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 The 400 metre hurdles is an Olympic athletics (track and field) discipline. On a standard outdoor track 400 metres is the length of the inside lane once around the stadium. Runners stay in their lane the entire way after starting out of the blocks and must clear ten hurdles that are evenly spaced around the track. The hurdles are positioned so that they fall forward if bumped into to prevent injury to the runners. Although fallen hurdles don't count against them, runners like to clear them clean, as touching them during the race slows runners down. The best male athletes can run the 400 m hurdles in a time of around 47 seconds, while the best female athletes achieve a time of around 53 seconds. The current men's and women's world record holders are Kevin Young with 46.78 seconds and Yuliya Pechonkina with 52.34 seconds. Compared to the 400 metres, the hurdles race takes the men about three seconds longer and the women four seconds longer. The 400 m hurdles have been an Olympic discipline since 1900 and 1984 for men and women, respectively.
[edit] HistorySee also: Men's 400 metres hurdles world record progression and Women's 400 metres hurdles world record progression The first awards in a 400 m hurdles race were given in 1860 when a race was held in Oxford, England, over a course of 440 yards (402.336 m). While running the course, participants had to clear twelve wooden hurdles, over 100 centimetres tall, that had been spaced in even intervals. To reduce the risk of injury, somewhat more lightweight constructions were introduced in 1895 that runners could push over. However, until 1935 runners were disqualified if they pushed over more than three hurdles in a race and records were only officially accepted if the runner in question had cleared all hurdles clean and left them all standing. The 400 m hurdles became an Olympic event at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. At the same time, the race was standardized so that virtually identical races could be held and the finish times compared to each other. As a result, the official distance was fixed to 400 metres, or one lap of the stadium, and the number of hurdles was reduced to ten. The official height of the hurdles was set to 91.4 cm (3 feet) for men and 76.20 cm (2 ft, 6 inches) for women. The hurdles were now placed on the course with a run-up to the first hurdle of 45 metres, a distance between the hurdles of 35 metres each, and a home stretch from the last hurdle to the finish line of 40 metres. The first documented 400 m hurdles race for women took place in 1971. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) introduced the event officially as a discipline in 1974, although it was not run at the World Championships and the first female World Champion was not determined until the 1983 World Championships. Many athletic commentators and officials have often brought up the idea of lifting the height of the women's 400 m hurdles to incorporate a greater requirement of hurdling skill. This is a view held by German athletic coach Norbert Stein: "All this means that the women's hurdles for specialists, who are the target group to be dealt with in this discussion, is considerably depreciated in skill demands when compared to the men's hurdles. It should not be possible in the women's hurdles that the winner is an athlete whose performance in the flat sprint is demonstrably excellent but whose technique of hurdling is only moderate and whose anthropometric characteristics are not optimal. This was the case at the World Championships in Seville and the same problem can often be seen at international and national meetings."[citation needed] [edit] Most successful athletesAmerican athlete Glenn Davis had a prodigal start to his hurdling career, running his first race in April 1956 in 54.4 s. Two months later, he ran a new world record with 49.5 s and later that year he won the 400 m hurdles at the Olympics, and was also the first to repeat that feat in 1960. In terms of success and longevity in competition, Edwin Moses' record is significant: he won 122 races in a row between 1977 and 1987 plus two gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montréal, and the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. He was undefeated for exactly nine years nine months and nine days, from August 26, 1977 until June 4, 1987. A relative unknown, John Vander Kamp, from Calvin College, nearly beat him during his lengthy undefeated streak, but came up a few hundredths short. The U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow prevented him from winning a hat-trick of gold medals, but his career is nonetheless widely regarded as one of the most successful in hurdling. His winning streak lasted until he finished third in the 1988 Olympic final. He also held the world record for sixteen years from when he first broke it at the Olympics on July 25, 1976 (twice in one day) until it was finally broken by Kevin Young at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.  Edwin Moses
[edit] Medalists[edit] Olympic Games[edit] Men[edit] Women[edit] World ChampionshipsThe official IAAF World Championships in Athletics competition began in 1983, but a 1980 women's event in Sittard, Netherlands, was also granted World Championship status. Three East German athletes took the gold, silver and bronze medals: Bärbel Broschat, Ellen Neumann, and Petra Pfaff.[1] [edit] Men
[edit] Women
[edit] Statistics[edit] All-time top 25 men(Updated June 16, 2009) [edit] All-time top 25 women(Updated June 16, 2009) [edit] Milestones
[edit] Season's bests[edit] References
Much of the content of this article comes from the equivalent German-language Wikipedia article (retrieved February 4, 2006).
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