HOT TAKE: the 400m WR is actually weak, and it should've been sub-47 and this final shows it.

Interesting comparison.

It's so weak it's stood for 40 years.

OP's not wrong. Someone like Athing Mu under correct coaching should be able to run 46.9 - 47.0.

A lot of female athletes get dragged into influencing and marketing, which consumes a portion of their energy and time. Why sacrifice IT ALL for a 47.0 if you can make a great living with a nice IG account and 48.5?

it's a well known fact that women's sports have weaker competition. It wasn't even until 1984 could a woman run the marathon in the Olympics. And that's why Syd could transition into flat that easily, because the field just isn't as deep (though it has certainly been better than 40 years ago). The same would be unfathomable for men, like Warholm's 400m flat PB is not even sub-44.

Women's records across the board are about 20% less competitive/deep than the men's records. This is a fact.

Yes women suck so bad, not sure why they are even allowed to compete? They can't beat men, so shouldn't have their own category - sounds DEI to me.

The women's 400m WR is an outlier already, and SML and the others scaring it are almost certainly on the hottest sauce around.

look at the ratios between existing world records. wWR/mWR =:

100: 9.58, 10.54, 1.100
200: 19.19, 21.34, 1.112
400: 43.03, 47.60, 1.106
800: 100.91, 113.28, 1.122
1500: 206.00, 228.28, 1.110

the variation in this ratio is very small. Women are slowest at 800; if that ratio applied to 400, the WR would still be 48.27. There's not much room for improvement.

SLM's 47.78 is back to 1.110 x the mWR. Just that little .18 seconds is a huge outlier by Koch.

To be honest, I'm not sold on the linear relationship between distance and gender difference you present. Hopefully I have the math and numbers right - I did it quick:

Male Female Diff

100 9.58 10.54 0.96

200 19.19 21.34 2.15 (1.075 sec. / 100 m)

400 43.03 47.60 4.57 (1.14 s / 100)

800 1:40.91 1:53.28 12.37 (1.55 s / 100)

1500 3:26.00 3:48.68 22.68 (1.51 s / 100)

5000 12:35.36 13.58.06 82.7 (1.65 s / 100)

It suggests there's some additional benefit to male physiology as you transition from pure explosive short sprints to races requiring more anaerobic endurance and/or aerobic endurance.

This is not a valid way to do the comparison. The time difference per 100m rises because the pace for longer races is slower, not because there is a disproportionate advantage for men for longer races. It makes more sense to represent the difference as either a time ratio or the inverse (speed ratio), in which case it ends up being much more consistent across distances.

The depth is definitely lacking, but I think the top end talents are probably relatively aligned. While it’s possible the women’s records are weaker than they should be, I don’t really think this is a good argument for it

Just because Karsten couldn’t transition to the flat (also he’s a world indoor silver medalist beating this years fourth placer without giving any focus to the event) doesn’t mean sydney being able to do so makes the women’s 400m weak. I think Rai would make the jump much better than Karsten. Some people are hurdle specialists, some can do both

You don't need to write "to be honest" every time you're sharing a thought.

But in the 5000, the men run 15.1 per 1500 while it’s sub 10 for 100/200. I feel like you have to look at the ratio - someone earning $1 million per year getting a $50k pay bump is only 5%. someone earning $100k getting a $10k bump is 10%

This is wrong.

400/800/1500 are testosterone distances, so males are further away from females.

100/200/5000/10000 etc men are 10% better than woman.

Testosterone give 2% extra boost on 400 and 1500.

800 is hardest distance for women as it is 50/50 combo of speed and endurance and they are 14% slower than men.

Don’t knownif thats actually a good argument. Records that last a long time were strong when they were set and then become weaker over time.

women’s sprints might be an exception though given the outsized effect of drugs

You can skip all that and go straight to the World Athletics points table. 10.54 is equivalent to 47.65.

What makes you think Mu has that type of leg speed?

One thing you are right is that it's not out of this world. I just default to the points tables which as I've said a million times are definitive but do as good a job as any type of logic giving a comparison across events and in 99% of cases feel accurate.

47.60 is a 1304 performance. That is not out of this world at all.

9.58 for 1356 points is out of this world. 19.19 for 1351 is out of this world.

Kipyegons 3.48.65 is 1299 points which is a good comparison point but a sub 47 is far too extreme. I do think we should have had far more performances in the low 48's and into the 47's though.

I always wonder if there is a psychological "seal" on the 400 and 800 WRs for women. Is it because the overwhelming (and let's be honest accurate) consensus that because the records are doped, even the women themselves just gave up believing it was possible? So instead of the best women starting careers with the ambition of running 47.50, they have been starting careers with the ambition of say running 48.50 and hence why the best women of the last 30-35 years have stalled out in the low 48 zone. I think we saw this exact same thing happen in the womens 1500 and then Kipyegon came along, broke 3.50 and then we had a host of women now down under 3.52 which was for years just seen as the domain of the turtle-blood scoffing Chinese women of '93.

This could be the turning point though, especially if SML stays committed to the 400 and Paulino hangs around and also runs a few more sub 48's.

Mu still has untapped potential but she'll never be a 47s runner.

Yes, you're right. Breaking it up the way I did still refutes the OP's idea that 47.60 is actually weak, though. He took the time difference between genders at 100m and simply multiplied it by 4 to get the expected difference at 400m. But that extrapolation would only work if males and females ran the 400m at the same pace as they ran the 100m.