Believe the time!

When Norway’s 400 metres hurdles star Karsten Warholm crossed the line last year in Tokyo, my TV screen said the time was ‘45.94’. I couldn’t believe it. For most of my life, Ed Moses was the gold standard in the 400m hurdles with his 120-race win streak, two Olympic titles and four world records, the last being 47.02 seconds. Even though Kevin Young broke the gold standard in 1992 with history’s first sub-47, his 46.78 seconds at the Barcelona Olympics, Moses was still in my brain.

When Warholm, the enigmatic Norwegian, chipped Young’s mark to 46.70, it wasn’t a complete shock as he has been closing on Young for some seasons.

Then came the 45.94 and an equally imponderable set of place times! A stunning 46.17 for runner-up Rai Benjamin and a distant third place for Alison dos Santos with a superb 46.72. The Moses killer was the fourth place time for Kyron McMaster, the Commonwealth Games champion from the British Virgin Islands – 47.08 seconds. My mind boggled. It was hard to accept that McMaster could be so close to the last Moses’ world record and yet be so far away from Warholm and the medals.

PERSONAL BEST

In that moment on August 3, 2021, time stood still. Then I looked at my own stopwatch and saw ‘46.0’. It confirmed that the TV time wasn’t a hoax or a glitch on the electronic timing system used in Tokyo. Then, and only then, did I accept that Warholm could have improved his personal best from 46.70 to 45.94. Only then did I accept that he could have been more than 1 second faster than Moses ever was.

Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan shocked everyone with a world record in the Eugene 100m hurdles semi-final round – 12.12 seconds – a 0.28 improvement of her lifetime best. However, Edrick Floreal, who coached American Kendra Harrison to the previous world record of 12.20, might not be so surprised. Asked in May if a sub-12 clocking might be possible in the 100m hurdles, Floreal answered, “I’m guessing 12.1 something might be more realistic but you never know. You get in the right race with the right people, the right motivation, anything can happen but 11 something, that’s a little far-fetched.”

By the way, when I looked at my stopwatch on Sunday after Amusan’s semi, it said, ‘12.07’.

Let me confess. I time races just in case there actually is an error. During the World Athletics Championships, I got ‘21.44’ when Shericka Jackson aced the women’s 200m in 21.45 seconds, ‘13.14’, when Olympic champion Hansle Parchment won his 110m hurdles heat in 13.14 seconds, ‘13.01’ when reigning world champion Grant Holloway won his semi in 13.01, and ‘13.03’ when Holloway won the final in 13.03 seconds. When Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce took her 200m semi in 21.82 seconds, my clock said ‘21.82’.

Perhaps decades of table tennis has honed my reflexes enough that the old 0.24 second differential between hand timing and electronic timing doesn’t apply but there have been many races, like those listed above, when my hand times match the official times.

Part of the Amusan shock comes from the source of the record. Most attention rightly settled on Puerto Rican Jasmin Camacho-Quinn who came into Eugene with the Olympic gold medal and just one loss in 2022. Had Camacho-Quinn broken Harrison’s 2016 standard of 12.20 seconds, there might have been less of a fuss.

Be that as it may, but a good stopwatch in the hands of a track nerd with good reflexes has revealed the truth.