The 400 Hurdles: Dawn of a New Day

by Steve McGill

The longer hurdle race of 400 meters has not traditionally been one of track and field’s most popular events, although it has had its moments. Glamour events like the 100 meter dash, the 1500m run and even the 100/110m hurdles are always in the forefront in terms of mass appeal. Heck, as another article in this issue mentions, the 400 hurdles wasn’t even an Olympic event for women until 1984. And when people talk about the men’s 400 hurdles, the only name that consistently comes up is that of the great Edwin Moses.

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But the times they are a-changing. Both the women’s and men’s long hurdle events are at the top of the must-see list with the upcoming World Championships in Doha. Both events are hot hot hot! In the men’s race, we can finally say, forty-four years after Moses’ first Olympic gold medal victory, that Moses is not unequivocally the best 400 hurdler in history. Of course, he still is, but no longer are the times he ran faster than the times being run by the best hurdlers in the world. Except for Kevin Young in 1992-93, no one had taken the sport to a new level, and Young didn’t do it long enough to move Moses out from being the greatest of all time to just the greatest of his era. But now we have three hurdlers, from three different countries, who have run sub-47 this year and/or last year; all of them are 24 years old or younger, and all of them will meet in Doha to see which one will lay claim to the title of world champion. There is no doubt that all three could go under 47 in the same race, and that Young’s world record of 46.78 is in jeopardy. Even if it doesn’t get broken in Doha, its shelf life seems to be expiring. If all three men stay healthy, there’s no reason to believe they won’t be around for another Olympic cycle, and maybe even two more.

Those three men are Karsten Warholm of Norway, Abderrahman Samba of Qatar, and Rai Benjamin of the United States. Samba has been relatively quiet this year, running a 47.27 in Shanghai in May, but otherwise staying off the radar. I have heard speculation that he may be injured, so we’ll have to look out for that heading into the World Championships. However, a healthy Samba in 2018 already proved himself capable of running under 47, and he was the first hurdle to do so since Kevin Young’s epic world record performance at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. Warholm and Benjamin, meanwhile, have been flying around the track all summer, with Warholm emerging as the World Championship favorite after his awe-inspiring victory in the Weltklasse meet in Zurich, where he defeated Benjamin, 46.92 to 46.98, marking the first time in history to hurdlers have gone under 47 in the same race.

I’d like to take some time now to look at the stride patterns of Benjamin and Warholm, since neither of them are locked into the exact same pattern every race, unlike Moses, who took thirteen strides between hurdles all the way around the track for his whole career. Young, too, was a thirteen-stepper, except he did twelve-step two hurdles on the backstretch on occasion, including in his world record race.

In looking at three of Benjamin’s meets—two from this year and one from last year—it is evident that he prefers to thirteen-step all the way. That’s what he did at last year’s NCAA final, where he ran 47.02, tying Moses’ personal best. And at this year’s Prefontaine Classic, he also thirteen-stepped the whole way, and crossed the line in 47.16. Interestingly, in his current personal best of 46.98, which, as I already stated, he ran against Warholm in Zurich a couple weeks ago, he ran thirteen through the ninth hurdle but then fourteen-stepped the tenth hurdle. I have a theory as to why this race was the fastest (other than the obvious fact that Warholm was in the race), but I’ll hold off on the explanation until after talking about Warholm’s stride pattern, as my point will the same for both hurdlers.

At the Diamond League meet in Paris earlier this summer, Warholm ran 47.26 taking thirteen strides between hurdles all the way. At the London meet, he ran 47.12, taking thirteen strides through nine hurdles, and then taking fourteen over the tenth hurdle. In his 46.92 race in Zurich, interestingly enough, he took thirteen strides through hurdle eight, and then took fifteen strides to hurdle nine, and then again to hurdle ten. So, in the race where he fifteen-stepped two hurdles, he ran his fastest time. Yes, having Benjamin in the race had a whole lot to do with that, but let me now get to my theory.

