Evolution of an Event
On the one hand, it seems that not much has changed in the men’s 110 meter hurdles over the years. Back in 1978, Cuba’s Alejandro Casaba’s set a world record of 13.21. A year later, Renaldo Nehemiah brought the world record down to 13.00. Now here we are in 2016, a good 37 years later, and Nehemiah’s time would have earned him a victory at the recently completed US Trials, and Casanas’ time would have earned him a hypothetical spot on the team.
There aren’t many events in which the best times from nearly 40 years ago would still be among the very best today. (Yes, the men’s 400 meter hurdles are another one, but that’s an article for another day).
Yet if your talking about hurdling styles, and evolutions in hurdling technique, then yes, much progress has been made since the golden olden days of 1972 Olympic champion Rod Milburn, Nehemiah’s nemesis Greg Foster, and the great Nehemiah himself.
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When I look at footage of the past greats through the lens of a fan, I am enthralled and amazed at the speed, strength, and agility that those guys displayed back in the day, and I can see that the event would not be where it is today without their contributions and innovations.
Yet when I look at footage of the old-schoolers through the lens of a coach, I see all kinds of technical flaws that I would address.
The video above, uploaded by another all-time great, Tonie Campbell, features clips of race footage from the legends mentioned above, as well as some others, like Campbell himself, Charlie Foster, Dedy Cooper, Willie Davenport, and Tom Hill. When comparing the styles of these guys to the styles of greats like Allen Johnson, Colin Jackson, Liu Xiang, Dayron Robles, and others, it becomes quite evident that the event has evolved a great deal.
While watching the video, I found myself thinking, man, if those guys knew then what we know now, they would’ve been running 12.5’s! Take a look at the video yourself and see what you think, but these are my major observations:
1) The old schoolers didn’t shuffle between the hurdles. They tried to sprint. As a result, a lot of them ran up on hurdles. Some, like Nehemiah, tried to zigzag in the lane in order to create more space. I don’t think shuffling really came into play until the late 1990’s, with Allen Johnson, when he began to address his issue of hitting a lot of hurdles in races. Shuffling – keeping the hands and feet very low in the three strides between the hurdles – creates more space to negotiate each barrier and also eliminates the need for any lateral movement in the lane.
2) The old schoolers were all lead-leg-dependent. The lead leg was the leg that created speed into and off each hurdle. Almost all hurdles hugged the lead leg side of the lane. The trail leg kind of just did what it did. Nehemiah’s trail leg was the most efficient, but even his opened more widely than would be considered nowadays. Same for the Frenchman, Guy Drut, although he is not pictured in this video.
3) Because of the lead leg dependency, the major emphasis was on extending the lead lead, then snapping it down with force. The lead leg didn’t cycle. It extended and stayed straight, on a horizontal angle. It didn’t begin to descend until the hamstring had passed the crossbar. At that moment came the snapdown. This snapdown was what caused the hurdlers to hug the lead leg side of the lane, which led to a lot of contact in races when you had a left leg lead in the lane to the right of a right leg lead. The 1970’s version of Greg Foster would actually kick the lead leg UP, and then snap it down.
4) The kicking up that was evident in the style of Foster and many others was the result of back-kick in their sprinting strides. Old school hurdlers didn’t do the front-side mechanics thing. Even the great Edwin Moses didn’t. The toes pointed down, the ankles weren’t dorsi-flexed. Hence the lack of a cycle motion. On the one hand it makes you wonder if front side mechanics is as vital as we make it out to be, yet on the other hand it makes you wonder how fast those guys could’ve run if they had employed front side mechanics. I’m of the latter opinion on that one.
5) Arm carriage was an anything-goes affair. The more innovative hurdlers, like Millburn, developed styles that helped them to stay balanced and to keep their momentum pushing forward. His double-armed lead was copied by many, and modified by members of the generation that followed him. But a lot of guys’ arms were all over the place.
6) Nehemiah was the only one who didn’t lock the lead leg at the knee. Other than raw athletic ability, that’s probably the biggest thing that set him apart from the rest. And he didn’t really snap down like the others; his was more of a push-down. Not quite the same as cycling, but headed in that direction.
You may have noticed that when talking about modern hurdlers, I didn’t get more modern than hurdlers of eight or so years ago. That’s because I feel that, from an innovative standpoint, the event reached a peak in the AJ, Xiang, Robles era. Everybody out there now is more or less technically sound, but there are no technical masters. The seven-step revolution that played a role in Robles’ 12.87 and Aries Merritt’s 12.80 has already grown stale. Back in 2012, we all thought 12.80, or at least 12.90, would become the new sub-13. But that hasn’t been the case.
We’ll see where things go from here. Because of a myriad of factors, it’s always very difficult to compare hurdlers of different eras. But it’s also always fun to do.
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