Altitude ii (women's 400 numbers)

[gh]

Linking this with a previous thread ("Altitude...") might as well carry the topic of Mexico 400s to its logical conclusion and include the women's data as well. Note they improved by even more than the men. I'd attribute that to the fact that they had far fewer chances at meaningful international competition leading up to the Games, so low altitude marks are poorer than their shape would have indicated.

1. Besson 52.0-53.8 (1.8)
2. Board 52.1-53.0 (0.9)
3. Chistyakova 52.2-53.1 (0.9)
4. van der Hoeven 52.6-53.6 (1.0)
5. Simpson 52.5-53.9 (1.4)
6. Penton (no OG)
7. Scott 52.7-53.5 (0.8)
8. Louer (no OG)
9. Henning 52.8-53.8 (1.0)
10. Hammond (no OG)

Average improvement for the 7: 1.11

[Pierre-Jean]

gh, i did the research few years ago, i have to dig it up in my stuff, showing that female 400m Olympic finalists for 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000 had a season best around 0.50sec slower than what they ran at Olympics. Is it to say that they usually perform very well at Olympics and the 1.1sec difference we find in Mexico doesn't look that big in spite of altitude "assistance" ?

[Mennisco]

If Valerie Brisco-Hooks had competed in Canberra at the 1985 World Cup, Sanya Richards would probably still be chasing the American record.