The progression of world records in the men's 400-metre race in athletics.
The first world record in the 400 m for men (athletics) was recognized by the International Amateur Athletics Federation, now known as World Athletics, in 1912. The IAAF ratified Charles Reidpath's 48.2 s performance set at that year's Stockholm Olympics as a world record, but it also recognized the superior mark over 440 yards (402.336 metres) run by Maxie Long in 1900 as a world record.
(+) plus sign denotes en route time during longer race "y" denotes time for 440 yards, ratified as a record for this event "A" indicates that the time was set at altitude.
The "Time" column indicates the ratified mark; the "Auto" column indicates a fully automatic time that was also recorded in the event when hand-timed marks were used for official records, or which was the basis for the official mark, rounded to the 10th of a second, depending on the rules then in place.
Records post-1976
From 1975, the IAAF accepted separate automatically electronically timed records for events up to 400 metres. Starting January 1, 1977, the IAAF required fully automatic timing to the hundredth of a second for these events.[1]
Lee Evans' 1968 Olympic gold medal victory time of 43.86 was the fastest recorded result to that time.
For the period when the record automatic time was Lee Evans' mark of 43.86, the progression excluding races run at high altitude (above 1,000 metres) was as follows:
↑ "Men's 400m Results"(PDF). Rio 2016. International Olympic Committee. 14 August 2016. Archived from the original(PDF) on 20 September 2016. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
↑ Eric Liddell's 1924 Olympic Games victory was initially ratified as a world record by the IAAF, despite being slower than Ted Meredith's mark from 1916. The IAAF rescinded the record on August 7, 1928.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.