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Charlie's Space 
peter karlsson-9.98
Thank you for the comment, yamama
Peter Karlsson never ran a sub 10 to my knowledge, in fact according to the IAAF his PB was 10.18s.
If he ran a windy sub 10, then it doesn’t count. Alan Wells ran a windy 10s flat in 79, but there was a 7m/s wind! If Usain Bolt has that we’d be talking about sub 9s times!
is my comment in the wrong place?
Technically, no as this page is a free for all page so comments on anything are welcome.
Obviously if you are looking for debate on the issue, posting it here isn’t likely to get that. If you re-post your comment on the right page. I will remove it from here. Sadly there doesn’t seem to be a way to move comments in wordpress.
The next white man that can run under 10 seconds I hope will be Fabio Cerutti.
See you in Berlin
Just two comments to white (Hungarian) athletes running the 100 m.
1. Attila Kovács was fourth (and best white athlete) in the epic final of Rome in 1987:
2nd IAAF World Championships in Athletics Roma 28-Aug/06-Sep-87
Results – 100 METRES – Men – Final
Sunday, August 30, 1987 Wind: 1 m/s
1 Lewis Carl USA 9.93 (WR)
2 Stewart Raymond JAM 10.08
3 Christie Linford GBR 10.14
4 Kovács Attila HUN 10.20
5 Bryzgin Viktor URS 10.25
6 McRae Lee USA 10.34
7 Pavoni Pierfrancesco ITA 16.23
Johnson Ben CAN DQ
2. Roland Németh ran 10.08 and holds the Hungarian record since 1999. He ran close to his record (10.10) in 2000, too. A detailed (though not complete) list of his results can be found here:
http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/country=HUN/athcode=136709/index.html
Regards,
Laszlo
Re the Seoul 1988 Olympic 100m race, you state that Ray Stewart secretly failed a drugs test the year before (1987). Whilst Ray Stewart is currently in trouble with drugs over his coaching career, I could find no other reference to an issue when he was racing. Do you have a source for this comment? I would like to include it (acknowledged) in a book I am writing on drugs in sport, but can’t do it unless there is some verification? Thanks for any help
regards
Chris
Thanks for the comment Chris.
Are you referring to this?
If so that was a comment written by someone called ‘Jake’, and unfortunately it is most likely to be conjecture, rather than based on verified sources. I have certainly never heard anything of Stewart failing a drugs test whilst he was running.
Charlie,
yes it was this comment – thanks for your quick response. I have since found the same comment in one drugs in sport blog (could have been copied from here of course). Obviously not of a standard for a book at present then!
Interesting reading. I actually agree that the West African genes in mostly African- American and by implication Jamaican athletes are superior creatures in sprint events. Just as interestingly the East African (Highlands) genes are very well developed for long distance running, and so we see Kenyan and Ethopian athletes dominate marathons and other long distance events.
NOTE: It may interest you that I personally was present on both subsequent Saturdays in 1968 (In Krugersdorp and Standerton) when Paul Nash on both occasions equalled the then world record over 100m with hand-timing but little wind assistence. He was the first white man to clock 10.00 sec – his competition in those days were two of the very best – Jim Hines and Carl Lewis, tragically Paul was never able to compete directly with them because of South Africa’s apartheid policies at the time. It was a big deal back then – the world’s fastest white sprinter in history – a South African! Even today still a great achievement.
Thank you for commenting David.
Paul Nash wasn’t the first white man to run 100m in 10s, it was actually Armin Hary, the German. It seems to get forgotten, in part perhaps because Hary was the first man of any race to run 10s but it was Hary’s time that Nash equalled. Still I bet it was something incredible to have seen. Incidentally Hary’s time was also auto-timed that day at 10.25s.
People also seem to forget that hand timed times are not the same as auto timed. The current official IAAF policy on hand timing is to add 0.24s to any hand timed mark. Ergo Paul Nash has an actual time of 10.24s by modern standards. So although those athletes may have run 10s then it isn’t the same as 10s today, the goal posts have moved.
Just to give you some further comparison, Carl Lewis’ fastest hand timed time was 9.7s. Making him over a quarter of a second faster, moreover it is worth pointing out that Lewis and Nash were not contemporaries. Hines also ran a hand timed 10.00s (but 2.0m/s wind compared to Nash’s 0.0m/s)so maybe had Nash been in Mexico City it would have been him that broke the auto timed 10s barrier. Let’s be clear though, whomever had broken it, it was down to the altitude not the sprinter. That record stood for 15 years (19 if you count only low altitude runs) almost 4 times longer than any other 100m record.
It is difficult to compare sprinters from that era to those of today, different tracks (Mexico Olympics in 68 was also the first one to use a modern track), different shoes and different timings.
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