Was this the greatest ever sprint race?
➤ Move over Usain Bolt, only a statistical anomaly is preventing your compatriot claiming her own world record and accolade
What if Usain Bolt is not the greatest sprinter in history? What if there was someone else better than him – someone currently competing and hiding in plain sight, obscured only by a statistical error that conceals her true outlier brilliance?
It is something that Bolt’s Jamaican compatriot, Elaine Thompsonherah, might wonder after she stormed to a 10.54sec victory in the 100metres at the Eugene Diamond League on Saturday, a fortnight after completing a second successive Olympic 100/200m double.
Her time in Eugene was, officially, the second-fastest in history. Yet to almost everyone in the sport, including the revered Track and Field News, it should be considered the world record.
Rarely is Florence Griffithjoyner’s 10.49sec mark mentioned without an asterisk or caveat of some sort. The primary reason was the wind, or lack of, during Griffithjoyner’s run. While huge gusts buffeted around Indianapolis on the day of the 1988 United States Olympic trials, the wind gauge flashed up a totally still 0.0m/s for her 100m heat, even while competitors in the men’s triple jump were aided by tailwinds in excess of 4m/s at almost exactly the same time.
Subsequent analysis has suggested Griffith-joyner’s run likely took place with a tailwind above 5m/s, far exceeding the legal 2m/s limit, and even the governing body’s own statisticians refer to the record as “probably strongly wind assisted”.
There are other, more suspicious, factors behind Griffith-joyner’s time. Having given up on athletics in 1986, she returned to action far leaner and noticeably more muscular the following year, before taking a big chunk off her 10.96sec personal best in the space of a few months in 1988. She claimed her improvement was down to a new training regime and improved diet, rubbishing unsubstantiated reports that she had taken performanceenhancing drugs.
Griffith-joyner never failed a drugs test, retired after winning triple gold at the 1988 Olympics and died suddenly after an epileptic seizure in 1998. That her 100m world record – which was a mind-boggling 0.27sec improvement on the previous mark – still stands is proof enough for the sceptics that Thompson-herah should be seen as the rightful world-record holder.
Strike a mark through Griffithjoyner’s 10.49sec run and Thompson-herah is 0.07sec better than any other woman in history. Rule out any other times achieved by Griffith-joyner in 1988 and the gap between Thompson-herah and the rest is 0.09sec. That margin is almost the same as the 0.11 sec between Bolt’s 9.58sec world record and the 9.69sec achieved by Yohan Blake and Tyson Gay.
There is another statistic that means Thompson-herah surpasses Bolt. The men’s and women’s 100m each have an easily identifiable mark of a world-class sprinter: for men it is 10 seconds and women 11.
Not only has Thompson-herah gone 0.04sec further than Bolt below that respective barrier, but worldwide numbers suggest the female mark might in fact be even tougher than that for men: a total of 117 women in history have broken 11 seconds, while 156 men have gone below 10 seconds.
There is every chance Thompsonherah will consign Griffith-joyner’s mark to history at the Lausanne or Paris Diamond Leagues this week, surely cementing her status as the greatest female sprinter in history.
Whether that puts her above Bolt is open to debate. Regardless, it is time the sports world gave her the respect her performances warrant.