What makes the 200m harder than the 100m it seems?

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is it just strictly the endurance of hauling arse for another 100m that makes the 100m specialists fall off? Is it the turn?

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yes

The turn

There’s a few exceptions in recent history.

Bolt and Lyles. Lyles is better at the 200m than the 100m. His 2nd -100m of the 200 is exquisite.

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good question is how much would the results through history be different if it was a straight line 200m

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Damn. Mind blown.
Why is it a loop in the first fricking place??

Transitioning from 100m to the 200m. it will favor top end speed and endurance over technique and thrust off the blocks.

The 200 is actually the "fastest" race in terms of average speed over distance.

World Records:

100m: 9.58
200m: 19.19 (or 9.095 seconds per 100m)
400m: 43.03 (or 10.78 seconds per 100m)

When you transition from 200m to 400m you've moved past the distance where humans (as of yet) can hold a balls to the wall sprint for that long. It's more of a fast glide (but at a near constant speed).

Transitioning up one more race to the 800m your're now needing to make the judgement call of how to run the race preserve energy/step on the gas without burning yourself out too early.

Carl Lewis back in the day was ..kinda the exception I think for100m moving up to 200. As Carl was always a 100 guy. But Bolt Johnson Lyles Thomas at some point were 400 runners that moved down. The extra stamina to get finish string the last 30 m and how to max speed a curve

The curve makes the difference, same as a 60 time for a baseball player vs his actual home to 2nd time.

Yeah, the curve can cause major issues, including injuries.

Fred Kerley is an interesting case bc he has world medals at the 100 and 400 meters. Sounds like the perfect guy to dominate the 200, right?

While he has some very good times, he has also gotten injured from the curve. He is far better at the other events (and the 400 curve is less severe when you factor in the speed). That’s why he didn’t even try to make the 200 team for Paris.

The 100m sprinters are going as hard as they can for 100m.

It shouldn’t be sustainable for 200m. if you still have gas in the tank for another 100m run harder.

and then you have a whole other batch of athletes who maybe don’t accelerate as fast and maybe their top speed isn’t quite that fast but they can maintain it for 150m.

After 50 meters all 100M sprinters are (slowly) decelerating. The best 100M runners just decelerate faster than everyone else, therefore maintaining a higher speed throughout the race.

The key to the 200 and 400 (and even the 800 as world class 800 runners are on average running faster than anyone else on the planet that are not world class 100/200/400 sprinters) is balancing acceleration while maintaining speed.

In the 100 you have to get to peak acceleration as soon as possible otherwise you don't hit the top end speed fast enough in a short race.