Michael Johnson has more than TWICE as many sub-44 400s as anyone else in history - 22.

Great stat! And he still has 3 of the top 6 fastest times ever in that event.

Earlier today, I commented on his consistently dominant margins of victory in global championship 200m races (0.33 or more every time). Here are his global championship margins of victory in the 400:

• 1993: MJ 43.65, second place (SP) 44.13 - margin of 0.48
• 1995: MJ 43.39, SP 44.22 - margin of 0.83
• 1996: MJ 43.49, SP 44.41 - margin of 0.92
• 1997: MJ 44.12, SP 44.37 - margin of 0.25
• 1999: MJ 43.18, SP 44.29 - margin of 1.11 (!)
• 2000: MJ 43.84, SP 44.40 - margin of 0.56

Johnson destroyed people.

Here's his world record run at the 1999 world championships, where he won by 1.11:

i mean, they couldn't test for epo during his era right?

There was not a test until 2000.

Anti-doping has improved a lot since the 90s but still not enough.

He's the greatest 400m runner of all time. I would argue that Kirani James is #2.

Was the Seville track like 1-2 meters short? El G ran 3:27.65 which was by far his best championship time.

I don't think that's enough to suspect the track was short. Wilson Kipketer's 800 was only his sixth fastest of that year, and he ran over a second faster just five days later. Nothing special about the 4x400 times either.

My Michael Johnson conspiracy theory is that because of his build and unusual form, all he had to do was hold his cadence and his relatively squat body would hold off gravity a bit longer than the classic tall, loping 400 runner.

So he was less likely to start treading water in the final 100.

Kind of like the blade runners who never really lose their cadence, and the blades are doing most of the anti-grav work. Just keep the legs cycling back and forth.

Not at all sus...

Wariner was the smoothest 400m runner ever

He was probably doping (that was the era) but his training was also suited to allow him to run 43s on back to back days. Massive amounts of volume year around under the Clyde Hart system, which is very well documented.

WvN , who has been effectively MIA since October 2017, would have probably had 40 by now, and perhaps a few under 43

...but MJ probably took twice as much you know what

The interview with Ray Martin in Australia, where he ripped off his mic and his security buffoons stood over the presenter showed the character of the man when faced with a simple question

Nearly all of his championship wins were dominant. Dude was a beast

I believe that was the race where El G’s teammate (Kaouch?) served as a pacemaker for Guerrouj

He consistently ran very fast, but only set the WR once, and only brought it down by .11, not that impressive considering the length of his career and how much the previous record holder, Butch Reynolds, brought down the previous record by almost one second with his 3 WRs. Johnson was actually better at 200 than 400. As he got older, his 400 results got more and more inconsistent.

Impressive how American-dominated that list is!

I would argue instead that as Reynolds had very recently brought the record down by such a big margin there was not a lot of room for improvement to the world record as seen by only 1 athlete surpassing Johnson in the last 25 years so him not destroying the record is a compliment to Reynolds rather than an indictment of Johnson.