1500m has got to be the most stupid, ill-conceived and ill-educated distance ever

1600m seems like the sweet spot, just 4 perfect laps without the stupid extra 9m

Better than cheating by cutting 100m off the course making it an ineligible cheater course

It may not make sense to Americans but to the rest of the world it does.

Annoying from a splits perspective (though less so than the mile), however the benefits of starting on a straight make it slightly superior to the 1600.

It was amazes me how either smart people at work their troll attempts or stupid they are with their actual takes.

The 1500m is 1.5k. The 10k and 5k are already in metric.

The US started building 440yard tracks but then realized meters was still better.

the distances that actually make sense fit track would be something like:

.1k

.25k

.5k

1k

2.5k (or 3k)

5k

10k

40k

Napoleon made all of Europe use the metric system. Unfortunately when he was gone the French screwed things up like they always do.

The British "mile" is one of many distortions of the old Roman "mile" of 1000 paces. The kilometer is exactly 1000 paces of a modern grown man (taller than Romans) so it is a mile.

Therefore the correct distance to have run was 1000 meters. On the original Frenchie 500m tracks, that would have been 2 laps.

If we go back to focusing on the 1000, we'll probably find it's soft and the top 800 runners and milers will all start pushing the 2:10 barrier.

You think a record set by a 3:43 miler with 1:42 800 ability is a soft? So who exactly of the current crop could break it right now then I wonder...

Could be solved by running separate lanes for the first 100 or 200 meters -would be a real advantage for real runners like Jakob in time trails (champs) without pacers… But it have to be a full mile given historically importance (f.ex the comparison between current runners and guys like El Guerrouj)…

When I was brand new to track I always thought the 1500M was such a weird distance

6 years later and I still think the same. Just... why does it exist? 3.75 laps... what??

I would rather see a full mile contested more regularly. That's how it was back in the olden days anyway, right?

The 1500/1600 are dumb and it should've just remained a full mile to begin with

Terrible idea, we're gonna run the mile like we do the 800M? Nooo. What difference would that make anyway?

Should the 800 be switched to a 700 then to allow for a straight start?

I personally like the 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200...then again, that's what we ran when I was in high school, so I'm based

A 3:43 miler (who may or may not have had 1:42 ability) who didn't run 1000 that much, and neither did anyone else. That nearly always means soft record.

Even if he was worth 1:42, he was within 2 seconds of sub 2:10, and 800 has already gotten 2 seconds faster than 1:42. So yes they could break 2:10 if they started trying all the time. They should!

The one who could is definitely not named Jakob though

No, at the collegiate/elite levels, it makes way more sense to start on a straightaway than on a curve. A waterfall start at the top of a turn works for a 5k or 10k, but for anything faster, it's a major disadvantage to start on the outside.

The difference for both the mile / 1500m with 200m separate lanes is that a smart slow start runner like Jakob can get the time he deserves (by not having to run wide bends when he catches the -too- fast starters, or at the start of the mile)…

The mile is much, much worse than the 1500. 1609 metres and 34 centimetres? Please. You’re obviously attached to the ancient imperial system of inches, feet and miles rather than the modern day metric system that 96% of the worlds population now uses.

That is because they are used to it.

The races go from a half lap to one lap to two laps... not to four laps... but to 3 and 3/4 laps.

The distances naturally double from 100m to 200m to 400m to 800m and then all of the sudden instead of a 100% increase in distance... it is an 87.5% increase in distance.

Then we go back to doubling the 1500 distance (3 3/4 laps to 3000 meters (7 1/2 laps). Then we increase by 66.666% to 5000 meters (12.5 laps).... then we simplify things back to doubling things to 10000 and 25 laps.

All in an effort to come up with round numbers that can be remembered by fans I suppose.

The English system is actually a better system for track and field distances in terms of the simplification of distances run and laps needed to run said distances. The only inconsistency is between 100 yards and 220 yards. But everything else is simple multiples of the previous distance. Quarter, half, one, two, three, six. And laps are all full laps that are multiples of other lap races. half lap, one lap, two laps, four laps and so on.

And if you can remember a number and the word "mile" as a fan... you can remember the length of the race.

What is this logic. Seb Coe, far and away the best miler among sub-1:42 guys, ran 1:41.73 and 2:12.18.

You’d see a handful of guys running 2:12/2:13 every year, but sub-2:12s would be rare (2:11.99 being like 1:42-low/3:28-low, maybe) and 2:09.9 would be 1:40.91/3:26.00 level (not that either Rudisha or El Guerrouj had the tools to do it, and I don’t know if anyone ever has).

The 1500m as a championship race precedes 400m as the standard track size by a number of years.

The 1896 track events were 100m, 400m, 800m, 1500m and 110 hurdles.
Those events remain today.
The marathon distance varies until the 1920s.

The 1896 track was about 330m with sharp turns and long straightaways.
When you take out track size as a consideration and you are using metric distances only, 1500m makes more sense than 1600m or 1609.344 m.
All of the events finished at a different line than they started.

Lots of distances are stupid. Like the 200m, for example. It's just to give the losers in the 100m another chance.

The only distances that should be run (let's exclude hurdling and throwing stuff and pole vaulting and backwards walking and all that pointless stuff for now) at major meets are:

100m

400m (not exactly a round number, but it's exactly one lap)

1000m (this should be the most important distance, one kilometer)

5000m

Marathon

Anybody who is a natural miler would be competitive at either the 1000 or the 5000, depending on which type of miler they are. Same with 10k runners - either do the 5000 or the marathon.