Increase the 110 Spacing
by Steve McGill
I think we can all agree that the men’s 110 meter hurdles and the women’s 100 meter hurdles are two very different races. To put it briefly, the men’s race is much more of a hurdle race while the women’s race is much more of a sprint race. As a result, the women’s race is much more appealing to the eye, especially to the casual fan, while the men’s race is more appealing to the hurdling purist. While it’s true that elite athletes in both events cannot maximize their flat speed between the hurdles, it’s emphatically true in the men’s race.
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Years ago I wrote an article in which I argued that the hurdles in the women’s race should be raised to 36 inches, with the logic being that making such a change would make the women’s race more of a hurdle purist’s race and that it would force female hurdles who rely primarily on their speed to become better hurdlers technically or else suffer the consequences of slower times. I wrote that article way back in 2005 or so, and ain’t a damn thing changed. In this article, I want to argue that the hurdles should be spaced farther apart in order to give the male hurdlers more room to sprint.
My proposal is that the hurdles be spaced one foot (.3 meters) farther apart. Currently, the run-in off the last hurdle is 14.02 meters. Increasing the spacing between hurdles by .3 would shorten the run-in to 11.32 meters, which would still be a viable distance to the finish line, so there would be no need to increase the length of the race itself.
With this argument I’m making, I’m talking about the collegiate and professional race over 42-inch hurdles, not the high school race over 39’s. That race can stay as it is. But when making the transition from high school to college, many hurdlers struggle, not just because of the increase in height (which is difficult enough), but also because the spacing doesn’t increase. Whenever I do drills in practice — and this holds true for most coaches — when I increase the height of the hurdles, I increase the spacing between the hurdles. That’s for both male and female athletes. If I’m doing quicksteps over 30-inch hurdles spaced 21 feet apart, for example, and then I raise the hurdles to 33 inches, I’ll increase the spacing to 22 or 23 feet. The only exception to this rule would be block start workouts or a pre-race warmup, where we’ll do a few reps over 30’s before raising them up to 33 with the same spacing. Same for boys — might do a few reps over 36’s before going over 39’s with the same spacing.
But the men’s race at the collegiate and professional levels has become a strange-looking race to the casual fan, and even purists like myself feel that the spacing is inhibiting many male hurdlers’ athleticism. Increasing the spacing by one foot would still allow for the artistry involved in clearing 42-inch barriers at full speed to remain in the forefront. But it would also allow these athletes a little more space to negotiate the space between the barriers, and a little more time to react to the barriers. The higher the hurdle, the closer you’re going to land to the next one. You can’t descend off a 42-inch hurdle like you can off a 39-inch hurdle. And because collegiate and professional hurdles are generally going to be stronger and faster than they were in high school, that’s all the more reason to give them more space between the barriers.
Most elite male hurdlers these days have mastered the art of “shuffling” between the hurdles — a term that refers to their ability to run with their hands and feet extremely low between the hurdles. As necessary as this adjustment is, it’s gotten to the point where it’s kind of weird-looking. Women, in comparison, look like sprinters between the hurdles. They might have to decrease their stride length some, but not nearly as much as the men do. The men look like they’re literally tiptoeing before springing up into position when it’s time to clear the barrier. Increasing the spacing would allow men to at least get their hands and knees up a little higher, and to thereby look/feel more like sprinters between the hurdles.
I remember when I was in college, even I had issues with feeling super-crowded between the hurdles, and I was only a 15-mid guy. I can remember moving in the hurdles three feet to create in practice the same feeling of crowdedness that I was feeling in races. So I can only imagine how crowded guys running in the 14’s feel, and then when you get to the guys in the 13’s and the handful who can go sub-13, oh my gosh.
From the fans’ perspective, increasing the spacing would make the men’s race a more fun race to watch. There would be less “timber toppling,” as my college coach used to call it — less contact with the hurdles, cleaner races, more aesthetically pleasing races. As it stands now, all the clang-clang of hurdles getting knocked over and bouncing off the track and bouncing into other lanes is not aesthetically pleasing for anyone, whether purist or casual fan. And we can’t blame the issues with hitting hurdles simply on bad technique. Elite hurdlers today have better technique than we ever saw as a whole in past eras.
While world records aren’t really an end-all be-all big deal to me, another benefit of increasing the spacing would be faster times. Although the run-in off the tenth hurdle would be shorter, the increased space nine times is going to add up to more speed being generated throughout the race. The only obvious drawback in that regard would be that the current world record and top-ten list, etc., based on the current spacing, would become irrelevant. But that would just mean we could draw a line between eras, which isn’t a big deal. More importantly, the event needs to evolve as the athletes who participate in it have evolved and are continuing to evolve. Give the dudes more space so they can show us what they can do.
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