thinking about someone being capable of all simultaneously, I think that’s absurd. If we’re talking at different points over a number of years it’s of course more feasible, but I think we’re probably about maxing out at a handful of 10.7s + 28:50s guys. Wilson Kipketer, Seb Coe, Joaquim Cruz, Abubaker Kaki, Taoufik Makhloufi, Yuriy Borzakovskiy, and Donovan Brazier would be among the candidates to be 10.7s + 28:50s guys, but that’s not to say I think they’d all get there. Note that the slowest 800 PB among that group is 1:42.61.
Guys like Cram and Snell could probably never have had the explosive acceleration to even break 11.00 FAT. There’s a huge difference between turning on the afterburners with 200 to go in a mid-d race where you’re the strongest aerobically, and getting out well in the first 50 of a 100m dash. Snell himself said he thought he was the slowest sprinter in one of his 800m Olympic finals, crediting his success to his aerobic development from running 100+ mile weeks. On the other end, I think Juantorena, Rudisha, and Korir could have broken 21.00 if they’d strived to, but as 400/800 guys that does not mean they could have run 10.5, and I’m practically certain they could have never run 29:00 either.