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An interesting article about the improvement of the 400m recently:
I was thinking, similar to how Bolt in 2008 seemed to tun the landscape of sprinting, I feel in 2011, Kirani James kind of had a significant amount of very young 400 runners make significant impact. Things did kind of fall in line with Merritt out and Wariner kind of falling off after 2010
This year we have 10 men under 44.4 and 7 of them are 23 or younger is unreal and all of them are from a different country as well.
Also, I'm inclined to place Merritt as one of the top 3 or 4 greatest 400 runners ever. Looking at his history, he has never got lower than silver at any world/Olympics. Injury in 2012 is his only blunder. I think he is top 5 in terms of sub 44 races and he pretty much brought the end of the Wariner era, who is (arguably?) the #2 all time.
I was thinking, similar to how Bolt in 2008 seemed to tun the landscape of sprinting, I feel in 2011, Kirani James kind of had a significant amount of very young 400 runners make significant impact. Things did kind of fall in line with Merritt out and Wariner kind of falling off after 2010
This year we have 10 men under 44.4 and 7 of them are 23 or younger is unreal and all of them are from a different country as well.
Also, I'm inclined to place Merritt as one of the top 3 or 4 greatest 400 runners ever. Looking at his history, he has never got lower than silver at any world/Olympics. Injury in 2012 is his only blunder. I think he is top 5 in terms of sub 44 races and he pretty much brought the end of the Wariner era, who is (arguably?) the #2 all time.