What was levrones 60m time?
I used to do the 60m in the indoor season here in the UK.
Here are the UK records, no 40m event tho
According to Levrones’ website:
a professional football scout spotted one of the articles and through an NFL agent, invited Kevin to try out for the New Jersey Gladiators of the Arena Football League in November, 2002
On page 134 of Hatfield’s “Power: A Scientific Approach” there’s statistics on the Johnson and Lewis race on 9/24/88 at the Seoul Olypmics. At 40m Johnson’s time was 4.67s and Lewis’s was 4.81s If someone wants to tell me how to put “returns” into these posts, I’ll post the entire race in 10m intervals.
The carriage return is employed in the following way, use these three characters:
‘<’ ‘p’ ‘>’
Just remove the spaces between them and, obviously, you wouldn’t use the single quotes.
Natt, I guess this does mean that Levrone (along with quite a few other athletes) is as quick as Carl Lewis through 40 meters, and
with little to no specific training. That does have an impressive ring to it, and Levrone does deserve considerable credit for sprinting ability.
Though of course it’s also considerably less than he was claiming, as many other athletes can do the same, a few can do better, and 40 meters just isn’t a standardized sprinting distance, unfortunately.
Here’s the results of the race:
Distance (m) BJ (s) CL (s)
10 1.95 1.97
20 2.93 3.00
30 3.81 3.89
40 4.67 4.81
50 5.52 5.62
60 6.37 6.53
70 7.22 7.37
80 8.06 8.23
90 8.93 9.06
100 9.79 9.92
To paraphrase what Hatfield says in this chapter: 100m dash athletes don't have impressive 40m dash times. They sacriface starting strength and explosive strength in training for speed endurance.
I know I've read Charles Francis saying the same thing. He said that when Carl Lewis would apparently put on that burst of speed at the end to win a race, he wasn't increasing his speed at all, he was just not slowing down as quickly at the rest of the competitors.
It’s possible to calculate average speed
over each 10m interval from this data, giving
interesting results.
The time to traverse each 10m interval is given to only 2 decimal places, and so
where calculated speeds are, arbitrarily,
plus or minus 0.5 mph apart, I’m considering
there to be no significant diffence in speed between them, and so those intervals are
grouped together.
Johnson:
0-10m: 12.2
10-20m: 24.2
20-30m: 26.9
30-100m: 27.8
The fastest 10m interval was 60-70m at 28.2 mph, but this could simply be rounding error since the times were rounded to hundredths of a second, and half-a-hundredth a second on either side of that interval would fully account for the difference from average, so there may be no real difference in speed for that interval.
With Lewis, the results are more ragged and I’ll first present raw data for each 10m interval:
0-10m: 12.0
10-20m: 23.0
20-30m: 26.6
30-40m: 25.8
40-50m: 29.3
50-60m: 26.0
60-70m: 28.2
70-80m: 27.6
80-90m: 28.5
90-100m: 27.6
Now, there’s an anomaly at 30-40m. Was Lewis really slower over this interval than in the previous, and then over the next interval faster than any other? This seems unlikely. More likely there is either rounding error, or a typo for the 50m time.
Other than this, Lewis’ fastest interval
was 28.5 mph for 80-90m, but it’s within rounding error and so is not significant. (Also, if valid, it would represent slowing down previously and then speeding back up again, which he probably did not do.)
If we use the same approach as with Johnson
and compute average speed traversing 30-100m,
we get 27.8 mph for Lewis.
I had not known before this calculation that
almost all acceleration is achieved in the first 20 meters, with about 2-4 mph additional acceleration between 20 and 30 meters, at which distance (approximately) top speed is achieved; and after this speed is maintained with very little change, no change to 2 significant digits, throughout the rest of the race.
And in this particular race, Johnson had very slightly less top speed than Lewis, but substantially better acceleration in the first 30 meters, and therefore won.
Whereas (getting back on topic) Levrone achieved a better time than Lewis over 40 meters, due to greater acceleration probably in the first 30 meters or even less, but had much less top speed and therefore was wiped by Chambers over 60 meters.
All this reinforces my belief that a 40 meter sprint (or similar distance) should be an Olympic event. There is a difference in skill and talent for a distance like this than there is for 100 meter, and it’s a valid sort of thing in its own right.
