– 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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I’ve been involved in Athletics for years, while I don’t 100% know all the history. I do know that a lot of the decisions about distances were made depending on the position of the start lines relative to everything.
If you look at a track, the 1500m start line is a straight line on the back stretch corner which gives the runners a full 100m straightaway to get ahead without having to jockey for position, the mile line is in a weird spot slightly behind the finish line, and if it were a 1600m the lanes would have to be crazy spread out due to the curve of the track and everyone would have to stay in their lanes for 200m around the back stretch, or the would be kinda close but the person on the inside lane would have a huge advantage. So 1500m makes the most sense on a 400m track, it just works out that it’s a nice straight line then everyone into position, and there isn’t as huge of an advantage to the inside lane.
Also the 400, 800, and 10000 are all on the same line, the start/finish line. The 5000m has the same start as the 200m on the innermost lane. The only outlier is the 3000m steeplechase, and that is so the runners get a full lap on their starting position before the go in the water.
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