Batten and Buford, A Look Back
For this month’s great race, I’m taking it back to my favorite race of all time in the history of track and field, and that would be the women’s 400 meter hurdle final at the 1995 World Championships in Sweden. In that race, Americans Kim Batten and Tonja Buford (Now Tonja Buford-Bailey) finished 1-2, as both broke the previous world record.
Batten’s winning time of 52.61 was only .01 ahead of Buford’s 52.62. Jamaica’s Deon Hemmings earned the bronze in 53.48, and she was in the thick of the race until she faded slightly on the final straightaway.
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For me, hurdling is at its most breath-taking, most awe-inspiring, when it rises to the level of dance, when it is an expression of a pure art form. And in this race, not only did that occur, but two athletes reached that level, at the same time, in the same race. I can’t think of another race in which that has ever happened.
Even though Buford was in lane three and Batten was in lane five, it almost seemed like they were tied together at the hip. In the first half of the race, Buford was touching down a millisecond prior to Batten, but on the final straight, they ran side by side, stride for stride, for the last 100 meters, with neither gaining a clear advantage on the other. Both of them 17-stepped the last three hurdles, with a left leg lead. You may be familiar with synchronized swimming, but this was synchronized hurdling. Unplanned, unscripted, pure and real in the moment.
Batten would later go on to say that she felt like she and Buford were dancing together, that she momentarily forgot that she was in a race, and had to jolt herself out of the reverie off the last hurdle. On the run-in, she reminded herself that she had to try to win.
About ten years ago, I interviewed Batten for an article I wrote about her career for this website, and the article was centered around that 1995 World Championship race. In that article, she talked about that feeling of dancing:
“If Tonja had not been in the race, and if she hadn’t been in the lane right next to me, I don’t know if I would’ve broken the record, or that she would have. We had a rhythm together. Neither of us pressed to get ahead of the other; it was like two people dancing. It wasn’t until the last hurdle that I realized I would have to surge somewhere.”
The full article can be found here: https://hurdlesfirstbeta.com/free-articles/profiles/kim-batten-woman-dream/
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