If I remember Speed Trap correctly, the key to the 88 Olympic race was Johnson getting such a great start and being able to match Lewis’s top speed which occurred betwen the 40-60m marks, earlier in the race they are building speed and later on slowing down.
according to the flex article"Though the two were close at the 40-yard marker (Chambers was hand-timed at 4.52 seconds, Levrone at 4.8), "
Levrone was HAND TIMED according to the flex article at 4.8 seconds at 40 YARDS.Ben Johnson ran an ELECTRONIC TIME of 4.67 at 40 METERS.HAND TIMES are faster then electric and 40 METERS is LONGER then 40 YARDS.See how Ben Johnson is much faster then Kevin Levrone.I’m pretty sure Ben Johnson has the fastest 40 meter time ever recorded.100 meters olympic spinters are the fastest over 40 yards,although there are some damm fast football players out there.
Terminator, no one ever said that Levrone was faster than Johnson over 40 yards. The comparison was to the recorded time of Lewis, which was slower. You are correct that it is a comparison of hand-timed vs. electronic, but it isn’t correct that hand-timed is always faster. One has to go with what one has.
I certainly don’t believe it’s correct to say that 100 meter sprinters are the world’s fastest at 40 meters also, or that Ben Johnson turned a faster 40 meter time than anyone else ever has or could: in other words that 4.67 is a world record. So our opinions differ there.
The difficulty here is that the 40 meter dash is not a standard event, and obviously non-sprinters don’t often have times electronically recorded on tracks from blocks. Nonetheless, 4.5 seconds (faster than Johnson) is a perfectly ordinary though quite good time in the 40-meter dash at the college level, though it’s not an NCAA event I don’t think. These aren’t even necessarily the athletes that might be the fastest at 40 meters: they’re just guys on the track and field team.
I think you’re way off in considering 4.67 to be the world record.
You’d be amazed at how some guys who would be terrible in track events with distances past say 40 yards can accelerate off the line. Now, I’m not a track athlete, but have been medium-good at any distance (which would contribute towards not being especially good at any one thing. I had a friend who used to be a star football player in high school, but now is fat and out of shape. He insisted he could beat me at sprinting, which I thought laughable. So we raced (on pavement.)
I was absolutely amazed by how he rabbitted ahead of me off the line. Just amazed. Now, I’d say I overtook him and had far more speed by the 20 meter mark, or 30 meters at most, but at 10 meters he was well ahead. He had no genetics for top speed – had stubby legs in fact – but could accelerate off the line really surprisingly well. Just goes to show one does not need a sprinter’s build to have remarkable acceleration off the line. If anything, a “low gear” so to speak actually helps at least the first 10 meters, perhaps 20. Now that’s not a particularly important anecdote, but as it happened to me, I tend to remember it 
(I also tend to remember it because, believe it or not, he broke his arm in the process. When I blew past him, he tried so hard to speed up beyond what he actually could do that he fell on the pavement and fractured something in his elbow. Never healed up quite right actually – could never straighten his arm quite 100% after that.)
Bill, the Lewis’s 50m time is a typo. It should be 5.65 not 5.62. It still doesn’t make the data look too much more like I thought it would. Of course, rounding error might be responsible for that.
terminator- Hatfield calculated Johnson's 40 yard dash time to be 4.419 seconds. That's not the world record.
I think I remember reading that chambers broke the 100m record last spring. I'm not sure though. Does anyone know the current world record in the 100 meters.
Bill hey man I don’t maybe their are people faster then Ben was over 40meters but I don’t know.Lewis time was not slower then Levrones Lewis’s 4.81 was over 40 meters electronic time.
Natt the Hat said "terminator- Hatfield calculated Johnson’s 40 yard dash time to be 4.419 seconds. That’s not the world record.
" Yes it probally is Natt the Hat. Why becuase it is an elcetronic time,thats not recorded from first motion like they do in the nfl. The Nfl times are recorded from first movement. Ben Johnson was recorded running a 3.7 40 yard dash by NFL guys.
