2001 The Review - The Sprints

2001 Review of the Year
30 October 2001 -  With the help of two respected journalists and statisticians, Mirko Jalava (FIN) and A Lennart Julin (SWE), the IAAF is pleased to present a Review of track and field events in 2001, which puts this year’s results into an historical context. Starting with the sprints, the series will continue over the next few weeks on the site.  Let's have your views on this topic in the IAAF’s online Forums?

Men Sprints
Mirko Jalava (FIN) for the IAAF

Standards in the men's sprints are usually affected by standards in the United States. During the last few years the Americans have struggled to find new talent at the very top. With World Record holder Maurice Greene (USA) still running fast and others challenging him, the 100m, the most prestigious event in track and field, is doing well. However, two others, the 200m and 400m, seem far away from their best days. Michael Johnson (USA), who owns the World Records in both events, has now retired and some serious work needs to be done if his performances are to be matched. The 200m suffered because Frank Fredericks (NAM) and Ato Boldon (TRI) were off their best form, while the 400m lacked top US athletes in the sub 44.5 bracket. The 200m has better potential to return to its best level, as there are plenty of runners who look set to run sub-20 times.

100m
With Greene and Tim Montgomery (USA) battling for honours, and top times being achieved, the 100m is the healthiest sprinting event. Maurice Greene started eight finals in 2001 and only once did his time exceed 10 seconds (10.01). Nevertheless, although there was a significant drop in top performances - 54 performances at 10.08 or better in 2001 and 108 in 1998, we have to remember the effect of wind on times. Also, fast times from the 2nd round at the World Championships in Edmonton (10 of them) are missing from these figures because of a faulty wind gauge. The World Championships saw some fast times and five men went under 10 seconds in the final, despite a slight headwind. This was the second best final in World Championship history, just behind Tokyo 1991, where Raymond Stewart (JAM) was 6th with 9.96. In terms of depth, the 100th performance for 100m was 10.27, with the record being 10.24 set last year, so standards remain very high.

2001 IAAF Rankings Men 100m

200m
It was a modest season in this event as only one man went under 20 seconds. The last time this happened was in 1989 when Robson da Silva (BRA) led the world with 19.96. The only performance below the barrier in 2001, 19.88 in Brussels by Joshua Johnson (USA), was also completely unexpected. Johnson was running in lane 9 and his personal best before this race was only 20.48!

In terms of depth, it is worth noting that the 50th best performance this year was 20.30. That time was bettered 81 times in 2000 and 86 times the year before.

But although there was only one sub-20 time there were plenty of runners just over the limit. Competition at Edmonton was tight sprinters needed to clock 20.29 to make the final, which is better than in most previous major championships. To conclude, the 200m is quite close to reaching the level it had at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996

2001 IAAF Rankings Men 200m

400m
Compared to the 200m, the 400m is a long way off its best era. Of course, the sudden absence of Michael Johnson is one factor but this can’t explain the huge drop in quality of the event, not just at the World Championships but throughout this year. The 50th best performance in 2001 was only 45.04, a mark achieved 82 times in 2000 and 100 times in 1998!

Edmonton clearly demonstrated that the event is in transition. Avard Moncur's (BAH) winning time of 44.64 would have been enough for only 7th place in the first semifinal at the World Championships in Seville two years before. With that time, he would not have made the World Top 25 in 1996-1999. It is incredible that a world title could be won with such a performance. Surprise silver medallist Ingo Schultz (GER) clocked 44.87 in Edmonton - exactly the same time Andrew Pettigrew (USA) ran to qualify as the last finallist in Athens 1997. Another factor could be that Great Britain, always a contender for 4x400m glory, has lost its brightest stars. In 1997 Britain had three men in the final, two in 1999 but there were none at Edmonton 2001. The overall depth is not really the problem, just the top performances. The record for the 100th best performer of the year was set in 2000 - 45.78 - and so far this year the 100th best is 45.95, with some performances likely to come still.

2001 IAAF Rankings Men 400m

Women Sprints
A. Lennart Julin (SWE) for the IAAF

Although the international calendar has become several magnitudes more comprehensive during the last decades the Olympics retains its special magic. Therefore, many athletes reserve their last-ditch-efforts for the Olympics. 2000 was no exception in that aspect and numerous athletes - even successful ones - ended their careers in Sydney.

2001, as a post-Olympic year, was very much a year of transition. And although a new generation of athletes stepped forward into the spotlight, they were not quite capable of filling the voids left by the departed superstars. The obvious consequence of this changing-of-the-guards is that the nominal levels of performance decline, something which should not be interpreted as a decline of the sport. The new generation needs time to reach its full maturity!

Ever since the previous post-Olympic year - 1997 - “women’s sprints” have been more or less synonymous with the name Marion Jones who stepped right out of the shadows into superstardom at that time. Her string of fast times and almost flawless competitive record over an entire Olympiade mean that “Super-Marion” really deserves the title of “Greatest female sprinter ever”.

