“Soft” and “Hard” Records in Track & Field
Posted September 29th, 2007 at 8:00 AM by Jimmie R. Markham
Section: News & Results, Track & Field
I love manipulating statistics, so it’s no surprise that my two favorite sports are track & field and baseball. Now that the 2007 track & field season is over, I thought it would be interesting to try and determine which world records are soft (easy to break) and which are hard (either not so easy to break or impossible to break based on current dope-detection methods that weren’t available when some of the records were set).
But how does one go about accomplishing such an arduous task? I tried trusty old Google (Yes! I actually succeeded in not using the word Google as a verb this time!), but to no avail. People obviously don’t have as much spare time as I do, because I couldn’t find a single documented method for determining whether a track & field record (or any sports record, for that matter) is soft or hard. I know they’re out there because I catch wind of it all the time: “so and so’s record is soft so it’s bound to be broken this season.” Are these pundits simply going by feel, or are they, like your humble correspondent, taking the time to actually crunch the numbers so that they can offer solid evidence for their claims?
I thought long and hard about what characteristics a record must have to be considered hard to break. The first thing that came to mind is that a record must be Beamonesque, that is, so phenomenal a performance that it leaves people scratching their heads and their competitors far behind (and, nowadays, the officials scrambling for the doping vials). Then it hit me. I would compare the best performance of all time to the tenth-best performance of all time in each event and determine the variance between the two. If the tenth-best performance was, as they say, breathing down the neck of the best performance, then the record would be soft. If the tenth-best performance was way back, still in the last county and suffering from lactate acidosis (figuratively speaking, of course) then the best performance could take a breather, if you will.
I went to one of my all time favorite track & field statistics sites (cleverly titled alltime-athletics) and found the best all-time performance as well as the tenth best all-time performance for each official IAAF event, men and women. I did all of the necessary MS Excel gymnastics, and here it is: the first annual TFS List of Track & Field Records, in softest-to-hardest order. The % you see in parenthesis is the variance between the best and the tenth best performance of all time. Anything under 1% would be considered soft. I have marked these soft records with an asterisk:
MEN
*110m Hurdles 12.88 (0.39%)
*1500m 3:26.00 (0.68%)
*3000m Steeplechase 7:53.63 (0.70%)
*4×100m Relay 37.40 (0.78%)
*100m 9.74 (0.92%)
*400m Hurdles 46.78 (0.96%)
Marathon 2:04:55 (1.05%)
400m 43.18 (1.09%)
10000m 26:17.53 (1.15%)
800m 1:41.11 (1.16%)
3000m 7:20.67 (1.21%)
1/2 Marathon 58:35 (1.25%)
5000m 12:37.35 (1.28%)
4×400m Relay 2:54.20 (1.30%)
One Mile 3:43.13 (1.39%)
Pole Vault 6.14 (1.49%)
Hammer Throw 86.74m (1.81%)
200m 19.32 (2.02%)
Triple Jump 18.29m (2.06%)
High Jump 2.45m (2.08%)
Decathlon 9026 (2.20%)
Shot Put 23.12m (2.26%)
Long Jump 8.95m (2.40%)
Discus Throw 74.08m (3.96%)
Javelin Throw 98.48m (6.56%)
WOMEN
*4×100m Relay 41.37 (0.58%)
*100m Hurdles 12.21 (0.90%)
*400m Hurdles 52.34 (0.96%)
Long Jump 7.52m (1.08%)
5000m 14:16.63 (1.19%)
Shot Put 22.63m (1.30%)
Triple Jump 15.50m (1.44%)
High Jump 2.09m (1.46%)
800m 1:53.28 (1.56%)
4×400m Relay 3:15.17 (1.73%)
1500m 3:50.46 (1.76%)
200m 21.34 (1.78%)
One Mile 4:12.56 (1.98%)
400m 47.60 (2.08%)
1/2 Marathon 1:05:40 (2.11%)
Hammer Throw 78.61m (2.17%)
100m 10.49 (2.19%)
Pole Vault 5.01m (2.24%)
3000m Steeplechase 9:01.59 (2.39%)
10000m 29:31.78 (2.56%)
Marathon 2:15:25 (3.15%)
3000m 8:06.11 (3.24%)
Heptathlon 7291 (4.38%)
Discus Throw 76.80m (4.60%)
Javelin Throw 71.70m (4.72%)
If you have any comments or forceful opinions about this list and how I arrived at it, please feel free to comment below. Have a nice day.
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- Best Track & Field City in the World?
- 2007 Track & Field Distance Events: Year in Review
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Tags: records, statistics, track and field
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The Final Sprint
[…] ekko wrote an interesting post today!.Here’s a quick excerptNow that the 2007 track & field season is over, I thought it would be interesting to try and determine which world records are soft (easy to break) and which are hard (either not so easy to break or impossible to break based on current … […]
September 29th, 2007 at 9:07 amVery interesting project and makes sense; however, might you instead consider the top ten performances to come from active athletes? If the 2nd through 10th performances were all from past history, then it suggests that no one current is close to the record - thus, not a record that may not be very “soft”. Just a thought.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:44 amNeat idea. Here’s a suggestion for “next-generation” improvement: factoring in when the various top-ten marks were achieved, and whether the person(s) setting/threatening the record are still active.
For example, the men’s marathon record was just re-set, Geb and Tergat and other greats are still active, and I would bet a lot of money that that record will be broken again before (for example) the 1500m. On the flipside, most of the top 1500m times were run by El Guerrouj, but he has retired, so that record may not be as “soft” as it appears in this analysis.
One other thing I noticed: the bottom of the list is dominated by the field events, especially on the men’s side. Seems fishy, but I can’t put my finger on what bias there might be that creates that outcome….
Thanks for posting this.
October 19th, 2007 at 7:26 pm