Thoughts on the 400s
Our sport is arguably the purest and easiest to understand. You have a race, and whoever finishes first, throws furthest, and jumps highest wins. Of course, tactics as well as ability contribute to the outcome, but generally, the best athlete wins. This is less true at an indoor event with a shorter track, tighter bends, an outside lane generally thought to be favourable in comparison to an inside lane. The powers that be make adjustments and conduct experiments to make the event more interesting for spectators or fairer for the athletes.
The 200m has been dropped from the program of major championships because it is considered to be intrinsically unfair due to the advantage of the outside lane over the inside lane. On the track, the 400 metres is run in lanes. Indoors, it starts in lanes with athletes breaking and running the second (200m) lap as a free-for-all.
The 400s at the World Indoors in Torun were run differently with the aim of making it as fair as possible – we will return to that issue. The first thing to say is that the format was not easy to understand. Taking the women’s 400 as our example, in round one 30 athletes where divided among 7 heats -with four or five in each one. The top 2 in each heat qualified for the semi-final, along with the two fastest athletes who finished outside the top 2. (The reason for this format was an acceptance that athletes in lanes 1 and 2 with the tight bends were at a disadvantage. Yet in the two heats with 5 athletes, an athlete was forced to run in lane 2.
There were 4 semi-finals, each with four athletes. The four winners, along with the next 4 fastest athletes across the four semi-finals, progress to the co-finals. Yes, two finals called co-finals, with placings decided on time. The first final is run, and the top three sit and wait for the second co-final.
Fastest in the first round was Lurdes Gloria Manuel, 51.08, with the “slowest” qualifier on 52.30. In the semi-finals, Henrietta Jaeger was fastest in 50.95 with Manuel second in 50.96. In fact, the four semi-final winners were the four fastest in the semi-final. In the two finals, the fastest overall was Manuel (50.76), who won the second co-final. Natalia Bukowiecka, the winner of the first co-final, finished second overall in 50.83.
Overall, you could say that Manuel was the dominant athlete and deserved to win, but the excitement of the final was lost with spectators and athletes unsure if a win in a co-final had been enough.
Bukowiecka’s comment after running the co-final sums up the confusion and unsatisfactory nature of the competition: “I won the first race, I set a national record, but, at that point, I did not know whether I should be happy or not; I had to wait for the second race. If there had been six of us running together, things could have worked out differently. I believe I could have fought for the gold.
Bukowiecka lost a time trial but thought that, had she been in the same race as Manuel, she could have won. The crowd was denied a “race”.