Marion ended the year 2000 by taking the Olympic 100m title with the widest margin ever. The fact that she was still just 25 years old made it well-nigh impossible to imagine - barring serious injuries of course - that her No 1 position would come under any kind of threat in 2001. But it certainly did ....

100m
When Marion Jones won the 100m at the opening Golden League meeting in Rome by a safe – but not overwhelming  - margin, we attributed that to early season “rustiness”. But a few days later in Lausanne the winning margin to fast starting training companion Chandra Sturrup was much too close for comfort: a scant one hundredth of a second!

Although MJ won also her four remaining pre-Edmonton races they didn’t erase the feeling that Marion was no longer the old, smooth, winning machine. She had to work visibly hard to win by very minor margins. Was she suffering from “post-Olympic-blues” having in the past four years achieved more or less everything?

But still, nobody really was prepared for what happened in Edmonton. Not even Zhanna Pintusevich who on August 6 brought Marion her first - and second - defeat since late summer of 1997 by taking both the semi-final and the final. In Sydney, Zhanna had been “buried in the pack” some 4-5 metres behind - now she was half metre ahead and thereby provided the moment of the athletic year 2001.

It turned out to be a truly unique occurrence as Marion was back to her winning (but still not “supersonic”) ways in the following meetings. But Edmonton reminded us that not even Marion Jones is untouchable, something that will offer important inspiration not only to Zhanna but to all female sprinters.

The flipside of having one truly outstanding athlete in an event is often that he/she more or less discourages - or frightens off - the contemporary competition. The alternative is a situation like the pre-Marion era when there was a group of evenly matched athletes (Devers-Ottey-Privalova-Torrence) taking turns at beating each other in the quest for supremacy.

2001 IAAF Rankings Women 100m

200m
This event in 2001 had its worst year in terms of quality for approximately a quarter of a century! A couple of illustrations:

* The medal winning times in Edmonton - 22.39, 22.52 and 22.56 - were the slowest in a worldwide championship since Munich 1972!

* The world leading time of the year (Marion Jones 22.23) was the slowest since 1977.

What has caused this spectacular - and alarming - decline? What are today’s athletes doing wrong to be running so much slower than their predecessors? To find answers we should, however, not be looking at the athletes - but rather their competitive opportunities. Because what makes athletes “tick” and train hard - and even harder - is attractive competitive goals. If we look specifically at the 200m for women it has in recent years become more or less a non-event outside of the championships. The almost exclusive emphasis of the “circuit” on the 100m has put the 200m on the list of “endangered species”.

In 2001 the 200m was a Grand Prix event “on paper” but in the real world you still had to look very hard indeed to find any major meetings carrying it as a point-scoring event: Just one of the seven Golden League-meets, just two of the five European summer GP1 meets and just two of all the eleven GP2 meets! During the whole European GP-season (mid-June to early September) the event was offered a grand total of four (4!) times!

On the other hand the non-GP 100m was available at all seven GL, four out of five GP1 and at seven GP2 for a total of eighteen (18!) attractive competitive opportunities. So why should any sprinter have made the 200m her priority in 2001, even if the event suited her better? It is no coincidence that while up to eight meetings counted for the GP scores no female 200m runner had more than five!

To get the women’s 200m out of its current slump it must be reborn as a common ingredient in the circuit. And why not? From the on-site spectator’s point of view the 200m is actually a more attractive event to watch than the 100m, which is fully appreciated only after watching a number of slow-motion replays!

2001 IAAF Rankings Women 200m

400m
No one could criticize Cathy Freeman for taking a year off after the extraordinary emotional high she experienced at the Olympics on home soil. But by leaving the scene she created a major void in an event that she has “owned” since the previous Olympics.  Unfortunately, injuries forced her most likely successor, Katharine Merry, to abandon her season in July.

The 400m was perhaps the most “open” of all events coming into Edmonton, especially as there had been just a couple of major encounters - with no clear-cut outcome - in the preceding part of the Grand Prix series. This offered the perfect opportunity for someone to rise to the occasion - and the one to do so was Senegal’s Amy Mbacké Thiam.

A semi-finalist in Seville 1999 and Sydney 2000 and coming off a summer of 51-ish times, she peaked perfectly in Edmonton. Three winning performances at progressively faster times: 50.99 in her heat, a new PB 50.21 in her semi and then 49.86! But Amy was hard pressed in the final by Jamaican Lorraine Fenton who came frustratingly close (just .02!) to getting her first major gold medal after a bronze in Seville and silver in Sydney.

Just as remarkable as this the first gold medal ever for Senegal was the fact that traditional powerhouse USA wasn’t even represented in the final! They still had the depth - a convincing 4x400m relay victory only evaporated when the last runner fumbled and dropped the baton - but they are at the moment missing an athlete - like three time World Championships medallist Jearl Miles - capable of fighting it out for gold in the individual event. Now the 400m world is waiting for the return of Cathy Freeman from her “sabbatical”....

2001 IAAF Rankings Women 400m

See The 2001 Reviews of: The Sprints - The Jumps - Middle Distance - The Throws -