– 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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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.
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