I got my information from charliefrancis.com abotu Ben’s Time. here is an intresting thread about a similiar topic about 40 yard dash times.
www.charliefrancis.com/ board/philboard_read.asp?id=761
Bill-Terminator said that Johnson had the fastest 40m not that the 40m split time that he did at the souel olympics was the fastest ever. There is some information on francis’s site i think that claims that Jonson did it in UNDER 4 seconds. You made that assumption a couple of times especially when you said “Whereas (getting back on topic) Levrone achieved a better time than Lewis over 40 meters…” Yeah sure it was quicker (even then only maybe as it was hand timed after all) but if lewis had only been running 60m he would have started harder im sure therefor decreasing the time at 40. Ive seen interviews with Ato Boldon where he said that it was important not to go out to hard as it made him fatigue later in a race. This would especially have been true for lewis as it was late in the race that he did most his damage. So he probably could have been faster over the first 40 or 60 but it might have sacrificed the rest of his race.
Lewis would have been good at a 40 metre race also. He is probably the greatest athlete ever to live. For those that say that he only had speed endurance and top speed while you may be correct i believe that he also had amazing levels of power, I would assume that you would need that to be the best long jumper in the world.
NAT IN THE HAT- the current world record holder is Tim Montgomery (USA) and the time is 9.78. But the best legal race that has ever been run is probably when Maurice Greene ran 9.79 in athens. This is because Montgomery was running with a significant but legal tail wind.
Tim Montgomery currently holds the 100m world record at 9.78.
You really cannot accurately assess any ones 40 speed by pulling the first 40 meter time out of a 100m (or even 60m) race. There is technique to the race beyond blowing your wad in the first 40.
This race was outdoors, which will yield faster times than if the race was indoors where it is typically run. Even so there were 75+ times better than the 6.64 run by DC during the indoor season this year and DC wasn’t any of them. So I am not sure what would have been proven had KL won. DC has only proven to be a world-class 100m runner and for one year at that.
I haven’t seen the final time for KL but he was down .28 at forty meters (which is a lot for forty meters) and it was a “blowout” after that, so it is safe to assume that he was in the 7-second range (7.02-7.2 range). That is only world-class speed if you are a female.
Since when does being a bodybuilder with decent speed equate to being a great athlete?
k
Terminator- I stand corrected. I couldn’t get the link to work but the homepage makes a reference to a 3.7 sec football 40 yard dash. I would think that training for the 40 yard dash would be different from the 100 meter because a lot of sprinters probably couldn’t hit their top speed and the body wouldn’t switch from the alactic anaerobic energy system to the lactic anaerobic energy system. Back to Ben Johnson, now that I think of how dominant his acceleration was I could picture his 40 yard dash being that dominant.
Well, obviously what’s needed to resolve all such controversy is for the 40 meter to be a standardized event. Then these times would not be in dispute.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to on the one hand, be dismissive towards hand-timed values or football results, when not suitable to one’s argument, and then on the other hand cite hand-times “by NFL guys” as proof when suitable to one’s argument.
To me, I have to limit serious discussion of what record speeds are a a given distance, by values electronically recorded and documented. Now in the case of 40 meters, the problem is, it’s not a standardized event, so we have to go with what’s available. I agree to a limited extent that extrapolating from a longer race is imperfect because one can hypothesize that the sprinter “would have gone faster” in the first 40 meters if he didn’t know he had to run further than that.
However, I don’t think that’s nearly as important an effect as beind said above, and really doubt the difference is much. For example, as Christian said, the world record in the 60 meters is 6.38 seconds by Maurice Greene. Johnson’s time at 60 meters in his 100 meter dash was 6.37. So why assume he “could have” gone substantially quicker yet over that distance and beaten the world record by a really wide margin – but never actually did of course. I don’t see the need to assume that.
This weakens the idea that Johnson started slower for the 100 meter than he would for a 60 meter.
Asserting that Lewis “would have” turned times faster than these has to fall into the realm of speculation, which is fun to make but can’t be expected to be persuasive. There’s just no evidence at all that Lewis could do substantially faster than recorded above at shorter distances.
Nor so far as I know is there substantial evidence showing this is not so) that an elite 100-meter runner turns a much faster 60-meter time when running a 60-meter race, or 40-meter time for that matter. The evidence above, and what other times I’ve seen, say no. But if there is further evidence showing that, for example, the same elite 100-meter runner can turn many tenths of a second quicker in a 60-meter race compared to his time at the 60-meter mark of a 100-meter race, then that would be interesting.
