by Stuart Weir
A sideways look at the women’s 100m hurdles
I’ve always been fascinated by the women’s sprint hurdles, and they have never been better than they are now. What has particularly struck me is how holiday events have developed over the last two Olympic cycles.
In 2015, Danielle Williams won the world championship with a time of 12.57. The following year, Brianna Rollins won Olympic gold with a time of 12.48. Sally Pearson won the 2017 world championship with a time of 12.59. Since then, times have just gotten faster and faster.
In 2021, Jasmine Camacho-Quinn took Olympic gold in 12.37, a time which in Paris three years later would not even have got you on the podium, with Masai Russell winning in 12.33 and the bronze medalist finishing in 12.36.
The same progression can be noted in the world championship, with Pearson’s 12.59 for gold in 2017 not sufficient to get one of the medals in any subsequent World Championships. In 2019, Nia Ali became world champion, running 12.34. 2022 can be discounted as the medalists’ times of 12.06 and 12.23 were wind-assisted. 2023 Daniel Williams won a Second World title in 12.43, running in lane 2. Winning a championship is about progressing through the rounds and producing the needed time. In those 2023 World Championships, Keni Harrison ran 12.22 in a prelim but only 12.46 in the final. On the other hand, Williams showed excellent competition management, running 12.50 in the prelim and 12.51 in the semi – enough to reach the final, where she found the time she needed to win.
It’s not just in championships. The times are going mad. Take the nine Diamond League 100h races. The early season races were one in times 12.45 to 12.63, But as the season progressed, We saw Jasmine Camacho-Quinn when in 12.35, 12.36, and 12.38, and Ackera Nugent winning twice, in 12.24 and 12.29, phenomenal times.
In Brussels, I took the opportunity to ask double-world champion Danielle Williams what was happening on Earth.
“ I would definitely agree that there are more fast hurdlers now than a couple years before. But the 100m hurdles have always been more about speed than technique. Because the hurdles are always so low, it’s always about how fast you can run. ‘Run’ is not the right word because you don’t usually run between hurdles, but whoever can move the fastest in between. So the faster you are on the flat, the quicker you can escape not being as good a technical hurdler because it’s not about technical but about how quickly you can get back to the track and run. There are a lot of hurdlers these days who can run a fast 100 meters, and that’s why you’ve seen the times getting so much faster. A couple of years ago, 12.5 would win any given race, but now, with 12.5, you’re finishing in the second half of the race.
“I am the runner who generates a lot of force on the track. And so that is counter to what I’m trying to do in the hurdles because I don’t want to generate force between them, or I will start crashing into them, which will slow me down. But for many hurdlers, with their technique and the mechanics when they’re running, they can scoot along the floor or the track and not generate as much force, so it works for them that they can do both. I can’t do both, so I have to do either.
“The sport has evolved a lot, and some might be shoes or the surfaces we’re running on that are making times faster. But also a lot of it, I think, is due to having a lot more education in terms of recovery and how to plan their season as well as better training athletes nutrition”.
Just keep expecting the hurdles to get faster and faster!
