– why aren’t all middle/long distance athletics track events in multiples of 400? Why the 1500 metres and not 1600 metres so that the race is an exact number of laps.
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But…they are? 400, 800, 1600, 3200.
Best explanation I could find was that the French, who had a lot to do with establishing the modern Olympics, actually used to have tracks that were 500 meters (1800’s), so it was three laps for them.
Also 1,500 meters is 1.5 kilometers, which is a nice fractional metric number, where 1.6k looks odd in metrics.
Because the track isn’t 40m long. When you run the 400 metres you all start in different positions since you have to run in your lane and this how you make sure everyone runs the same distance. Hence the track isn’t actually 400m long.
In the 1500m you don’t have to stay in lane (everyone moves to the inside of the curves) and so the races reflect the true length of the lap.
Because tracks are 400 meters, and despite how everyone feels about the imperial system of measurement nobody has every tried to run a 4 minute 1.6 k. Everyone wanted to run a 4 minute mile.
All tracks built in the USA before the 80s were 1/4mile tracks. 440 yards. 4 laps made a mile and that was the ultimate race for running. Fit TV perfectly as it was about 4 minutes in duration. Every kid in the 60s and 70s knew who Jim Ryun and Dr. Roger Bannister and Steve Prefontaine were.
It was only when the races started to be standardized according to Olympic rules did they start marking them at 400 meters.
400 meters happens to be 437.4 yards. Really close to the 440 yard quarter mile.
I hope this helps
Long time (30+ years) High school and college track and field official here, and if I was appointed super-supreme head-honcho of track and field for US high school track, the first thing I would do would be to mandate running the 1500 and the 3000 m instead of the 1600 and 3200. Followed quickly by the elimination of the 4×200 relay. ( I really dislike that race with a passion)
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I don’t have an answer but did want to add that it is frustrating being a former decathlete because you work so hard training and competing for so many events, the last of which is the 1500m run, and they don’t even let you run a full mile! (Although I’m sure anywhere else that uses metric won’t be as frustrated)
The best way of putting it is that its “more metric.” The idea of the race lengths is to get them rounded to something, and the 1,600 and 3,200 numbers are very rough. I do agree that 1,600 and 3,200 make some sense, as they keep with the formula of doubling each length and also making them perfect multiples of a 400 meter track. But since there’s no 6,400 or 12,800 meter race, that logic falls flat.
At the international level, generally it goes 800, 1,500, 5K, and 10K on the track. They skip the 2 mile equivalent altogether. Its about getting distances that are more round — if anything you could argue that the 400 and 800 meter races are the outliers. But I guess that in those cases, they wanted to stick with 1 and 2 clean laps around the track — as 400 to 500 and 800 to 1,000 would drastically alter those historic races so much compared to just going from 1,609 to 1,500. Obviously the times are much different from 1,609 to 1,500, but the general strategy is still pretty much the same. Its long enough to be a distance race where you still have to pace yourself. Going from 800 to 1,000 would kind of change the composition of the race from a near sprint to a distance race. Going from 400 to 500 would change it from a pure sprint to something that you had to hold back a little on.
I ran middle and long distance in high school and during the winter and spring seasons we did exactly that! During spring track the distance runners did 800, 1600, and 3200 (some of us were also on 4×400 relay teams). Winter was the same distances, except shittier (indoors, fewer meets, sprinters didn’t invite us to run 4x4s with them, and it cost more money.) During the fall season we all ran 5Ks in state parks or golf courses, but that was XC not track.
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