The best way to resolve this sort of thing, what times would be at 40 meters, and speculations that they would be markedly faster than what was recorded by Johnson above, is to have the 40 meter race as an official event. I still think, considering
all the discussion above of everyone, that there are runners with less top speed than elite 100-meter runners who have better acceleration off the mark and therefore faster times over a short distance such as 40 meters, where most of the time consumed is in just the first 20 meters so they are of critical importance. It simply stands to reason, and I agree with Hatfield on that point.
ok first off Ben Johnson did not run a 6.37 in his seoul race he ran a 6.33 according to www.charliefrancis.com.
Are
RT .132
10 1.83
20 2.87
30 3.80
40 4.66
50 5.50
60 6.33
70 7.17
80 8.02
90 8.89
100 9.79
The thread can be found here http://www.charliefrancis.com/board/philboard_read.asp?id=602
Also Bill Roberts I apologize for using the term"NFL Guys" It was late at night.
Here is the thread explaining Ben’s 40 yard dash time it was recorded by a Miami scout.
http://www.charliefrancis.com/board/philboard_read.asp?id=807
Here is a qoute by Charlie Francis from that thread regarding Ben’s 40 yard dash time,
“The 50 and 60 meter times are splits from Seoul (please check the 10 meter split comparisons for Tim, Ben, and Maurice on the site). The 40yard time was done by a scout for Miami who was looking at prospects in Toronto in 1987. The fastest prospect ran 4.4. Desai Williams ran a 3.9 as well (note he was in second place up to 60 meters in the Seoul final with a 6.47 split)” Charlie Francis
Bill you also said"I don’t think it’s reasonable to on the one hand, be dismissive towards hand-timed values or football results, when not suitable to one’s argument, and then on the other hand cite hand-times “by NFL guys” as proof when suitable to one’s argument.
" Bill I don’t think football timed 40 yard dahs times can be used to be made to make comparisons to someones electroncic 40 meter or 40 yard time ran in a electronic timed 100 meter race. I was merly using the time of 3.7 by Ben to compare it too other NFL players who are timed in a similiar fashion.
Bill also I agree with you that BEn probally went as fast as he could for the first 40 and 60 meters of the seoul race when he ran his 6.33. I believe that even though he went all out in that race, that his time over the first 40 meters is still faster then anyone else can run over that distance.(although maybe T-mont and Maurice could run or are able to now run faster over that distance).
Bill- I dont think that anyone said that Johnson started slower than he needed so the statement “This weakens the idea that Johnson started slower for the 100 meter than he would for a 60 meter.” is useless. Why would he start slower when it was his acceleration that was his best aspect. I believe the statement about starting slower was made about lewis. I believe that he would have started slower because his top speed and speed endurance were his strengths.
Terminator, now that you’ve explained fully, I agree with you on virtually every point. Particularly that I now understand that you were meaning to compare the Charlie Francis claim for Ben Johnson’s 40 yard time only with claims for football players, when before I misinterpreted this as intending to be in comparison to track times.
Charlie Francis is of course a superb trainer. I hope this does not sound disrespectful and I do not intend it that way but I lack the knowledge to be able to say that because he claims a particular time for one of his athletes, other than an officially recorded time, that must be the accurate time. So I am uncertain when a claim does not seem right. I note that Mr Francis and Dr Hatfield have different times
throughout in their report of this particular race, with Mr Francis’ times for his athlete always being the faster – except for the officially reported final time.
I suppose there may be two sets of hand-timed values and these are the sources of the datapoints for these times at each distance? If so perhaps this explains the seemingly-ragged pattern of Lewis’s times. A full hundredth of a second error one way at one distance, and then the other way at the next distance, would fully accound for the squirrely findings when one calculates average speed
through the intervening distance.
But if there is only set of data, then one of these gentlemen is not reporting the correct numbers for the times at each distance.
Lacking any other information, choosing between different values, for me the more credible are Fred Hatfield’s values for Ben Johnson’s times at 40 and 60 meters, or any other intermediate distances, simply due to Dr Hatfield having no reason either to promote how fast Ben Johnson was, or to wish to make appear not as fast as he was. Fred Hatfield’s reported time would be a world record at 60 meters as it is.