zxcvzxcv wrote:
He ran 21.5 220 in the sprint medley in hs and split 46.9 440y on a relay, according to his son, after a 3:55, as a freshman in college, and I think that was the day in which it was so muddy that they had grain elevator belts down for the jumps.
46.9y in mud equates to sub 46 open on mondo and on tired legs probably low 45 or high 44.
Hmmm! Are you sure you're not Ventolin?
Converting a 46.9 hand timed split in a relay from 50+ years ago without a complete video of the race, to being worth 44 high in an open race on mondo without tired legs is stretching belief a tad. Ryun ran many 440 splits on cinders and synthetic in his career, yet never ran faster than that 46.9 leg. Had the conditions been so dreadful and unconducive to a fast time, then why was he never able to beat that time before or after? And its not as if he didn't need to run any faster, as his team lost a lot of the races!
Here is a video of the mile and 4 x 440 that day.
https://video.lib.ku.edu/items/show/1526The track was rolled before the mile, and for both races looks like any other dirt track with some marks on it. It certainly isn't flooded, 'a quagmire' or muddy! Where are the splattered spots of mud on their legs at the end of the races, which you used to see on competitors taking part at White City on a wet track?
Running a relay after a 3:56 mile shouldn't take too much out of an elite athlete of 19.
Coe ran most of his fastest 400 relay splits (45.5, 45.6 and 46.3 and 46.4 on dirt) within an hour or two of an 800m race.
A 46.9 HT split is probably more like 47.1 FAT. That's for 440yds, so we can safely state it would have been more like 46.8 for 400m. That is still with a rolling start, so we can then add about 0.7 sec for an open 400m, making it worth c. 47.5.
Converting from dirt to synthetic is difficult because there are many claims ranging from 0.5 secs to 1.0 per lap in a distance race. For 400m I would imagine the differential would be nearer to 0.5 sec. Even Epstein's claim of 1.5% is only 0.7 secs, but that was for competitors in a mile.
I would estimate that Ryun was capable of somewhere between 46.8 and 47.0 for an open 400m on a synthetic track that day. On a mondo track like Monaco in 2018, then perhaps 46.5 - 46.7. Which is a far cry from 44 high!