And this is something I’ve been saying for years: thirteen all the way isn’t necessarily the best for everybody. Even though there aren’t many similarities between the 110m hurdles and the 400m hurdles, I contend that one similarity is that a shorter last stride into the hurdle helps to create momentum through the hurdle and to the next one. So, even though long hurdlers don’t want to employ an emphatic cut step like sprint hurdlers do, they do want to take off close enough that their momentum will take them forward. And slightly shortening that last stride serves that purpose.

Therefore, late in a race, it makes sense that the stride pattern will shift. For athletes at this level, they can thirteen-step most of the race with ease, but by the latter stages of a race, the thirteen-step becomes a struggle. Look at the strain on Warholm’s face and how high he carries his arms late in the race when he tries to thirteen-step hurdles nine and ten. Compare that to how he’s able to push through the final two hurdles in the Zurich race. By taking more strides between the hurdles, he put himself in better position to sprint off the hurdle. This idea that less strides is always better is, quite honestly, a bit ridiculous to me. You want to take the amount of strides that puts you in best position to sprint off the hurdle. Always. Regardless of which hurdle race you’re talking about.

On the women’s side of things, the two women pushing the event to new heights are Dalilah Muhammad and Sydney McLaughlin, although there are other hurdles definitely worth mentioning, such as Ashley Spencer and Shamier Little. Little, who looked like a phenomenon in the making when she won NCAA’s as a freshman before turning pro, is still very good, but, because of the other three, didn’t make the World Championship team.

Here, stride pattern isn’t as significant of a telling factor. Muhammad consistently takes fifteen strides through the first seven, and then alternates lead legs and takes sixteen steps between the last three. McLaughlin goes fifteen through eight, and the alternates and takes sixteen between the last two. Not much difference there. When Muhammad ran 52.20 for the world record at USA Nationals, her stride pattern was the same a few weeks later when she ran a disappointing 54.13 in Zurich. For McLaughlin, her times in those two races was much more consistent, as she ran 52.88 at Nationals and 52.85 in Zurich. One thing that we can say about the women in comparison to the men is that their technique does look better when they alternate lead legs. That’s another thing I forgot to mention about Warholm. By switching down to fifteen at Zurich, instead of fourteen like he did in London, he kept himself on his stronger lead leg, further giving him more momentum through the last two hurdles.

But back to the women, the idea that taking a consistent amount of strides between hurdles all the way around the track does not seem to be considered a standard of excellence, which makes sense to me, for the reasons I’ve already mentioned. Maybe the women are able to alternate lead legs more smoothly because the hurdles are lower, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the reason why. My experience has been that female hurdlers, for whatever reason, are naturally more adept at switching legs, to the point where it’s sometimes hard to tell which leg they “should” lead with in the 100m hurdles. McLaughlin and Muhammad are both very good on their opposite leg.

The thing about the Muhammad vs. McLaughlin rivalry is that, despite the fact that they are very friendly toward each other and respectful of each other’s talents, neither one of them is okay with losing at all. Muhammad’s world record race at USA Nationals seems to have been a direct response to having lost to McLaughlin earlier in the summer. Of course, that’s an oversimplification, but still, there’s no way she wasn’t motivated by a desire to prove to this young girl two years removed from high school that the current sheriff in town is still the sheriff in town. In that earlier race, in Oslo in June, Muhammad controlled the race for most of the race and had established a clear lead on the homestretch before McLaughlin came roaring back for the victory off the tenth hurdle and through the finish line. At USA’s, Muhammad made sure she wasn’t going to be walked down again.

Meanwhile, one thing that stood out to me about the final at USA’s is that despite the fact that Muhammad totally dominated that race, and despite the fact that she broke the world record rather emphatically, McLaughlin was still closing on her at the end. No, she had no chance of catching her, but that push off the last hurdle spoke volumes to me about how fierce of a competitor McLaughlin is. If you are going to beat her, you have to beat her; she’s not going to concede anything. And the competitive fire in Muhammad is on the same level, which is why the Doha final will be a race for the ages.